After purposely staying away from Twitter for 24 hrs and returning to it today we see a shift in the discussion and a vast increase in users as a result. The parallel stories of the event itself and the created event of the so-called Twitter revolution have taken over the mainstream news. #CNNFail now can only complain at the tardiness of the coverage while the tag itself has
become News. Clear-headed reporting is now coming in thru veteran newspaper journalists alongside the constant presence of a growing participatory audience. Clay Shirky
comments that Twitter allows empathy, the ability to not just sympathize but also actively engage.
Meanwhile a story we’d been paying close attention to (and engaged via web 2.0 tools) is the continuing plight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea. That story only just broke in MSM and now is all but buried as the relentless news cycle moves forward. It’s worth noting that story in light of this participatory ‘revolution’ in that they are young videographers functioning for new-media outlets –
are they warranted the same rights as a newspaper reporter? Are they any different than Roxana
Saberi, in light of the way journalists are
being muted today? The very definition of journalism comes into question through events like we’re participating in now, with Iran. How and by whom information is parsed, how it’s provider’s are persecuted are paramount issues faced by everyone engaged on the net. Shirky also draws comparison to Chicago in 1968, when the catchphrase was ‘the world is watching’. Now the world has moved beyond watching, to taking part in the media. If the media was the message, now it is the machine we use to communicate.
Currently the world is primarily engaged in one story; we forget that pirates still
terrorize the oceans and young reporters are held prisoner in dangerous countries. Concerning is the notion that not only do we only crave engagement with one big story at a time, we view only one side of that story.
Amid the questions ‘not’ being asked enough in the #IranElection Twittersphere: why are there no postings from the other sides? Iran has far more than two parties, all of them quite vocal. Yet it appears that only the green Mousavi side is using the technology to be heard. When we see the images through YouTube and Flickr there is little doubt that
the masses in the frame represent all, yet mostly we read only Green commentary. The dialog over the images on the MSM networks almost never discusses what is being viewed, so there is a harsh disconnect and lack of a full understanding of meaning in the sequences playing out behind the plastic haired presenter. This disconnect is echoed in forwarded bytes of out-of-context video on the Internet. If you dig around, you can find
reputable sources – mostly
print journos –presenting other sides. But you have to
dig around, and in the fervor of phenomenon such are being witnessed with Iran it’s difficult to bother, to not be swept up in the energy. Constant renewal of information, combined with the disassociation afforded by ‘distance’ on the web, is a heady brew. The perceived ‘action’ of Tweeting is more often ‘reaction’ to the mass of other Tweets. There is no pause, only ‘go’. It’s addictive, in the way video games are. The brain is engaged, yet simultaneously disengaged. A tricky balance to strike.
Our willingness -in mobthink - to not pause, creates a vacuum. When we don’t step back and question what we’re viewing on our PC’s, or how we’re engaging in it, we’re doing a disservice to ourselves. The difference between firing off a reactionary email and regretting it later is that email allows the same passivity of taking a letter to the postbox. The ability to think twice, to have written the email, saved it as a draft and sleep on it. Maybe, you wouldn’t hit send in the morning. Remembering to take a breath isn’t so easy if you’re keyed up and actively engaged. Twitter, SMS, FaceBook, comments sections on blogs, chat rooms, user groups and forums all feed off our willingness for the instantaneous. The delay of long-form engagement is erased in 140 characters or less. It becomes a conversation, gilded with a mask of anonymity, the gift of speed and an ability to reach thousands, millions of other folks just like you. To some degree, the 2.0 engine accelerates on mobthink. When we can all feel the rush of connecting with someone dodging teargas and batons, it is reminiscent of the experience provided by a good action movie. Or, as noted yesterday, the retelling of a fight. There’s action, and you’re involved! Even if it’s from a swivel chair in front of a computer screen.
Twitter itself faced choices, possibly
enhanced by the State Department, about scheduling service that would have downed the lines so to speak. Recently they publicly turned down
offers of sale. In creating a lean and mean operating system for their service they’ve made the easiest social networking tool to use. And one of the most difficult to regulate. As an entity, Twitter’s users are discovering how to regulate ourselves. As a business, it is shrewdly generating value while standing alone as a self-governing social site.
Is what’s happening in Iran a revolution? Perhaps by political definition, as commented
here by Richard Sambrook, it isn’t. Is the participation of millions in the
evolving discourse a revolution? Perhaps it is.
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