Twitter: The first draft of history?
Like many others, I woke up this morning to Twitter messages about a disaster in China: a magnitude 7.8 (at last report) earthquake in the southwest, with thousands of people either dead or injured. Much like the forest fires in California last fall and other recent news events, Twitter became one of the main sources of on-the-ground reporting — even before CNN started picking up what was happening, and with more personal detail. During such times, Twitter seems like a crowd-sourced reporting tool, much like what NowPublic.com has created but with cellphones and 140 character messages as the medium.
In any disaster, one of the first things that people look for — not just journalists, but readers too — is the eyewitness account, the first-person description, the man on the scene. Whenever something like the earthquake happens, thousands of editors and producers at newspapers, radio programs and TV networks clog the phones trying to reach someone, anyone, who can provide a personal account: they call homes, schools, stores, friends, distant relatives. What was it like? Where were you when it happened? What happened next?
Twitter is able to supply all of those things — and it’s also self-directed. People can post messages about whatever they wish, rather than answering only the questions that a producer asks them. In the study I wrote about recently that looked at Twitter and Facebook and Wikipedia as disaster reporting tools, one of the comments about the California fires was that the media focused on celebrities and how they were affected, but Twitter and other sources gave a more complete version of events and how they were affecting everyone. Paul Kedrosky calls it the democratization of headline news.
Obviously, 140-character messages don’t take the place of reported stories that check facts and determine what exactly happened, or pull together various reports into a coherent whole. But they are a compelling part of that story — and journalists who know how to take advantage can produce something much more complete with the help of all those Twitter reporters in the field. Journalism has been called “the first draft of history,” — and now the people putting together that draft have even more help in getting it right the first time. For more sources and info, check out the post at Global Voices Online.
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think Twitter is a little more than a time-wasting jumble, or at least
it can be. I can remember not all that long ago people were saying
the same things about the Internet.
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For journalists, I totally see it. Bloggers too. But others.... - most of the stuff that comes through:
a) is referring to someone to whose twitter account I'm NOT following so I hae no idea what the person is referring to
b) obscure references to articles i"ve not yet read
c) too short to often make sense
d) boring (farts, naps and 'where are you you' posts as stated above)
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what you make of it.
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I agree, there are some powerful positive outputs to this.
I recently donated to the Red Cross and blogged it, so far, three others have donated, directly or indirectly of my evangelism
Would you consider updating your post with a link to the redcross, and encouraging your readers to donate? would be great, we can actually make a difference.
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through MySpace, I'd be happy to write about it.
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done in Chinese vs. English; what percentage is done on myspace.com vs.
myspace.cn--- is the whole story based the English-speaking side of the
population?
But seriously, why am I even bothering? It's too late for it to matter and
our chamber of echoes is blinded to the digging. Let it run its course so we
can move onto the next thing.
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In response to the issues about myspace not being monitored I recently watched the UK earthquake unfold infront of my eyes.
On experiencing the earthquake I logged onto google and frantically searched to what was going on, nothing was returned from reuters, bbc or sky news.
Then bulletins popped up from my myspace friends, with location, epicentre, effects etc etc, with comment following on for about half an hour, until reuters and the mainstream press had broken the news.
I have later learnt that this was first broken on twitter and not myspace, soes anyone have the link to the twitter that broke the news of the UK earthquake?
Great blog Mathew.
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you're done.
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