Just watched the film “The Mist“. It should be called “Oops, I Jumped the Gun”. #lol #dadjoke #oops
Posts Tagged Twitter
Food for thought
Sep 4
Computer says no
Jul 11
I’m currently in Iran and have discovered that just like Twitter killed blogging, the Iranian net filter killed Twitter.
Blokked!
I knew that this was going to be something I’d have to deal with but I don’t think I’d truly, deep-down prepared myself for it. I’m gonna come home.
Man jobs
Apr 4
Holidays bring man jobs. First cab off the rank was the door leading to the garage where one of the hinges had come loose. However, this is my entire collection of tools:
But, being a man I fixed it nonetheless:
Blog CPR
Mar 30
Right, that’s it. I’m going to come straight out and admit it: Twitter has killed blogging. Well, maybe not killed it but definitely wounded it.
You see, once upon a time (like, two to seven years ago) all the nerds on the Internets used blogs as a means by which to swap smart-arsed comments and pithy one-liners; good posts on good blogs were not just good posts in their own right but good conversation starters as well. Communities of like-minded (and some oppositionally-minded) people formed and gathered around their favourite blogs for discussion and larfs. Then along came the Facebooks and the Twitters (especially the Twitters) and all of a sudden those nerd communities that had come together thanks to blogs moved elsewhere to swap those comments and lines.
Now, in the future (like, 2010) there are still lots of awesome blogs and blog posts around but the awesome conversation tends to take place on the Twitters. Even if good blog posts are good conversation starters, the conversations decreasingly take place in the comment threads below the post.
But it’s not just the commenters whose behaviour has changed — the authors are doing things differently as well. I used to be a prolific blogger, averaging five to ten posts per week, but now I reckon I might punch out one a week if I’m lucky. True, I write for other non-blog outlets now, but the main reason is that when a thought comes into my head that would previously act as the seed for a blog post I now tweet it instead.
As much as I love Twitter and see the evolution of online interaction as an exciting thing, I do miss my blogging from both the perspective of the author and from the perspective of comment discussion participant. For this reason I am going to force myself to blog more, holding back tweetable thoughts and turning them instead into posts. I’m also going to get back into the habit of commenting on blog posts instead of taking my discussion to Twitter.
Who’s with me and who’s against me?
There’s been some debate on Twitter during the past week about the role of so-called “citizen journalists” and whether they even have the right to be blessed with the J-word. This then went into further discussion as to what makes a journalist, a question that doesn’t really have a simple answer.
Working journalists would argue that their craft is specialised and comes with appropriate qualifications. But, unlike law and medicine, the little piece of paper you get at the end of a journalism degree or cadetship is by no means an exclusive requirement needed to embark on a journalism career.
I think the key to the whole debate rests in the definition of a journalist, which is someone who processes information, weeds out fact from fiction and then presents it a manner which is understandable and informative to the user. This is where the notion of the “citizen journalist” falls over when it comes to describing someone relaying information online via blogs, Twitter and other social media.
During the weekend’s tsunami scare I saw a tweet that could be described as citizen journalism:
CometDudeOur PA system in Okinawa Japan just announced Tsunami warning. evacuate to higher ground #tsunami #okinawa
This is the kind of classic on-the-spot post during a major breaking story that made Twitter famous. But is it journalism? No, it’s not.
- Sure, CometDude is providing important information here, but where’s the detail?
- What sort of tsunami warning has been issued?
- Does the warning include an order to evacuate to higher ground, or is this CometDude’s own advice?
- What is higher ground; the top end of the street or the summit of Mt Fuji?
- And finally, how do we know this is even true?
Sure, there is a limit to what one can write in 140 characters, which makes the case against this being classed as journalism even stronger.
Simply relaying what you’re seeing, or hearing is not journalism, it’s Citizen Commentary, and no different to eyewitness sound bites we see on the news. If that is journalism than “Chk-Chk Boom Girl” Claire Werbeloff might as well join the MEAA.
It could be argued they’re reporters. But reporting involves a lot more than just relaying what you see. It involves gathering such quotes and checking them against other facts before using them in a package to present the story.
Ironically, this is being compromised in order to keep up with the internet. The result is information coming out through supposedly credible news sources before its verified, meaning that basic tenet of journalism, to weed out fact from fiction, is being sacrificed for the sake of providing up-to-the-minute content.
So, yeah, maybe one day the term Citizen Journalist will apply instead of Citizen Commentator, but sadly this will be because the standards that once defined true journalism will sink to its level.
I done wrote a short piece in today’s Crikey email about the UoEB meme.
What next? Meme, the musical, starring Bumcrabb and Bolt
Twenty four hours is a long time in today’s interconnected, intertubed world. Once upon a time a throwaway, smart-arse remark by a panelist on a political TV chat show would take days to grow into a meme, relying on being quoted in newspaper columns and replayed on evening news. But in the age of Twitter it takes only 24 hours for that smart-arse remark to go from being uttered on Insiders to being printed on a T-shirt and plastered all over the blogosphere.
Groupthink Couture Pty Ltd has also released some new t-shirts, as referenced in the article.
Keep Bolt close to your heart