It was only on last June 16 that we have witnessed a protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. Just as with any country that have experienced an extreme form of suppression of the freedom of expression, you can expect different forms of media being bogged down by the government. But not today that Twitter is here.
There have been lots of talks about Twitter being a news tool. A lot of people condemned it as a headline-only type of reporting proclaiming its uselessness. But the young Iranians proved this to be wrong. They can get the news out in their own little way because of the social updating website.
But is this good or bad? It is good in the sense that it gives people an area to express themselves. This applies especially in times of crisis. But of course, mobile phones are also to blame here for they are also tools to spread news.
The only bad thing I can see in this evolution of information transfer is the lack of authority. Some news may get distorted as it is passed from one person to another and some people may make claims that are not really in their area of expertise. This distortion will result in misinformation.
The best part of Twitter is that it can also reach people in other countries. We have seen people migrate like crazy and this can be a valuable tool to know what is happening in their homeland. Take the situation of the Iranian student in the US for instance. “These days for like 24 hours, I didn’t sleep. I got three hours sleep in the last three days. It’s been really intense. I’m worried about my friends; they’ve been on the streets,” he said.
Hey, have you seen this news article?
New details about Michael Jackson’s Death Emerge
I was wondering if you were going to blog about this…
Thank you for your interest but to be honest, there are so many sites publishing information and the big news networks have first hand information that we have decided that we cannot really add anything to the discussion.
There is a small point, however, that shows the power of the internet and social networking sites. Immediately upon the rumors of his death, traffic was so intense online that even Google News suffered a forty minute outage.