Research: A Twitter Revolution in Breaking News

Abstract

Twitter facilitates the spread of news and information enabling individuals to combat censorship and undermine the stranglehold of state-controlled media. It is undoubtedly playing a significant role in a rapidly evolving digital media landscape and 21st century politics. But journalists’ dubbing of the events in Moldova, Iran, Tunisia and Egypt as “Twitter revolutions” is perhaps more reflective of the experience of their own changing working practices than the politics on the ground. It points to a Twitter revolution occurring in the newsrooms of media organisations, evident in the increasing importance of Twitter for journalists covering breaking news stories.

The Paper

Available here to download from the Social Science Research Network.

Citation

Bennett, D., 'A Twitter Revolution in Breaking News' in Keeble, R. & J. Mair (eds.), Face the Future: Tools for the Modern Media Age, (Abramis, 2011), pp. 63-73.

Updates

FOI

• For those of you interested in the progress of this Freedom of Information request, I did receive a reply from the Ministry of Defence on the 8th February. Though the response was fairly lengthy, a couple of aspects of my request were not really dealt with because the information I was looking for was not held 'centrally'.
  

• I'm still hoping to find this information at a more local level, but have not yet had a reply to my email asking exactly where I can access the data I asked for. I'm hoping to reveal my 'findings' - they're not very exciting - at some point.

CNN Sack Blogging Producer

• CNN's press office just haven't replied to my email about the sacking of a CNN producer for keeping a blog. But they did talk to the New York Times:

'Barbara Levin, a spokeswoman for CNN, said she could not discuss specifics because the network does not comment on personnel matters, but she said in a statement, “CNN has a policy that says employees must first get permission to write for a non-CNN outlet.”'

• Rather intriguingly the man who fired Chez Pazienza has just resigned.

CNN - Still shutting down their blogging journalists

In 2003, CNN employee, Kevin Sites, started a blog which provided readers with a personal commentary on his reports from Iraq.

On 21 March 2003 CNN asked him to stop blogging. A spokesperson claimed that Sites’ should be fully engaged filing television reports. Sites agreed to stop blogging explaining that he had little choice but to comply - CNN were paying his cheques and had sent him to Iraq.

At the time, this was seen in the blogosphere as an assault on blogs by the mainstream media.

Today, CNN is still getting rid of its blogging journalists. Chez Pazienza, a producer, who has a popular blog at Deux Ex Malcontent was fired last week for his blog posts.

He claims he was fired because he had not had his writing vetted by CNN in accordance with the employee handbook.

Needless to say he doesn't seem too happy about the state of television news and fires a warning shot to the mainstream media:

"CNN fired me, and did it without even a thought to the power that I might wield as an average person with a brain, a computer, and an audience. The mainstream media doesn't believe that new media can embarrass them, hurt them or generally hold them accountable in any way, and they've never been more wrong."

You can read Chez's version of events here

I've emailed CNN to (hopefully) get their take on this.