The article, “The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows During the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,”researches quantitative data that tries to understand how Mainstream Media (MSM) tries to distinguish themselves in social media networks particularly Twitter. More importantly though, is how does the mainstream news organizations separate themselves from “non-professionals” within Twitter and the constant flow of information from real-time newsworthy events.  Gilad Lotan is the Vice President of Research and Development at Social Flow. At Social Flow they extract the conversations, datasets, and complete sets of information from social networks like Twitter and Facebook to try and comprehend what your audience is doing, talking about and clicking on in real-time on Twitter and Facebook. In this article above, Lotan and his team members utilize this data to conceptualize the information flow on Twitter based on the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.

Structured as a Quantitative Research Paper, Lotan creates a number of variables to compare professional journalists to “non-professional” tweeters. We are now trying to understand where our information is coming from therefore we question between what is truthful information and rumor. The primary information that comes from Twitter is easily forwarded on by other journalists and individuals and posting activity serves as key information routers.  Journalists and activists serve as the primary information sources but in contemporary society, we tend to find out information based on short excerpts or a one-liner description from other individuals or people that we follow. We not only receive our news from the television, radio or print newspaper now, but also via social networks. And because the news is coming from a hybrid and dynamic information network whose structures and influences change depending upon how a variety of individuals act, news organizations need to research and understand how their reporting fits into these constantly changing social networks like Twitter. The Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions are just the start in trying to understand how much of an influence Twitter has and the hybrid networks to come, will have on society’s new coverage and who will be providing the ground-breaking information. I think in the near future, the news organizations are going to have to figure out another way to entice their readers onto their tweet pages. If an individual is reporting, more than likely, in my opinion, will I also want to read what he or she has to say about the news they are covering, because they always provide a different perspective with perhaps new information as well.