I watched with interest the ‘tweet that went wrong’ saga for our Junior Minister of Foreign Affairs Shri Shashi Tharoor. How an innocent TWEET led to knives being drawn out. As the call for his head became louder, the media incessantly reported the views of his party members, opposition, and all and sundry who had a point of view - and as Indians we have a point of view on anything - so there was a lot of content to fill pages, airtime! To top it all his OSD added fuel to fire by “tweeting” on behalf of his boss! It finally ended after several days with a glum Mr. Tharoor emerging from a meeting with the Party President Smt. Sonia Gandhi. I was reminded of a picture of him and Mrs Gandhi in an animated conversation at the Prime Minister’s Iftaar Party in the Indian Express. It looked as if as he was getting ‘gyaan’ from her!

So, how did a tweet about a phrase that we use so commonly to describe economy travel go wrong? How did a person who was Undersecretary of Communication at the United Nations get his own communication wrong? A person who has spent his career advising international dignitaries & bureaucrats on their public presentation get it wrong for himself? Or is it, that we are a society, which does not have a sense of humour?

Mr. Tharoor should know better that form is as important as the content, especially for a public person such as himself. I am attempting to get my arms around this as a public relations professional.

First, the medium. Twitter. Though it’s a fabulous medium to get your message out there, it suffers from the limitation of 140 characters. Suitable for short messages but completely impractical if you wanted to communicate beyond “what you are doing” or sharing “links” to interesting content. How do you set the context? Did Mr. Tharoor get caught in the 140 character trap?

Second, the device. Mobile phone. Great to stay connected and can’t think of life without it. However, ease of access and ability to communicate instantly only leads to reactive rather than well thought out and balanced responses. I see it all the time, especially from the crackberry wallahs. Get a message; read and react instantly. Great for responsiveness but what about time to process message and frame your reply? Did Mr. Tharoor fall into the ‘instant messaging’ trap?

Third, the message. Cattle Class. The cattle class is over 90% of a constituency of any politician. It’s the cattle class that voted Mr. Tharoor to parliament. Can a parliamentarian be so insensitive to his own constituency? As all communicators know the golden rule: It’s not what you say, but what your audience hears that matters! In this case the audience heard a slag that hurt their sensibilities in describing them and not the message about being austere before the call for austerity. Did Mr. Tharoor, a seasoned communicator forget the golden rule?

Last, as I often tell participants in my media training class: be careful with the use of humour as you respond to media enquiry in writing. The recipient may not share your sense of humour. The ‘tweetstorm’ that followed is ample evidence of this so I don’t have to say more. Say what you mean and mean what you say, if you want to be understood.

I do hope, the brilliant Mr. Tharoor survives this very minor indiscretion on his part as this country needs more politicians in the cabinet like him. I have had the privilege of meeting him in New York and can vouch for his brilliance and grasp of international relations, and boy we need people like him at the helm of our Foreign Affairs.

I am sure that this experience brings out the sharp and smart communicator in him that he truly is.

Classic: twitter, the double edged sword..user be aware. Think it over.

Share/Save as a bookmark

Tags: cattle class, Crisis Communication, Public Relations, shashi tharoor, twitter