Berlin – Germany’s presidential election last Saturday, in which incumbent Horst Koehler won a second term, may well go down as the breakthrough moment in Germany for social networking site Twitter.

While few were surprised at the outcome of the vote, the manner in which the result became known has been causing a political stir.

Roughly 15 minutes before the official announcement, two parliamentarians posted the result on the Twitter website, informing media-savvy internet users of Koehler’s re-election.

“Guys, you can calmly watch the football, the election was successful,” Christian Democrat (CDU) delegate Julia Kloeckner wrote, after the brass band arrived to play the national anthem – making it clear the decision had been cast.

Her Social Democrat colleague Ulrich Kelber also posted a Twitter message, announcing that Koehler had achieved the necessary majority of 613 votes, a good 15 minutes before the Parliamentary President Norbert Lammert proclaimed the winner.

Twitter is the latest in a series of internet sites enabling individuals to communicate with the masses, bypassing traditional media. The site allows users to send text messages which are instantly published.

Twitters can range from the inane (“Thinking what to make for tea”) to eyewitness updates of breaking news, as happened during last December’s Mumbai bombings, when a constant stream of Twitter messages gave real-time insight as events unfolded.

New media sites such as blogs, YouTube and Facebook are already being embraced by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

US President Barack Obama has more than 6 million Facebook “friends.” And the office of British Premier Gordon Brown is a regular Twitter user.

In Germany however, the phenomenon is far less widespread.

“New media got off to a slow start in Germany,” says Nils Diederich, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, adding that internet use in Germany is far less widespread than is generally assumed.

Diederich believes Germans are starting to see the advantages of new media tools in unseating the traditional monopoly on information enjoyed by those in power.

“The possibility of fast communication is a means to democratically disseminate information,” the professor said.

“In certain situations, the use of modern forms of communication by all and sundry threatens the control of the mighty vis-à-vis the less mighty,” Diederich added. This, he said, presented a risk to politicians.

Kloeckner and Kelber have come under heavy criticism for preempting the announcement of Saturday’s presidential election result.

The parliamentary leader of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) Peter Ramsauer said: “I have no sympathy for such things, as it ultimately undermines the dignity of the parliament.”

Such criticism could be seen as the defiant voice of politicians faced with an army of citizen journalists, equipped with new media tools capable of derailing their control of the political agenda.

Diederich, who spent 18 years in parliament, thinks in this instance there is a simpler reason for the outrage, as the incident ultimately represented “a breach of the parliamentary code of conduct.”

“It devalues the role of the plenum of the Federal Convention if they don’t receive the result from the parliamentary president, but from an arbitrary communication running in parallel,” Diederich said.

The Federal Convention is the body which meets once every five years with the sole purpose of nominating the new president.

It was nothing new for members of parliament to perform such “indiscretions” as a way of drawing attention, Diederich added.

“The new media will do less to change the foundations of politics, but rather they will affect the style and intensity with which political issues are communicated,” Diederich concluded. (dpa)