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Twitter. The world's live search engine for Iran election.
The Iran election of 2009 is the first live event I have ever followed on Twitter. To me, Twitter is like a live world status report on practically everything and, in this case, a defining political event in the middle east as it unfolds. What makes it so unique is that you get so many diverse and unfiltered perspectives; it's like what theaters once coined a 360 "sensurround" experience.
Bloggers like Josh are doing a terrific job too. IMO, if you really want to stay informed about something, you have to seek out or create your own news experience. Fortunately you have a lot of innovative sources to choose from.
We have 24 hour news networks but they just aren't coming through for me on this election. Suffice it to say, they aren't coming through for me on much of anything anymore. I recognize the difficulty of media access in a place like Iran but Christiane Amanpour has managed to offer an insightful perspective for CNN, although with events unfolding every minute, somehow cable news coverage lags behind.
And cable news is corporate-sponsored. That really presents too much of a conflict of interest, and the notion that you can trust any corporate-sponsored newscast implicitly, never mind a state-sponsored newscast, is seriously naive. (They overlap so much now maybe there isn't even a difference between the two.)
Keep in mind that with the internet, and especially Twitter, it can act as an instant rumor mill. It can be used to distribute information and disinformation, just like all media. So you have to enlist your brain a little and look for a balance of evidence.
That's the thing now. We all have to do a little more work to find out what's really happening.
I'm not saying Twitter is the answer. I'm just saying there does seem to be a purpose for it that is evolving beyond discovering what kind of lettuce David Gregory is eating at the National Press Club.
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As I understand it, Iran is actively shutting down foreign media. NBC and CBS and others have had cameras and microphones confiscated. Clips of live violence that are being uploaded to youtube are being quickly deleted. But people in the streets are still using cellphones to twitter events.
How can Iran effectively close down communications when all its citizens, not just press outlets, are communicating?
June 14, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
CNN's on it after #CNNFail blew up. It's amazing to see a relatively rapid response to consumer sentiment from an organization like CNN (the equivalent of an aircraft carrier at sea). Andrew Sullivan's doing a pretty bang up job of weeding through the rumours on Twitter, verifying them with external sources, etc.
See: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/
June 14, 2009 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, thanks for Andrew Sullivan's link. We should really take notice of the in insurmountable power that people have when they are actively engaged and pressuring media and government.
People en masse are the most influential lobby.
June 14, 2009 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have found the twittering virtually useless. When it is impossible to verify in some body of discourse what is accurate and what is made up, the whole mass of words is reduced to meaninglessness. If somewhat taken aback by the willingness of so many generally serious people to assume that something must be real if it is read on Twitter. One suspects here a kind of primitive awe over the written word.
Sullivan has been the worst offender in the lot. He appears to have fallen into a sort of manic, drunken frenzy over the gush of electronic barks and graffiti. He shovels it out to his readers by the spadeful. What is truth? What is a lie? Who has written what is being shoveled? ... Who knows? Who cares?
June 14, 2009 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Choose your shovel, Dan. Mass media, newspaper, internet.
Plenty of misleading articles in the newspaper posing as the truth simply because they are well-written.
As I said in my post, I recommend seeking out a balance of evidence.
June 14, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink