About 10 days ago, I was invited to Oxford University to speak at an event called “Silicon Valley comes to Oxford." One speaker I shared the podium with was Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter; over lunch, as we talked about the future of information, he told me that the news was about to go “real-time." Hmm, I thought to myself… What exactly does that mean? Then, of course, the hideous drama of Mumbai exploded.
The future arrived in a haze of arbitrary bullets and grenades -- or, more appropriately, in a blizzard of tweets. And Stone was right: The news really had gone real-time. In the anarchy of Mumbai, in the chaos of violence that erupted outside Chabad House, inside the Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels, at Leopold café and in the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, the traditional hierarchies of top-down news services broke down. In their place, the Internet became a richer source of news than either mainstream television or newspapers, both stymied by the archaic broadcasting rules of the local bureaucracy.
Local bloggers, photographers on flickr, and, of course, thumbing Twitterers reported the news in real-time. Commentators spoke of a “paradigmatic” shift in the nature of information and, inevitably, the populist elites at The New York Times lauded Mumbai’s “citizen journalists.” The future of media had arrived in Mumbai in a hijacked boat packed with bloodthirsty, suicidal terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba.
But a week after the terrorists’ guns have been silenced, has much really changed? Has the news media now gone real-time?
Even a reactionary old fart like me has to acknowledge that tweets, flickr photos, and blogs are changing the news business. That said, it would be an oversimplification to believe that we’ve just gone through a shift -- paradigmatic or otherwise -- in the knowledge industry. Firstly, most of the information put out between Wednesday, Nov. 26, and Friday, Nov. 28, in the heat of the violence, was unprocessed. And just as it takes a professional cook to transform raw food into an edible meal, so the really insightful analysis of the massacre -- from professional journalists like Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria and The New York Times’ Alan Cowell -- took place after the guns had been silenced and observers had time to digest the complex meaning of the tragic events in Mumbai.
There’s also the issue of the real value of this avalanche of unprocessed information let loose on the Internet by citizen journalists. There were so many messages about Mumbai on Twitter, for example, that 100 pages of tweets covered only a few hours of the violence. So not even a professional journalist would have had the means or time to process all this information and distinguish the vital information from the gossip and lies. It’s a savage irony that the people best positioned to use Twitter effectively in the chaos were the terrorists themselves, who were allegedly using the micro-blogging service to learn about police movements. Thus, on Nov. 27, the Indian authorities actually requested that locals stop their updating because, as one tweet observed, it was "giving away strategic info to terrorists via Twitter."
Then there’s the economics -- or perhaps the lack of economics -- to the revolution in real-time news, taking place against a depressing backdrop of massive lay-offs at mainstream newspapers and television news outlets, cuts which partially explain why American media coverage of the events in Mumbai was so patchy. None of the photographers on flickr or micro-bloggers on Twitter were, of course, paid for their contributions. Meanwhile, the value and popularity of the Twitter brand rose dramatically as more and more journalists (including me in this article) wrote about the revolution of citizen-generated news.
So for Biz Stone and the rest of the small Twitter team intent on maximizing the value of their highly innovative technology, the economic rewards of real-time news are very tangible, but for professional journalists who need to be paid for their work, it’s much less clear how this revolution will be monetized.
— Andrew Keen, Silicon Valley author, broadcaster, and entrepreneur
I agree. This is what I want. Citizen journalism is a neat concept but I want the backstory, the indepth research, and the extra sources that come with a well-researched story by a professional journalist.
Do you think that the use of those misinformation techniques you mention could cause them some legal issues? If I am an investor and read in a blog that they are not going for something that IMHO would add value, and I sell the stock but that was just to throw competitors off their plan...
I think this is a classic ProAm collaboration as mentioned by Chris Andersen in his 'Long Tail'. There are some things only a professional can do (like Zakaria's analysis) and they will get paid to do it. But raw real time data feed can be done by amateurs and they are far more efficient than paid reporters. Video and Camera Cell phones have empowered every citizen to report raw news as it happens. Media does not have the bandwidth or a economic incentive to be in a multiple places.
Ultimately, people need and want journalists to sift the input from primary sources like Twitter and provide an accurate portrayal of the facts -- as accurate as possible. Further, journalists can offer contextual information, background data, etc., and analysis in editorials. These elements will never go out of style.
My security spin isn't just about the leaky sieve (although I do think that we'll see "acceptable tweet" policies, at least in the businesses that care enough to have "acceptable blog" policies) of priviliged information, but rather the manipulation of information through microblogging. One of the interesting things about real-time news is that it provides the oppurtunity to also give real-time disinformation. One of the slowdowns in non-live news is that fact checkers are out there scouring to make sure things are true, and even with that, mistakes are made.
As the resident behavioral psych guy around here, I'm absolutely certain that I could fairly easily start some Twitter disinformation networking with a minimum of people that could cause genuine panic. Perhaps not culture disrupting, as not THAT many people are on Twitter or particularly care, but certainly more than a blip. For example, you could easily start a fairly large number of people hitting a particular site, even if a claim about it weren't true - they'd go look to make sure it wasn't. We could easily use what we know about the human response to communication to get people to at least check out what we're saying, to plant the seed...
Technologies like Twitter are providing the capability to capture and broadcast real-time information about events as they happen -- be it text, images or video. This "immediate" reporting apparatus will be further integrated into the overall journalism process but I don't think it will totally replace it.
But is it too informal? People I think like to share their knowledge, but get credit for what they know. I would bet there isn't a person out there that has not shared some information with someone that shouldn't have been in the know - not necessarily trade secrets or top secret government intel, but something.
We like the "wow" factor around it. I know something juicy.
My wife's grandmother used to say, "Don't ever write anything down that you wouldn't want to appear in the newspaper." I think that is good advice.
The wave of information on myspace, facebook, and other sites has led to more than one embarrassing moment for an individual. That's where the good stuff is.
I know when I get a resume across my desk, I go to Google before even reading the resume. I search for names associated with employers, email-ids, etc... What can I learn about this person in the "public view."
It's amazing how much you can find. I've found individuals that have spouted off about their boss, projects at work, and silly procedures/policies that they disagree with, and have even found ways around. Hmmmm... next.
I think one difference is the perception we have of twitter. We see it as something informal, casual that 'no one' really reads (for the most part).
So with that in mind, I think people are more likely to release some delicate information over twitter that they might not send through an email message.
Sorry to throw water on what was Twitter's finest moment so far.I have many friends and relatives in Mumbai and one of my Juniors from myUniversity was killed in the Mumbai attack.And I was as anxious and worried as the rest of people about them.But the 'news ' that came out of Twitter ,especially after the initial hours of the attack was total crap.Absolute Garbage and nothing relevant to the Issue at hand.But that has come to represent every single issue of modern day life.Do we need 24/7 Updates and news?
I don't think so.And my feeling is vindicated whenever I watch CNBC and FOX News.After the initial reports all we get is reruns and re-reports and crap.
People who contributed to Twitter got carried away in the heat of the moment and thought they were contributing a service.In reality they were only playing into the hands of this 24/7 ,Always On Culture we have gotten ourselves into.I won't be surprised if ,the next there is a Terrorist Strike ,Governments everywhere Shut-down Twitter as it only plays into the hands of Terrorists.
As for the real Journalists-There will always be a market for serious quality Journalism. Even today people pay for the WSJ,NYT,Economist and Businessweek.Its only the Daily Newspapers and Tabloid who need to worry about Twitter and its resultant Garbage.
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