The Twitter Revolution Dr. Anthony Curtis – UNCP Mass Communcation – 910.521.6616 – acurtis@uncp.edu

Articles about Twitter: Since the popular social media tool Twitter debuted in March 2006 as a free, social-networking, microblogging Internet service via which users send text updates, known as tweets, Twitter has grown into a communication phenomenon. Technically speaking, Twitter is a microblogging system that is a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. It's a device agnostic message routing system with some social networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web, instant message, or third party API projects, tweets can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web. How does it work? The Twitter website simply asks the question, "What are you doing?" That question could be answered in a word or two, but usually is answered with a longer brief message. Tweets are limited to 140 characters. Users follow the stream of tweets from others they select. Hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles have been written since 2006 about the Twitter phenomenon. This is not a list of all those articles, Rather, this annotated bibliography is a reverse-chronological list of those articles most pertinent to journalism, public relations and mass media. Each item in this bibliography has an annotation – a brief description of what each article is about – intended to help you decide whether to read the article. As Twitter says, "In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens – from breaking world news to updates from friends." The news stories below show how Twitter suddenly has come from nowhere to become extraordinarily important in international news gathering. IRAN June 2009 You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War The Iranian Protests and the Mainstream Media Jack Bratich, CounterPunch, 25 June 2009 Analysis: Iran Election Coverage Sparks TV News Revolution Expelled journalists turn to social network sources; amateur video of woman's death becoming symbol of story Marisa Guthrie, Broadcasting & Cable Magazine, 22 June 2009 Iran Dominates as the Media are the Message News Coverage Index: June 15-21, 2009: The intensifying protests and political ferment inside Iran eclipsed some major domestic stories in the US news. And as the mainstream press confronted daunting restrictions on coverage, an outpouring of social media reports helped drive the Iran narrative. Mark Jurkowitz, The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, 21 June 2009 Google translation tool aims to improve Iran info access Google Inc released a tool that translates Internet blogs, news articles and text messages from English to Persian, and vice-versa, in a move the firm said will "improve access to information" amid the turmoil and media restrictions following Iran's disputed election. Reuters, 19 June 2009 The Pirate Bay Helps Iran Critics Dodge Censorship Popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay said it has helped launch an Internet network in support of Iranian election critics allowing users to dodge the regime's censorship rules by surfing anonymously. Associated Press, 18 June 2009 Mideast Hanging On Every Text And Tweet From Iran Though Tehran has largely shut down communication outlets, protesters are getting out snippets of text and stealthily uploaded photos in a guerrilla-style Internet revolt. Jeffrey Fleishman, LA Times, 17 June 2009 Dan Rather: Tehran, Twitter, and Tiananmen Massive protests, government crackdown, and media blackout - Tehran today sounds like Tiananmen Square two decades ago. But Dan Rather, who covered the China massacre, says the shift in the media landscape over the last two decades means there's no comparison. The Daily Beast, 17 June 2009 Iran's Twitter Revolution Forget CNN or any of the major American "news" networks. If you want to get the latest on the opposition protests in Iran, you should be reading blogs, watching YouTube or following Twitter updates from Tehran, minute-by-minute. The Nation, 16 June 2009 Live-Tweeting The Revolution Check out this impressive list of Tweets about the Iranian election. Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish, 16 June 2009 With Iran All A-Twitter, Service Maintenance Pushed Back Twitter delayed the work because of the events now playing out in Iran. Martyn Williams, Computerworld, 16 June 2009 The Twitter Revolution It's true that however things turn out in Iran, this will probably be forever known as the Twitter Revolution. Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, 15 June 2009 2009 Rethinking rights, accreditation, and journalism itself in the age of Twitter What better manifestation of the fact that in the 21st century the concept of "gatekeeping" is history? David Schlesinger, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters News, 24 June 2009 2008 Twitter ye not: crash survivor updates blog from burning plane As an airliner skids off a Denver runway, a passenger delivers a minute-by-minute account. