picture: http://www.matthamm.com
Since last March 21st, it has been five years that tweets have been published across the Web. No, I don’t mean the cute little chirping birds produce, but the short text messages people around the world display on their profile page. May it be about the weather, gossips, daily moods or inspirational quotes, human imagination has no limits in terms of sharing with the whole world what comes into our minds. This incredible exchange of ideas has now grown literally into a worldwide network used by a staggering 200 million users. Just to give you an idea of how big it is, Twitter published five interesting numbers for its 5th anniversary:
1) Approximately 460 000 accounts have been created every day in February 2011.
2) One billion: this is now the number of tweets sent every week.
3) An average number of 140 millions of tweets are published in a day.
4) 6939 tweets in a second. This record has been reached in Japan only four seconds after midnight during 2011’s New Year. The last record was reached on 25th of June 2009, the day Michael Jackson died (456 tweets every second).
5) Last year, the number of Twitter mobile users rose of 182%.
If you still doubt of the influence of this social networking and microblogging phenomenon, let’s just think about some recent events where Twitter turned out to be an important and effective communication tool.
2009, in Iran, even after being shut down by the government, Twitter found a way to keep the world informed about the violent protests bursting in the country. Twitter became so important for Iranian opposition supporters for disseminating information that it even delayed its scheduled downtime for site maintenance. It was also said that Twitter allowed the event to be much more noticed by international media, bringing them news that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get.
More recently, after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Twitter was used by rescue organizations to post all sorts of information that the population may need (phone lines, shelters, train schedule…).
In Egypt this time, Twitter’s role has been recognized by President Obama who admired the Egyptian’s “creativity, talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears”. Indeed, although 88% of the online networks were blocked in Egypt, Twitter was used by protesters to show their determination against President Hosni Mubarak.
All these examples, and much more, show us how important Twitter has grown in only five years. It is now clear that this tremendous technology has the virtue of connecting people all over the world, sometimes bringing them together around a good cause, waking up some feeling of humanity and citizenry. I think it’s a fact we can’t deny.
On the other side, as a journalism and communication student that I am, I must admit that Twitter has also its downsides, especially as far as journalism is concerned. For four years now, I have been taught that only multi-sources papers can be called “journalistic”: you have to multiply your sources and tie them in if you want your story to be as close to the reality as possible. I personally am a fervent defender of well-documented and impartial journalism, but, however, it seems that this basic rule tend to be hard to put in practice in the world we live in now. As far as journalism has existed, the “scoop” has always been a Holy Grail for media companies: you are the only one that publishes an important piece of information, more people than usual will then buy your newspaper, which will of course make bigger profits. It’s as simple as that and news organizations know it well, although they certainly won’t clearly admit it. Yet, we live in the 21st century, the era of the Web, where everything has been accelerated: e-mails, video-conference, live chats, live broadcasting, 24-hour information channels… The flow of information is moving faster than ever before. In Twitter terms, this acceleration manifests itself by:
- the characters-limit (140 characters is just enough for the transcription of events and news right at the moment they happen)
- the fragmentation of the information (what matters on Twitter is not the website, nor the content, but the comments and the hyperlinks)
- the easy access (you can consult and post tweets not only directly on Twitter, from your computer or your mobile phone, but also from dozens of platforms, websites, widgets, applications… Just think about the Iran case and how easily Twitter could escape from the censorship…)
- the “hashtags” or keywords (what’s important is not the content, but the topic)
- the “RT” or copy-paste (I don’t think I have to explain this one…)
- the “reply” button (it accelerates the conversation)
- …
Being conscious of that, we can’t deny that Twitter largely fosters the idea of quick, short, however unverified, raw pieces of information, which, of course, blithely circulate among people… and journalists. Indeed, this acceleration is affecting journalists’ work in a way they unfortunately can’t struggle (you know, competitiveness, efficiency, profits… Journalism, whatever we say, is still a business). If journalists are in a hurry or lacking inspiration, they still have Twitter as an endless source of information of any sort. And this not-so-professional practice is quickly spreading among the news redactions around the world. The first example that comes to my mind is the one of CNN which used, during the Iranian elections, Twitter posts and attributed them to unnamed sources (http://gawker.com/#!5304469/twitter+addled-cnn-refers-to-tweets-as-a-source). Afterwards, CNN spokesman apologized and said it was a mistake, while recognizing CNN often does use Twitter sources. Another edifying demonstration of this journalistic “laziness” is the #journorequest hashtag. This keyword has especially been invented by and for journalists in order to facilitate their search of news on Twitter. All they have to do is to type their request into Twitter with the #journorequest hashtag and wait for somebody to answer them. Usually, they don’t have to wait long until public relations companies run up and “offer their help”. Let’s just have a look at the most recent #journorequests on Twitter:
- Looking for a female survivor of a terrorist attack from anywhere in world for publication
- I am looking ton interview a male between 25 - 55 who had cosmetic surgery and is pleased with the results
- Come on ladies, don't be shy! Need couples aged 35-55 to discuss sex lives for sensitive piece 4 weekly mag. FEE.
- Are you pregnant with first baby and had fertility treatment? Would you like to be in parenting mag? Please get in touch
- Looking for a woman in 20s who has been in rehab for drink, drugs or gambling
It’s easy to see: most of them are juicy, crispy, saucy requests and unfortunately reveal present media preoccupations.
Besides this new, and I hope marginal, use of Twitter, some journalists are also simply surfing around Twitter until they find a story interesting enough to publish. As I said earlier, by lack of time, they tend not to check out sources and stories. This unfortunately sometimes results in little mistakes that will most of the time remain unnoticed, but also in bigger errors and thus bigger, sometimes serious, consequences. For example, in 2009, at the MTV Video Music Awards, the rapper Kanye West did quite a surprising exit, taking up arms against the singer Taylor Swift and her price won for one of her music videos. A bit later, in an interview with ABC, President Barack Obama would have treated the rapper of a “jackass”, which the journalist hastened to publish on Twitter. Problem: that declaration was actually “off the record”, and thus, according to the tacit journalistic rule, not aimed for publication… This tweet provoked of course a clamor of indignation in the US. ABC apologized for its mistake and Barack Obama abstained from any comment.
As a conclusion, I think we can say that Twitter can be a great tool for everyone, may it be a simple citizen or a journalist. However, as with all other technologies, it’s a matter of personal integrity and awareness to use it the right way. As far as journalists are concerned, even though it would be much easier to regurgitate everything they see on Twitter, they still should apply the basic rules they learned in journalism school (truth, accuracy, checking out stories, sources, facts and context). Twitter should encourage them to sharpen their sense of hierarchy and selection in order to give ever more sense to news. As for others, as responsible citizens that we all are, I think it’s a priority to put in place an awareness culture where everyone should be able to question the news and to keep a critical eye on them.
Oh, and I almost forgot: happy birthday Twitter! :-)
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
http://socialmediajourno.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/happy-birthday-twitter/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rory-oconnor/twitter-journalism_b_159101.html
http://cronkite.asu.edu/mcguireblog/?p=158
Well written!
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