House Democrats are in the midst of a historic sit-in on the floor of Congress to protest the Republican majority’s inaction on gun control in the wake of the Orlando massacre. But since the House isn’t technically in session, C-Span's cameras are not filming.
And yet the channel is still airing video from the chamber, and thousands more are watching on their phones. What is everybody watching if media isn’t allowed to film? Periscope, the live-streaming app acquired by Twitter last year.
Representative Scott Peters of California has been streaming on it all afternoon. But he recently implored his fellow congresspeople to download and use the app, too. "There’s an app called Periscope," he called out from behind his live-streaming phone, "and I understand that if too many people watch it that it crashes, so if other people had it or wanted to download it, maybe they’d like to try it out too and it would generate a little more capacity for the effort."
If too many people watch the same feed at once, the broadcast can crash, which is what Peters is hoping to avoid by getting other congresspeople to download and stream from Periscope, too. But most Congress members probably don’t know how to use the app, so here's a quick primer. It's easy, Congress!
Step 1. Download the app and create an account. You can sign in with your Twitter account if you have one, which you probably do since most members of Congress do.
Step 2. Open the broadcast tab by tapping on the camera icon at the bottom right of your screen and name the broadcast.
Step 3. Tweet your Periscope feed by clicking on the Twitter icon. You need to do this before you start broadcasting. You may be prompted to add your Twitter credentials to link accounts if you have not already.
Step 4. Click the red bar that says Start Broadcast. Voila, you're live. All broadcasts are public by default, but you can change that by tapping the lock icon on the broadcast screen (though in this case you definitely want it to be public). To end, click on the down arrow in the upper right corner of the broadcast screen and tap Stop Broadcast, obviously.
Step 5. To share your Periscope outside of Twitter, ask your followers to swipe right on iOS or up on Android to reveal a sharing link and other social media sharing options. People can watch Periscope from any internet browser without downloading an app.
Ok! Good luck, Congress. And please keep filming. Thousands of people are watching.
