Twitter & the Media

Micro blogging has become all the rage in the last few years, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and even Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia edited and maintained by the public, have all changed the way we interact and communicate with one another. This has never been more apparent than in times of disaster or conflict. Even the mainstream media has adopted this trend; companies such as CNN and Fox have twitter accounts and often use material from them on the air. Micro blogging is a new constant in our media driven lives but its popularity seems to correlate with unfortunate occurrences, such as the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.

On January 12, 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred near Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince. The damage was catastrophic, leveling Haiti’s poorly constructed buildings and infrastructure, injuring, killing and displacing hundreds of thousands. The media coverage of the quake was considerable, images of Haitians distraught and confused, injured and helpless filled the news and society responded to their cries; answering them with texts, and 140 character messages via twitter.

An elaborate effort to raise money to help the Haitian people was immediately underway. A revolutionary text to donate system helped the Red Cross collect over 1 billion dollars to date for Haiti relief. People organized over twitter, donating money, offering messages of hope and some people even took physical action, organizing groups of volunteers to go to Haiti and combat the disaster. The media also became a place to search for loved ones. The television and twitter were both the main resource used by the Haitian people to connect with family in the United States and abroad.

These micro blogs have created a network that is accessible to the public, a front not explored since the birth of the internet. But a revolution in technology over the last few years has advanced the field of communications itself, Twitter, Facebook and so on. These new outlets have connected the people, allowing them to interact in a manner that is completely new. It is unsure what the long term affects of such technologies are but the short term affects are evident.

The expansion of communication and the ways in which we, as a society, gather information have created a system of news in which its value has inflated. Anyone with a Facebook, Twitter, or internet connection for that matter, can create news in their image and how they see fit. Naturally this can led to a system that is based in unverifiable information. While the internet and its social devices have brought us together it also poses an inevitable threat to the value of our news.