Follow a Twitter hashtag if you actually want to find out what happened at today’s ‘riot’
Posted: March 26th, 2011 | Author: Sam Bueno de Mesquita | Filed under: Content, Facebook, history, Media | 2 Comments »I’ve just had a very quick stroll along the ‘March for an alternative’ demonstration in London. It was a genial, meaningful and often rather beautiful event.
As usual, it’s going to be in the news tomorrow as a terrifying riot. Does it matter that the media report only the extremes, given that those 300,000 marchers are sending 200 Tweets a minute showing the other side of things? I’m afraid it does. The people watching the news are not, mostly, following the marchers on Twitter, so they’ll never get that true picture unless they can actually be bothered to plough through thousands of messages from people they’ve never met.
Still, the existence of social media is making a small difference to the way the news is reported. For all the far left’s paranoia, there has never been a media agenda to present all protesters as thugs. It’s just that ‘Revolutionaries destroy Ritz… you’re going to be next’ will sell a lot more papers than ’300,000 nice people all agree with each other and go for a nice walk to show it.’
But the journalists are following these events on Twitter and Facebook – and that has two effects. Firstly it generates alternative good stories they might never have found before: that was how ‘kettling’ made the news. Secondly, broadsheet and TV journalists are reluctant to lie when they might get found out – however much a little lying might help the story along. The Twitter feed for #26march tells the full story of the day in a million mundane haikus and 100,000 grainy photos.
The truth is out there now. And while it’s too boring for most of us to trawl through, it does at least make it a little harder for journalists to present it without balance.
(All photos by @kerstint)
I’ve just had a very quick stroll along the ‘March for an alternative’ demonstration in London. It was a genial, meaningful and often rather beautiful event. As usual, it’s going to be in the news as a terrifying riot.
Does it matter less than it used to that the media report only the extremes, given that those 300,000 marchers are sending 200 Tweets a minute showing the other side of things? The people watching the4 news are not, mostly, following the marchers on Twitter, so maybe they’ll never learn the truth.
But the existence of social media is making a small difference to the way the news is reported. For all the far left’s paranoia, there has never been a media agenda to present all protesters as thugs… it’s just that ‘Revolutionaries destroy Ritz… you’re going to be next’ will sell a lot more papers than ’300,000 nice people all agree with each other and go for a nice walk to show it’.
But the journalists are following these events on Twitter and Facebook – and that generates alternative stories they moight never have found before. That was how kettling became famous, and it is why it is now made very clear in reports that the violence comes from a minority. The aggregate of all those Tweets, Fli9ckr uploads and blog posts tells a very different story to the one you’ll find if yuour job is to rush from trouble-spot to troublespot looking for the most extreme event you can.
Which is more true, the advertise4mtns or the news? ???? reckoned it was the advertiseme4nts. The news was loaded up with mass murderers, wars, crisis and doom; the advertisements mostly featured normal people being quietrly made happy by accumulating stuff that helped them deal with everyday problems. So it’s the adverts that tell the real truth and the news is just sensationalism.
Except that now there is a third route to the truth… social media – it’s neither as glossily fake as the adverts, nor as sensationalist as the news. The Twitter feed for #26march tells rthe full story of the day in a million mundane haikus and a 100,000 grainy photos.
The truth is out there now. And while it’s too boring for most of us to trawl through, it does at least make it a littlet harder for journalists to lie.
