Twitter and the changing face of the news (1 Viewer)

[loquasagacious]

Within seconds of the first explosion in Jakarta, Twitter lit up with first-hand accounts from people on the ground - well before the big media companies could scramble into position.

Just like during last year's Mumbai terrorist attacks and, closer to home, the recent bushfires that ravaged Victoria, Twitter has once again proved its worth as a lightning fast way to spread information during disasters and breaking news events.

Daniel Tumiwa appeared to be first in the world to report the Jakarta bombings on the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels.

"Bom @ marriot and ritz Carlton kuningan jakarta," he wrote.

"Left location.Shocked. Lots of blood. Breakfast meetings at coffee shops while bombs went off."

Before long other Indonesians were uploading photographs and details they had recorded on their mobile phones.

Andre Siregar, who was in the Ritz-Carlton when the bombs went off, wrote that he "felt building shake twice" and published a photograph of the Ritz-Carlton's crushed facade.

"Airlangga restaurant explosion. We just had dinner there last night," he wrote.

Another user posted a photograph of smoke billowing out of both hotels.

Jakarta bombings | Jakarta hotels bombed | Twitter | Ritz-Carlton bombed |Marriott bombed | Terrorism | Terrorist attacks | smh.com.au | Sydney Morning Herald | Foreigners dead

In a world of tweets everyone is a reporter, news crews can scramble to get there but the witnesses will already be tweeting before the news crew is in their vans. This is the future of the news tens, hundreds even thousands of ordinary people reporting the news as it happens in 140 characters or less.

For hundreds of years the news has been centralised; town criers, newspapers, news reels, radio and tv. The emergence of twitter means the news is being decentralised - crowd sourced.

The news no longer has to gathered or disseminated from a central point which cuts the lead time on stories dramatically - but no central point means no central mouthpiece. In an ongoing storm of tweets about John Mayers toilet habits how does the news get out? Big stories are self propagating, one person tweets it and ten people read it - they tweet and 10 people each read it. At a conservative ten readers per tweet it only takes six tweet cascades to reach 1 million people. The speed at which twitter disseminates information is even contracting marketing cycles as the smh reported today Bruno loses millions due to poor twitter reviews which effect ticket sales days/weeks before poor reviews do.

Smaller stories though are unlikely to propagate in this way and do run the rick of being lost.

Decentralisation also means no editorial control, the advantage of this is of course that we get the raw news without the bias that editorial policies may apply. Of course the disadvantage is situations like photos of bomb victim's body parts being circulated.

The other important disadvantage is that decentralisation means no one to put all the pieces together to form a coherent story. It's a raw news feed as it happens not neatly organised or placed in context, this is left to the public. This to me is where the news networks need to concentrate their resources, they need to harness twitter as their eyes and ears, develop a news service which specialises in aggregating and explaining what Twitter is feeding through.

In this way Twitter becomes more of a threat to the wire services (AP, Reuters, etc) and the news networks themselves become a value-add service. In a world where google could (read: will) develop a way too aggregate Twitter news networks must differentiate by adding value e.g. the analysis and context the news requires.

In my opinion it is a brave new world that has such tweets in it, one with many threats and opportunities for the existing news suppliers and vendors, what are your thoughts?

 

[volition]

I agree that Twitter may end up changing the way the world gets its news - and for the better imo. This trend of shifting away from big news services is also assisted by people who are effectively fulfilling the role of journalist by writing about events on their blog.

It will definitely force news channels and newspapers to find some new way to compete or perish.

 

[*TRUE*]

Jakarta bombings | Jakarta hotels bombed | Twitter | Ritz-Carlton bombed |Marriott bombed | Terrorism | Terrorist attacks | smh.com.au | Sydney Morning Herald | Foreigners dead

In a world of tweets everyone is a reporter, news crews can scramble to get there but the witnesses will already be tweeting before the news crew is in their vans. This is the future of the news tens, hundreds even thousands of ordinary people reporting the news as it happens in 140 characters or less.

For hundreds of years the news has been centralised; town criers, newspapers, news reels, radio and tv. The emergence of twitter means the news is being decentralised - crowd sourced.

The news no longer has to gathered or disseminated from a central point which cuts the lead time on stories dramatically - but no central point means no central mouthpiece. In an ongoing storm of tweets about John Mayers toilet habits how does the news get out? Big stories are self propagating, one person tweets it and ten people read it - they tweet and 10 people each read it. At a conservative ten readers per tweet it only takes six tweet cascades to reach 1 million people. The speed at which twitter disseminates information is even contracting marketing cycles as the smh reported today Bruno loses millions due to poor twitter reviews which effect ticket sales days/weeks before poor reviews do.

Smaller stories though are unlikely to propagate in this way and do run the rick of being lost.

Decentralisation also means no editorial control, the advantage of this is of course that we get the raw news without the bias that editorial policies may apply. Of course the disadvantage is situations like photos of bomb victim's body parts being circulated.

The other important disadvantage is that decentralisation means no one to put all the pieces together to form a coherent story. It's a raw news feed as it happens not neatly organised or placed in context, this is left to the public. This to me is where the news networks need to concentrate their resources, they need to harness twitter as their eyes and ears, develop a news service which specialises in aggregating and explaining what Twitter is feeding through.

In this way Twitter becomes more of a threat to the wire services (AP, Reuters, etc) and the news networks themselves become a value-add service. In a world where google could (read: will) develop a way too aggregate Twitter news networks must differentiate by adding value e.g. the analysis and context the news requires.

In my opinion it is a brave new world that has such tweets in it, one with many threats and opportunities for the existing news suppliers and vendors, what are your thoughts?

This is an intriguing and plausible idea.
I am sure there will be some who will consider the immediacy of "twitter news" reckless, as there will no doubt be incorrect or downright dishonest items reported via Twitter.
However this may be all but nullified by, as you say, aggregation and further investigation.

 

[Uncle]

without referring to reliable source.
i misread this thread as "Twitter and the changing face of the jews".

 

[AsyLum]

I don't think it'll have as big an impact on professional news reporting as you make it out to be OP, purely because the difference between amateurs and professionals require processes and validations/approvals to be published. The reason people 'trust' big conglomerate news companies is because of these processes, you take that away and its just as shabby as an amateur reporting it on a blog.

But as you said, and maybe not with Twitter, there is definitely something to look at with regards to using 'free' resources to begin looking for leads and whatnot