All In Me Head

InformationWeek.com ran a piece by Eric Zeman on Twitter and Flight 1549 back on Saturday.  Basically, it notes that Twitter had “covered” the “events” of the day before any of the “conventional media” were able to get rolling.

Two of Zeman’s comments got me thinking.

That’s amazing power, all thanks to the mobile phone and a social networking tool called Twitter. News spreads like wildfire when you can tell 100, 500, 1,000 people at once with a single Tweet.

and

Expect to see more news breaking via Twitter rather than traditional media outlets.

Frankly, I do expect to see a lot of news “breaking” on Twitter.  And frankly, I do seriously hope that someone’s around to FIX it when it breaks.

There was a lot of misinformation about the incident that evidently ran rampant on Twitter as well.  I’m glad I personally wasn’t relying on Twitter for any critical information.

I don’t have time to flesh things out today, but here are a few basic conclusions:

1. Too many people seem very eager to see the mainstream press (especially the papers) disappear.  But I think there will always be a niche for them.
2. There will always be those (at least for a decade or two) without Twitter.  This doesn’t affect Twitter’s ability to break news faster, but it’s depth will be challenged at some point.
3. We are truly getting back to the small town feel — the way news carried for centuries.  It jumped person to person — always that game of “telegraph” we all played in elementary school.  At least here, there’s less chance of breakdown, unless someone intentionally screws with things for their own agenda.
   
4. Which leads me to believe that someone needs to collate the stuff that flows off Twitter, filter it for facts, and assemble those facts into something history can use, readily accessible to all — especially those who not as affected by the ADHD nature of our current news-feed.
5. There are implications for security.  [see below]
   
6. Here’s the order of “events” (or the place of various media, if you like) as I see them now:  Twitter breaks the story.  (This is little different from, and perhaps even expressed as “tipsters on steroids”.)  Conventional media follow up, as emotionlessly as possible, leaving blogs to provide the analysis / spin.  Is there likely overlap here?  Sure.

Here’s something I thought of from a security perspective (and even from simply a social perspective):

I’m waiting for the first Twitter-based “stampede.”  Indeed, what does happen (how do we control it) if someone uses Twitter to create a false event?  Someone dedicated enough to Twitter false photos of “proof”, which they then allege — when it can’t be reproduced — is a cover-up?  When those whose job it is to certify (or de-certify) Twitter rumours do their jobs — but those pushing the rumour keep insisting (like the birther controversy) that MSM “decertification” is really a “cover up”?

This, to me, is probably the best reason mitigating AGAINST the sort of “info-tainment” that’s becoming the rage.  Someone, somewhere, some media outlet, is going to need to be trusted — be THE MOST TRUSTED, or this sort of thing will be too easy to perpetrate.  It all comes down to trust.  Info-tainment can’t be trusted — it’s too subjective, too feel-good, too open to the very same emotions that introduce slant to reportage.

Tags: blogs, media, MSM, security, Twitter

This entry was posted by admin on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 10:46 PM and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.