Twitter Revolutions?
Yi-Tan Weekly Tech Call #237
Monday, July 6, 2009
How is social media affecting coups, insurrections and protests around the world?
We've talked some about the Obama campaign's peaceful use of social media. More recently, Guatemala, Moldova and Iran have all been called "Twitter Revolutions".
The Iran standoff and Honduras' new crisis are both trending topics now on Twitter Search. The tweets around Iran have seemed focused and helpful; those about Honduras are hardly helpful at all.
All together, let's discuss:
- What effects can social media have? Do the tweets and videos help or hurt?
- Between spinners and spammers, is this moment over? How can we reclaim it?
- Is a new news format emerging? What happens next here?
Useful resources:
- Ethan Zuckerman's Cute Cat Theory of Network Censorship (& the Times' article)
- Andrew Sullivan waxes about being in the revolutionary flow
- Jaap van Till's Technologies of Flocking
- Citizen journalism, mainstream media and Iran (John Clarke, Reuters)
As always, an IRC Chat will be available during the call, here.
Tweeting has taken a big step forward: we're now @yitan! Please follow us, and let's also continue using #yitan. This page is on a wiki, here.