Five links from 2011: 'Twitter'

I am picking out a few of the more interesting links from my 2011 delicious bookmarks. On Monday, I selected five from my 'war reporting' tag. 

Today, I've selected another five from among the bookmarks I labelled 'Twitter' in my delicious account. 

Enjoy!

1. 'Visualising the New Arab Mind'

Computational historian Kovas Boguta visualises the Twitter influence network around the revolution in Egypt.

2. 'The man who tweeted the attack on Osama Bin Laden - without knowing it'

In May, computer programmer Sohaib Athar provided Twitter updates of the US mission to kill Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Athar was unaware of the significance of what he was tweeting at the time but he knew something was up:

"Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)."

The Washington Post collected his tweets using Storify. 

3. 'Taliban join the Twitter revolution'

Meanwhile, Twitter's rapid uptake by all and sundry included the Taliban in May and Somali insurgent group Al Shabaab by December. 

A rather surreal interactive war of words online now accompanies serious military activity on the ground as ISAFMedia and alemarahweb engage in disputes over Afghanistan while HSMPress take on Kenya's military spokesperson Major Emmanuel Chirchir.    

4. Libya air strikes: NATO uses Twitter to help gather targets

"Potentially relevant tweets are fed into an intelligence pool then filtered for relevance and authenticity, and are never passed on without proper corroboration. However, without "boots on the ground" to guide commanders, officials admit that Twitter is now part of the overall "intelligence picture"."

5.  British Prime Minister considers curbing Twitter use after UK riots

August's riots in the UK prompted consideration of whether the use of Twitter and social media should be restricted.

As it turned out, BlackBerry Messenger appeared to be the communication tool of choice and recent research by the LSE/Guardian claims that Twitter was more useful in the aftermath to organise clean ups than to incite disorder. 

Journalism and rumour busting in China

There has been lots of talk about journalists' role in refuting rumours on Twitter during the recent riots in the UK.

A slightly different take on the same issue has emerged in China with the establishment of a "rumour busting league" by former Xinhua agency journalist Dou Hanzhang.

The Financial Times reports that Mr Dou's league has been trying to expose "rumours" passed on by microbloggers since May.

But his site only attracted significant attention when it began attacking "rumours" surrounding government attempts to cover up details of last month's fatal rail crash.

According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, Mr Dou's league was rather selective in its definition of rumour:

“It targets only rumours that originate with ordinary people and neglects rumours created by the government, and uses official statements as the basis and starting point of its [campaigns]”.