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The Power of Twitting
November 28th, 2008 | 
Author: Twitter has demonstrated its awesome power of its network in the ugliest of circumstances; the massacre in Mumbai has brought the networking, information sharing website right to the forefront of news gathering as the tragedy was played out on millions of people’s mobile phones and inboxes second by second.
CNN reported Twitter user “naomieve”’s response to the outpouring of information: “Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action.”
This is correct to an extent – certainly, news of the attack spread via Twitter far quicker than the old media could report on it, to the extent that immediate reports were dictated by the often conflicting information that was pouring out of Mumbai, twitted, re-twitted and passed around the world as fast as the eye can blink. But that soon gave way to traditional media headlines being recycled.
The astonishing speed and multiplicity of Twitter is also its weakness – the amount of re-twitted reports mean that it is impossible to tell what is an eyewitness account from a hotel and what is rumour or even mean-minded invention.
It is worth bearing in mind that it is a tool as useful to the terrorists as it is to anyone and to remember, as the old Second World War posters instructed, that “careless talk costs lives”. Twitter is an exciting tool and it’s now very much in the spotlight, at the cutting edge of communications. All that remains now is for all of us, from commentators to people in desperate situations such as those faced in Mumbai, to use it responsibly.
To read the full story from CNN click here.
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I strongly agree with both assessments. Twitter provides an extraordinary route to news which is un-moderated and immediate. The lack of editorial intervention also means that some people will always use it without care or responsibility. That is why it won’t replace traditional channels but it has added another dimension. The importance of “old” media was well illustrated by the Today programme’s coverage of the Mumbai attacks. I blogged about this here http://pr-media-blog.co.uk/mumbai-terror-and-the-power-of-radio/ but read the comments – some powerful sentiment.
This is an email I sent to CNN:
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I am the Twitter user naomieve referred to in the article. I would like to provide some context around the tweet quoted by CNN.com. The tweet Stephanie Busari refers to was NOT supposed to promote the social media aspects over the realities of what was happening to Mumbai.
I actually expanded further on this tweet to argue why I was disappointed that the focus of many tweets regarding Mumbai was to congratulate social media and Twitter for being faster on the uptake than traditional media.
I go on to expand on this in a discussion with Twitter user gyokusai where I say “#mumbai is a media experiment while mumbai is the city under attack that Twitter half the time forgets is bleeding”. That is – the Mumbai experience on Twitter is half genuine citizen journalism in action, and half self-congratulatory social media participants just happy to see a lot of publicity for Twitter regardless of the actual situation on the ground.
It is precisely that mix of content which was disturbing me at the time. Unfortunately that is also the reality of citizen journalism, the Twitter experience, social media – the whole online experience of no quality control or central control over the message to be delivered. I still believe Twitter is a crucial tool for circulating information, from, among and to the people who are in that moment and hoping for a happy ending. But I was and still am upset that users are more interested in what the Mumbai horror meant for Twitter, than what it meant for humanity. Unfortunately, for all the Twitter fanatics may like to argue, the two are NOT identical!
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