Comments on: Citizen Journalism Grows to Witness Journalism http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/citizen-journalism-grows-to-witness-journalism.html Ideas & Trends Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:43:54 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Peter E http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/citizen-journalism-grows-to-witness-journalism.html/comment-page-1#comment-243785 Peter E Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:50:10 +0000 http://www.psfk.com/?p=19015#comment-243785 As technologies have improved, so has the ability to share and report news from a eyewitness account. CNN has a very interesting article on how social media was used in the wake of last weeks terror attacks in Mumbai. They report, “80 messages, or “tweets,” were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.” Many people said they heard about the attacks in Mumbai on Twitter well before they saw it from the traditional news media outlets. Other tweets were updates on where people could donate blood. CNN continued by saying “Twitter remains a useful tool for mobilizing efforts and gaining eyewitness accounts during a disaster, the sourcing of most of the news cannot be trusted. A quick trawl through the enormous numbers of tweets showed that most were sourced from mainstream media” While tweets cannot always be taken as fact, it does prove that as the technologies enabling people to share and inform improve, so does the speed and amount of information being reported. People are able to share a eyewitness account from across the world and in great volume, and it is technologies like Twitter that can aggregate this information making it accessible to the rest of the world. If blogging empowered the citizen journalist, twittering empowered the citizen. Anyone can type 140 characters. Please visit http://breakinghabit.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/terror-tweets/ to see how similar citizen reporting took place at Columbine and 9/11 As technologies have improved, so has the ability to share and report news from a eyewitness account. CNN has a very interesting article on how social media was used in the wake of last weeks terror attacks in Mumbai. They report, “80 messages, or “tweets,” were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.” Many people said they heard about the attacks in Mumbai on Twitter well before they saw it from the traditional news media outlets. Other tweets were updates on where people could donate blood.

CNN continued by saying “Twitter remains a useful tool for mobilizing efforts and gaining eyewitness accounts during a disaster, the sourcing of most of the news cannot be trusted. A quick trawl through the enormous numbers of tweets showed that most were sourced from mainstream media”

While tweets cannot always be taken as fact, it does prove that as the technologies enabling people to share and inform improve, so does the speed and amount of information being reported. People are able to share a eyewitness account from across the world and in great volume, and it is technologies like Twitter that can aggregate this information making it accessible to the rest of the world.

If blogging empowered the citizen journalist, twittering empowered the citizen. Anyone can type 140 characters.

Please visit http://breakinghabit.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/terror-tweets/ to see how similar citizen reporting took place at Columbine and 9/11

]]> By: Reader » Citizen Journalism Grows to Witness Journalism http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/citizen-journalism-grows-to-witness-journalism.html/comment-page-1#comment-243716 Reader » Citizen Journalism Grows to Witness Journalism Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:11:15 +0000 http://www.psfk.com/?p=19015#comment-243716 [...] Nicko Margolies for PSFK, 2008. | Permalink | Comments | Add to [...] [...] Nicko Margolies for PSFK, 2008. | Permalink | Comments | Add to [...]

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