Pai Would Be First FCC Chairman to Make Active, Spontaneous Use of Social Media
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, leading candidate to be chairman in Donald Trump's presidential administration, would be the first FCC chairman who's an enthusiastic, spontaneous user of social media, especially Twitter. Industry observers don’t expect that to change if he becomes acting or permanent chairman in January. Pai has posted almost 9,400 tweets, more than twice as many as his closest colleague, Jessica Rosenworcel. Trump himself has posted more than 34,200 tweets.
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Pai’s use of Twitter is very different from that of current chairman Tom Wheeler, who has tweeted 665 times, mostly in support of one of his initiatives. Wheeler hasn’t tweeted since Dec. 15, when he posted several tweets tied to his announcement he would step down Jan. 20.
Pai is much more spontaneous, tweeting about everything from the death of movie star Carrie Fisher and astrophysicist Vera Rubin to numerous new developments in the world of communications. Tuesday Pai tweeted out photos of the morning sky. Pai answers questions that are tweeted to him. Wheeler follows five on Twitter, his fellow commissioners and former aide Gigi Sohn. Pai follows 2,557 and is a persistent retweeter. He has “liked” more than 11,100 other tweets.
A year ago, before the Trump phenomenon, the answer on how much a chairman should tweet was likely different than it is today, said Lori Brainard, associate professor of public policy at George Washington University, who focuses on communications. “The answer that I would have given you a year ago is, sure, he has to rein in his use of social media,” she said. “The chair’s pronouncement are taken very seriously and the chair has agenda-setting ability, needs to have a seriousness of purpose, and wouldn’t want to give away any of his personal politics.”
With Trump, “all bets seem to be off,” Brainard said. “I don’t know what we’ll see.” Pai has been tweeting a lot and will likely continue to do so, she said: “It might be different under a different president.”
Other FCC chairmen have made effective use of popular media, Brainard said, noting that the shipwrecked boat on Gilligan’s Island, the S.S. Minnow, was famously named for former FCC Chairman Newt Minow. But Twitter is different from traditional media channels, she said. “Twitter is a lot more immediate,” she said. “You can reach a lot more people in a shorter amount of time.”
“Pai uses Twitter like the bright, affable, and intellectually curious man that he is,” countered Richard Bennett, free-market blogger and network architect. “There’s no reason for him to mimic the used-car salesman tone that’s so common throughout government. As they say in high school yearbooks, he should stay as tweet as he is.”
“Pai has already achieved a remarkable balance of decorum, thoughtfulness, wit and pop culture savvy,” said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka. “I don't expect anything to change if he's made chairman.”
Pai is likely to continue to be a proficient tweeter, emailed Matt Wood, Free Press policy director. “If it’s any indication of how Commissioner Pai uses Twitter, here’s an anecdote: on the day that [former] Rep. Chaka Fattah [D-Pa.] was indicted, Commissioner Pai’s account was busily ‘liking’ tweets by Net Neutrality advocates that thanked the congressman for a statement Fattah had made in a hearing several months earlier,” Wood said. “So it’s not all dad jokes, Carrie Fisher farewells, and comically oversized coffee mugs for this commissioner. He and his staff use Twitter not just as a communications tool, but as an echo chamber for their own ruminations and as a weapon against their enemies list.”