With the popularity of social media/networking, the speed of the Internet, and the integration of innovative smart phone technology, the world is becoming connected, updated, and informed no longer solely through journalistic media, but that of social media.
Speaking from personal experiences, when Michael Jackson passed away in June 2009, I did not initially hear it from the television news, or reading it in the newspaper. Instead, I saw multiple Facebook posts and statuses that read “RIP Michael Jackson.” After realizing that so many of my friends were writing these posts, I realized that the King of Pop had passed away. I then saw multiple wallposts of links to news sites that were covering in live what was happening at the hospital in downtown Los Angeles.
As sites such as Facebook and Twitter can offer a smaller world and live feed, it is not surprising to learn that during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolution, there were snapshots and information that was consistently uploaded, viewed, and shared among all those in the Twitter world. In Lotan et. al’s article, researchers study the two broad phases of research, which includes how journalists work within formal news organizations, and the second, the more innovative body of literature, includes how news is presented from networked individuals that include any type of professional and organizational background.
Defining and breaking down the categories of actors that were tweeting about information of the live feed of the revolution, researchers investigated the kind of individuals that posted and reposted content about the revolution as well as the content coming from journalists. Seeing a trend in information flows, it was interesting to see that researchers saw that there was a low flow of information initiated by organizations compared to that of individuals. Also finding that there was balanced distribution across organization and individuals in relation to flow size, the researchers concluded that “influencing audiences to participate on Twitter might be, in part, derived from individual personality, balancing out raw follower count in the flow size data.”
Ultimately, the researchers of this article concluded that their findings suggest that the news reports on Twitter, in particular during this revolution, individuals such as bloggers and activists constructed and co-constructed (through reposting) news alongside the journalists. As a result, Twitter has become and created a kind of conversation among these actors and during this revolution, and had indeed played a role in the passing of information as it was one of the news sources that the researchers called a type of “hybrid and dynamic information network.” Moreover, researchers also concluded that during monumental events such as the Tunisian and Egyptian revolution in 2011, Twitter did play an important role as “revolutions were, indeed, tweeted.”
In my opinion, this article can definitely be taken a step further asking the question of, “So, what’s next?” This question refers not only to what the next historical event will be covered on Twitter, and what technology will be after Twitter that will also help different actors cover news stories, but also begs the question of what is Twitter going to be used for next?