As we mentioned last week, the Iranian protestors’ use of Twitter has everyone talking about the future of micro-blogging. So just how powerful is the twitter revolution we’ve been hearing so much about? According to Gordon Brown, it means that “foreign policy can never be the same again,” which has unearthed some commentary from those who are still doubtful that what we’re seeing is a true sea change.
Noam Cohen of the The New York Times does a very good job breaking down the pros and cons of the social network as news outlet: difficult to censor – check, good at capturing the zeitgeist – yep, often inaccurate – definitely, easily adopted by those trying to spread misinformation – sure seems that way. Peter Daou of the UN Dispatch makes a more philosophical criticism, lamenting the fact that twitter hasn’t taken up the equally important issues of hunger or violence against women. This seems slightly unfair since attention going to issues of spiking drama is hardly a problem unique to new technology.
Steve Bloomfield of Things Seen and Heard makes the more pressing point that all the excitement might end in the old realization that “there is no direct correlation between us knowing about a tragedy and us doing something about it.” (A point that Good decided to express in statistical terms.) And while it remains to be seen where all this is headed, Cohen’s final point suggests that while there is no proof yet that Twitter can oust a government (Twitter only represented a small percentage of the tools used to organize protests in Iran), its power over traditional media is growing. When CNN failed to pick up coverage of protests last weekend, a Twitter campaign forced the channel to explain its decision.
Photo: Mykl Roventine on flickr under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
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