Is Twitter the New Journalism?

             Ever since Stanley Milgram’s famous ‘six degrees of separation’ experiment, the concept of separation has become vital in understanding societal structures. More significantly, with the advent of Web2.0, the term associated with the participatory sharing and collaboration characteristics of the World Wide Web, the notion of separation was challenged further with the creation of network models. Micro-blogging, consisting of real-time, immediate communication, has impacted new ways news and information flows are communicated. Twitter, a form of micro-blogging, facilitates instant, online dissemination of short fragments of information from a variety of official and unofficial sources. What exemplifies Twitter’s importance was recently illuminated in the case of the Egyptian protests in January 2011. Information unable to be covered on radio and television was disseminated via Twitter within moments of a particular event and subsequently, utilized by the mass media. While it is quite bold to declare a platform at odds with journalism to be novel, given journalism is the professional discipline for verifying information, reliance on Twitter during the protest, indicates that journalism norms are bending as professional practices adapt to social media tools such as micro-blogging (Honeycutt and Herring, 2). Thus, the institutionally structured features of micro-blogging are creating new forms of journalism, representing one manner in which the Internet is influencing journalism practices and changing how journalism is defined as whole.  Through highlighting the real-time communication, addressivity, and gate keeping characteristics of Twitter during the protests, it becomes apparent that Twitter enables freedom of expression and association, which represents a new collective consciousness taking form.

            The essence of real-time communication embedded in micro-blogging technologies such as Twitter, highlights a substantial reason underscoring the shift to a more participatory journalism. When blogging on Twitter, individuals possess the ability to report their experiences in real time, reflecting an open source news network. Twitter combines blogging, instant messaging, and short messaging services whereby individuals at their computers are connected with individuals on the move. Moreover, the real-time group communication that Twitter facilitates coincides with Clay Shirky’s notion of cognitive surplus, the “ability [for] the world’s population to volunteer, contribute, and collaborate” (Shirky, TEDTalk).  Specifically with regards to the new media landscape whereby tools allow more than just consumption, but also the ability to create and share, “civic value” is also created by participants in which the flow of information is enjoyed by society as a whole (Shirky, TEDTalk). For instance, on 4 February 2011, Brian Dubreuil of CBC news, reviewed various tweets on air so as to give the viewing audience a sense of what was occurring in Tahrir Square. To highlight a jubilant atmosphere, Dubreuil sited @sharifkouddous who tweeted, “Thousands continue to stream across Kasr El Nile Bridge. Very festive atmosphere. What a contrast to Wednesday’s govt-sponsored brutality” (Dubreuil, CBC). Additionally, Dubreuil highlighted @TamerELG’s tweet, which stated, “Some pro-regime groups are again tossing rocks from a side street near Tahrir Square. Civilian security inside square controlling it” (Dubreuil, CBC). Thus, the emergence of a collective intelligence via twitter enables journalists to acquire developments of information in places they cannot get to, as well, provides the ability for the user to spread and share real-time information, which highlights the civic value of the Twitter medium.  

            The link-based nature of tweets and the addressivity attached to each user name creates journalism as a conversation, which allows individuals to be peripherally aware of discussion threads occurring in real-time without being contributors. In light of Julie Cohen, the interplay of metaphors underscores the usefulness of addressivity with regards to making sense of lived space through the use of cyberspace. A topic with a hash symbol (“#”) at the start of a phrase helps disseminate information on Twitter while also, serving as a way for Twitter user’s to organize themselves. For instance, if a group of user’s agree to append a certain hashtag to tweet about a topic, it becomes easier to search for that topic. Used widely in the Egyptian protest, the hashtags #jan25, #Egypt, and #Tahrir were the most commonly used by those individuals reporting from Egypt. Here, the above three hashtags became a metaphor for those individuals experiencing the Egyptian protest first hand and disseminating the information into cyberspace. Moreover, Twitter organizes tweets based on hashtag labels and thus, one can easily follow a series of events owing to the organization of common hashtag names onto one page. The hashtag tool highlights the ability for social space “to attain ‘real’ existence by virtue of networks and pathways, by virtue of bunches and clusters of relationships” (Cohen, 26). Additionally, Danah Boyd highlights 'journalism as a conversation' as a form of ambient journalism, since tweets are not restricted by physical space, time or delineate groups (Hermida, 298). As a result, a “distributive conversation that allows others to be aware of the content without being actively apart of it” is created (Cohen, 27). Thus, with the use of hastags, Twitter exemplifies the manner in which cyberspace is also a part of experienced space; the dimension of connectedness between experienced space and the new social space, networked space, accounts for a novel dimension, ambient journalism.

            As pivotal as Twitter is in shifting journalism into a more collective sphere, restrictive elements that were present before micro-blogging, still persist. The gatekeeper aspect of journalism that filters or prevents the dissemination of information, for instance, endures when analyzing Twitter within the Egyptian protest context. The Egyptian government was responsible for halting connectivity of Internet servers in Egypt. The shutdown consisted of social-media websites, in addition to preventing all Internet access in much of the country (Millian, CNN). Though the Internet was eventually restored, and connectivity to the outside world was reestablished, the ability of the government to shutdown the Internet highlights Jonathan Sterne’s notion of new media; specifically, his elucidation regarding the focus of newness within a given media opposed to with respect to other media. While micro-blogging revolutionizes the pace and flow of information and alters journalistic dimensions in terms of creating a participatory outlet, as a whole, it “cannot resolve all existing problems” (Sterne, 152). Moreover, Sterne emphasizes digital media as “halfway technologies” whereby technologies are only built to solve problems that are half understood (Sterne, 152). While Twitter was not invented as a tool to alter the journalism sphere, it is telling that as amazing as micro-blogging is, it cannot transcend human gatekeeping constraints that were present beforehand.  What is most interesting however, is the manner in which corporations acknowledge the importance of Twitter in maintaining the connectivity of and between users. For instance, Google, Twitter, and SayNow, launched Speak-2-Tweet amongst the Internet blackout in Egypt whereby people without access to the Web shared messages on Twitter via voice mail (Krazit, Cnet News). The service offered three international phone numbers, and for each call, the service would instantly post a message to Twitter with a link to listen to the message; the messages were posted with the hashtag #egypt, another way for users to follow them. The significance of corporations transcending the limitations within the micro-blogging sphere highlights the recognition that ambient journalism is key to the acquisition of real-time experiences.

            The reliance of Twitter throughout the Egyptian protest illuminated the importance of micro-blogging and the dissemination of information throughout an evolving phenomenon. Twitter’s real-time communication feature, addressivity characteristic, and worldwide support from Internet corporations, provided “the understood reality” through a conversational and collaborative user experience (Hermida, 300). While Twitter and micro-blogging as a whole have not alerted the journalism sphere completely, in accord with various bloggers, it has definitely brought about “the new first draft of history” whereby journalism represents the “old” first draft. Twitter allows one to compare notes with millions of people worldwide, in real time that is searchable, reusable, and relinkable; a trend which has never been possible before. A significant relationship may continue to evolve between shifting journalism norms and practices and micro-blogging websites like Twitter which serve as an awareness system. In the future, journalists may be defined as ‘sense-makers’ rather than reporters in which the role of a journalist may be broadened to one “who serves as a node in a complex environment between technology and society, between news and analysis, between annotation and selection, between orientation, and investigation” (Honeycutt and Herring, 9). Twitter has undeniably prompted a collective consciousness with regards to information sharing and in terms of the journalism sphere, represents a major catalyst toward the creation of medium that may alter the field eternally.