Has Twitter become a source of breaking
news? Twitter has been a source of information on events such as the USA
presidential election campaign, conflict inn the Middle East, and natural
disasters. Average Joes, the you and me’s that make up our ever increasing globalized
world are now through the use of social media platforms able to provide to the
world breaking news, in real time, as it unfolds.
The Pew Research Centre states that the rise of social media and
its impact on the news gained the most attention during 2011 in technology
topics, with Twitter and Facebook
dominating the intersection of social media and the news. The study showed that social networks were
seen as a supplementary method to obtaining news with 76% of Twitter users also
obtaining news directly from a news organisation.
Cross, M (2011) maintains that Twitter has become
a crucial communication tool in times of disasters. Natural disasters such as
the March 2011 earthquake and Tsunami in Japan saw Twitter utilised as a
crucial communication tool with over 1000 tweets per minute coming out of
Tokyo.
In November 2008, Twitter established its
place as a news provider when during a terrorist takeover of a Mumbai hotel,
hostages ‘tweeted’ up-to the minute reports’. News agencies had missed their
opportunity with the crisis being over before they could arrive. Twitter had
broken the news to the world with ‘Mumbai’ recorded in “more than one message
per second” during the crisis.
Closer to home, during the 2012 Queensland floods more than 35,000 tweets using
the #qld floods hashtag were sent by Twitter users.
The CCI report on Crisis Communication onTwitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods states that “social media has an
important role to play in crisis communication and emergency management and
reported that the Twitter hashtag #qldfloods quickly became the central
coordinating mechanism for floods-related user activity on Twitter. “ The widespread use of ‘retweeting’ messages
saw the he Emergency services and media organisations being the most visable
participants in #qldfloods.
The floods saw @QPS established its
position as a leader in the field of providing up to date information as events
unfolded. Queensland Police service was able to with the use of the @QSPMedia
during the floods was able to provide timely and relevant information to the
public and through ‘retweets’ able to amplify this information. One of the
findings from the CCI report was that “@QPSMedia’s now established position as
a leading account for crisis communication in Queensland places it well to
explore more systematic approaches for crowdsourcing situationally valuable
information directly from the Twitter
community, in addition to continuing its role as a key information
disseminator.”
The QPS has continued post floods to
provide Queenslanders with real time information on events unfolding in the
state through the use of social media. To date the @QPSmedia has 30,249 followers.
“Twitter both drew on and became a source
for mainstream media. Social media users around the world shared a wide range
of flood-related media resources via
Twitter. Meanwhile, users closer to the site of the disaster shared their own experiences and observations,
often by including photographs and videos in their tweets.” (CCI Report 2012)
I remember watching in horror as video
emerged on all media news streams of the massive wave of water ripping through
Toowoomba and heading down to the Lockyear Valley. I was in a state of shock
and disbelief. Not only were the images horrific they were a clear and distinct
warning to those of us threat lived in Ipswich and Brisbane of what was heading
our way.
These images and messages obtained through
social media platforms such as Twitter enabled us to visualize and understand
(although still disbelieving) that the flood was real and was fast approaching
us. For me social media played such a crucial role in both living through the
disaster and the enormous task of the clean up afterwards.
I was able to know in real time what roads
were closed and open, and where help could be obtained. The use of Twitter
enabled complete strangers to know where to turn up to help people frantically remove
precious items from homes as flood waters were creeping up their streets. And
again during the clean up, these tweets allowed these strangers to know where
to turn up with gumboots, gerni’s, brooms and gloves. Twitter during the
Queensland Floods not only provided a source of news but became a way for
complete strangers to come together to grieve at the loss and help rebuild
shattered lives.
Science Daily reports
that there are over 3000 academic papers that discuss Twitter with many of the
studies on the importance of twitter in disseminating information of world
events.
For those who don’t have Twitter ‘Twitter in Plain English” on youtube.com provides a short animated
explanation on how Twitter ‘provides small bite size information updates about
your life and allows you to follow the updates of the lives of people that
matter to you via the web” with the little messages from twitter painting a
picture of the lives of family and friends that you have not previously
seen. “What is Twitter?" provides an animated explanation about what is Twitter and how to get started.
Interestingly, the video states that news messages appear first on Twitter
before traditional media takes them up.
Twitter has changed the playing field, we
now are all potential news journalists with the ability to break news to the
world in real time.
Citations
Cross, M 2011, ‘Twitter
world’ in Bloggerati, Twitterati: how blogs and Twitter are transforming
popular culture, pp.51–65.
CCI, 2012, http://www.mappingonlinepublics.net/dev/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/qldfloods-and-@QPSMedia.pdf viewed
10 December 2012
Explania.com 2012, http://www.explania.com/en/channels/technology/detail/what-is-twitter viewed
10 December 2012
Pew Research Centre 2012, http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/what-facebook-and-twitter-mean-for-news/?src=prc-section viewed
9 December 2012
Source Daily 2012, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110415154734.htm viewed
10 December 2012
Youtube.com 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=ddO9idmax0o
viewed 10 December 2012
