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.

How the BBC challenges censorship in Iran and China

There was an interesting article in The Guardian a few days ago documenting how the BBC is combating censorship in Iran and China using social media (and some good old-fashioned journalism).

At a South by Southwest festival panel, Sanam Dolatshahi, producer and presenter with BBC Persian TV, described an information struggle with the Iranian regime: "they would jam our footage and show their own version of events – using the same UGC, but to tell a different story, a different version of events. They would also try to make us broadcast wrong stuff so that we would lose our credibility."

She suggested that even more emphasis was subsequently placed on "verification and cross-checking of our sources."

Meanwhile, the head of BBC China, Raymond Li, said he uses microblogging websites to publish material. He finds that regulation is less prohibitive on these sites and he can outwit state censors. But he said it required no little skill and plenty of care.

Iran has a history of jamming BBC Persian TV satellites, while China blocks the BBC website every now and then. Like in 1998 or in 2010. 

Twitter, Iran and journalism

There have been all sorts of reflections on Twitter and journalism recently. Here's a few that caught my eye...

• The Online Journalism Blog

"Errors are amplified in this media environment because most Twitter followers and bloggers aren’t so much validating and confirming their facts as they are reinforcing an opinion or statement they already agree with. But while the social media sphere is a business of corroboration for regular people, it should not remain so for journalists."

• Jeff Jarvis on Iran and 'process journalism'.

"Piece by piece, the story came together before our eyes, in public. The journalists added considerable value. But this wasn’t product journalism: polishing a story once a day from inside the black box. This was process journalism and that ensured it was also collaborative journalism – social journalism, if you like."

• A couple of Twitter sceptics are forced to reconsider their position after seeing tweets from Iran - Ellen Goodman and Gideon Rachman. (Note how the authors use the same idea in opening paragraph in some sort of strange 'I-see-how-Twitter-can-be-useful-but-I-wouldn't-go-so-far-as-to-actually-update-my-own-account' show of solidarity).

• Reuters rethinks journalism in the Twitter age.

• After all, it's journalism, Jim, but not as we know it - bending the rules to cover Iran.
  

Curating media coverage on the Iran Election

I've been gathering links on the continued trouble in Iran with the calm frenzy of an obsessive stamp collector.

I've stuck all the links up on my Frontline blog.

If you missed yesterday's offering, hop on over here or if you're well-ahead of the blogging game, here is today's collection.

Links for today on blogging

• Joanna Geary, now of The Times, on why she started blogging and what she learnt from it: "Although, I didn’t really know what I was doing with the thing, with hindsight I can see from the second post on I started exploring the idea of increasing audience interaction."

• Former Iranian President, Mohamad Khatami, wants to see Mir Hussein Mousavi as Iranian president. Khatami thought it would be a good idea to answers questions from Iran's bloggers. According to Global Voices, he "loves blogs". But then slamming blogs just prior to fielding questions from their authors probably wouldn't be the way forward.
  

• The Reuters Institute had a roundtable discussion on blogging at some point recently. It produced some global perspectives on the impact of blogging on journalism in various countries.
  

Ahmadinejad

I set the iPM team the challenge of getting hold of the President of Iran to talk about uranium, US foreign policy, and nuclear power to discuss his blog for their Saturday programme. I reckon the opportunity to momentarily escape the whirlwind of international politics and have a cosy chat with Eddie Mair would be too good to miss. Surely.