Politicians have a powerful new tool in Periscope, and democracy is better off for it

In March of 2015, shortly after live-streaming via smartphones became a genuine phenomenon, Dan Pfeiffer declared that 2016 would be "the Meerkat election." "Whether it is Meerkat, Periscope or someone else," wrote Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Obama, "the potential for a service that makes live-streaming this easy is limitless. It could do to television what blogs did to newspapers by removing many of the financial and structural advantages of legacy media institutions." Pfeiffer was mocked at the time — "as exciting as these new live-streaming social media apps are, they are certainly not 'taking over' Washington," wrote Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Meerkat indeed faded away shortly thereafter.

But live-streaming has surged in popularity in 2016,with Facebook joining Twitter's Periscope app in a new war for Twitter's attention. That battle played out on the floor of Congress, as Democrats staged a wild sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives demanding gun-control legislation. When House Republicans adjourned the session, forcing C-SPAN to turn off their cameras, Democrats simply began broadcasting their protest on Periscope. The illicit streams captivated the nation, as a promising but still unproven technology found itself at the center of the national discussion. Whether 2016 will truly be the live-streaming election is still anyone's guess — but it's inarguable that, at the time of this writing, these apps have taken over Washington. Politicians have now seen the value in live-streaming, and they won't soon forget it.