Twitter Revolution Buzz Pushback
Jun 18th, 2009 | 3 responses
Jack Shafer at Slate is doubting Twitter:
Unlike several other technology-friendly journalists, I’ve found it more noise than signal in understanding the Iranian upheaval. I’m not saying that there is no signal to be found; I’m just saying that my cognitive colander isn’t big enough to strain out Iran information I can rely on…. I appreciate, as Atlantic Senior Editor Andrew Sullivan wrote in his blog, that many of the reports are “more about the mood than hard fact.” But my appetite for mood is easily sated while my appetite for hard fact isn’t. If we should be able to criticize Ayatollah Ali Khamenei without fear of being shot, so, too, should we be able to scrutinize Twitter.
Kevin Drum counsels in MotherJones.com that before we get weak-kneed with our paeans to the revolutionary powers of Twitter, we should all remember that genuine and huge protests in Iran predate both Twitter and the Internet.
One of the sharper Twitter critics I’ve read this week is Evgeny Morozov, who, writing in Slate‘s sister site ForeignPolicy.com yesterday, posed the heretical notion that tracking or blocking the tweets and blog postings by in-country Iranian protesters just might not be the regime’s top priority.
Nicholas Thompson in Wired, too:
We have no idea how many Tweets are spreading through RSS, Facebook pages, and text-messages. Nor do we know how info gets into every Twitter feed. But there’s evidence that the reach of some of the most prominent Iranian “Green Revolution” Tweeters may not be as great as it first appears. For example, many of the Iranian tweeters described in the Western press seem to have between 10,000 and 30,000 followers. That’s a lot; but Ashton Kutcher it ain’t. [...]
This afternoon, I emailed UCSD professor Babak Rahimi, the author of “Internet & Politics in Post-revolutionary Iran” and someone who is in Tehran right now covering the events. I asked what he thought of my hunch that we in the Western press are over-hyping the impact of Twitter. Here’s what he said:
“I very much agree with you. The Twitter factor is present, but not as significant as, say, cell phone or social networking sites… [granted, it's hard to separate these out -- nms] I just wonder (or worry) how the U.S. media is projecting its own image of Iran into what is going here on the ground.”
And, of course, from the Business section of the NYTimes, Twitter use in Tehran has given the revenue-free Web service a credibility boost. But the company still hasn’t proved it can leverage its popularity to make money.
RELATED — Romenesko:
By criticizing CNN for using social networking sites to report what’s going on in Iran, Jon Stewart “turned himself into a caricature: he fashioned himself as the crotchety Luddite who opposes new media platforms not on their merits, but because they’re new,” says Megan Garber. Stewart’s attack on CNN was “a rare misstep for The Daily Show’s normally trenchant media criticism,” she adds.
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3 Responses to “Twitter Revolution Buzz Pushback”
My guess is that the media, not having any people on the ground in Iran to do the reporting, is hyping how important Twitter is because they are using it themselves for their coverage. Twitter is simply a medium; it's the content that matters, and much of what is being tweeted is static and rumor. That's not good or bad, just the way it is.
Adam
http://www.twitterbacklash.com
The hype is stupid, and note that it's convenient for the media because a) it allows them to produce less actual news by substituting Twitter fluff and other similar fluff in place of real news and intelligent thought; b) the quality of the content is routinely as dull and reflects people as dull as the “news” content and what it implies about the typical viewership or “target” audience.
“Twitter is simply a medium; it's the content that matters”
EXACTLY. It's just a means to an end (communication).
And it's a laugh when you think of it — the quality of the content is often awful — poor non-standard and ad hoc abbreviations, people writing in all lower case, which indicates they are lazy or stupid or both, and the names themselves are in all lower case (again, all lower case is stupid), and they are beloved of lefties who are often anti-business or anti-corporate in their sentiments, and hypocritically so, because the all-lower-case names for Twitter and Facebook that you see displayed on-line or on the television networks are nothing other than corporate-style logos just the same as those of Coca-Cola, KFC, or Nike or its swoosh. Do any of these Twitter-hyping twits who bash Evil Corporate Logos have the sense to see that?