We’ve seen it before: people posting their thoughts, opinions, ideas, and their nonsense on Twitter for the all world to see. But what would happen if an entire country came together and used Twitter to post updates about what is going on in the nation? That is exactly what Sweden just did.
The @Sweden program, also called Curators of Sweden, was started at the end of last year as part of Sweden’s government tourist agency. The program is putting the account in the hands of its citizens in an attempt to create “the world’s most democratic Twitter account.” Each week, a different person is “@Sweden” and he or she tweets, well, whatever they want.
The point of the program is to demonstrate through “typical” Swedes that there in fact, exists no “typical” Swede. Curators of Sweden aims to provide real accounts of the nation’s broad range of events and happenings, rather than a glossy overview of the country. In doing so, they are also reintroducing the early Internet concept of the global village.
The sometimes personal, sometimes provocative, sometimes inappropriate but always interesting, posts have been successful in bringing attention the nation; in just a few months, @Sweden has garnered tens of thousands of followers and mentions in over 120 countries. Clearly people around the world are attracted to this innovative way of displaying ideas about the nation. The question that remains though is whether this sort of identity merger is a trend to look out for in the future…