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 23 December 2008 Plane crash survivor texts Twitter updates What's the first thing you would do after narrowly avoiding disaster? The Guardian newspaper, UK, 22 December 2008 Small talk is the next big thing for the twittering classes Twitter, a combination of messaging and social networking, looks like it's becoming the next craze after MySpace and Facebook The Guardian newspaper, UK, 22 December 2008 BBC admits it made mistakes using Mumbai Twitter coverage Microblogging service Twitter came of age during the Mumbai terror attacks. However, the BBC has been criticized for using unsubstantiated citizen reports in its coverage The Guardian newspaper, UK, 05 December 2008 In Mumbai, witnesses are writing the news Moments after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai began, Twitter exploded with messages The Guardian newspaper, UK, 01 December 2008 Twitter comes of age with fast reports from the ground Blogs and file-sharing sites have provided rapid and kaleidoscopic accounts of the terror attacks in Mumbai The Guardian newspaper, UK, 28 November 2008 How Twitter and Flickr recorded the Mumbai terror attacks The effectiveness of the web showed itself once more in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai with the photo-sharing site Flickr and the microblogging system Twitter both providing a kaleidoscope of what was going on within minutes of the attacks beginning. As India's financial capital, Mumbai is home to a number of the country's most computer-literate users, who had been quick to adopt the microblogging format of Twitter The Guardian newspaper, UK, 27 November 2008 Same game, new rules: A historic presidential campaign Ñ and what it means for our digital future Political campaigns have historically been held hostage by the media and candidates had to wait for the media to show up before they could say anything. What the Obama campaign did differently was communicate news all the time. They were sending out Twitters, uploading videos and doing all kinds of media work on their own. They bypassed media gatekeepers and took the message directly to the public. PRSA PR Tactics, 26 November 2008 Twittering topples Motrin ad campaign directed at mothers Bloggers and microbloggers banded together over a weekend to criticize a new ad campaign by a pain drug that suggested mothers carry their babies as if they are fashion accessories. PRSA PR Tactics, 19 November 2008 Will Mars Phoenix and its Twitter feed rise from the ashes? It seems not. After five months exploring Mars, digging up the soil and making some startling discoveries along the way, the interplanetary laboratory has gone off the radar, probably for good The Guardian newspaper, UK, 13 November 2008 Mars Phoenix: NASA vows to carry on twittering across the universe The agency says it has been bitten by the Twitter bug and will continue to use feeds to communicate with space addicts The Guardian newspaper, UK, 12 November 2008 Farewell to Phoenix NASA's Martian probe has come to a dark and frigid end, but its dying gasp was a tweet of 'triumph' The Guardian newspaper, UK, 11 November 2008 The Twitter election Casting a vote in the presidential election was not complete without tweeting your own ballot report via Twitter The Guardian newspaper, UK, 04 November 2008 Want to follow the US elections? Try twittervotereport.com The US election is happening and a radical new website is creating a real web 2.0 experience to watch The Guardian newspaper, UK, 04 November 2008 US Election 2008: Coming to a computer near you, live, tonight I hope you weren't planning on getting any sleep tonight, because the Internet-obsessed world will be expecting you to be glued to your media screens for the next 24 hours to watch the US election drama unfold The Guardian newspaper, UK, 04 November 2008 Birds on a wire: Public relations in the Twitterverse The popular social media tool, Twitter, which debuted in March 2006, has created a communications phenomenon that media and analyst relations practitioners should monitor and consider joining. PRSA PR Tactics, October 2008 Journalists continue to use Twitter to report and publish news Many journalists are continuing to use the microblogging service Twitter to both gather and broadcast news. PRSA PR Tactics, 29 August 2008 The 'CNN breaking news' Twitter - revealed! CNN took some flack this week for a rather tardy Twitter feed when it appeared to post 'breaking news' about the California earthquake five hours after the event. By that time, most of Twitter users were totally over the whole earthquake thing so therefore were quite scathing. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 01 August 2008 Pointing the internet in a new direction Sites such as TinyURL that turn long URLs into short ones have suddenly come into their own, thanks to Twitter The Guardian newspaper, UK, 31 July 2008 Earthquake reported on Twitter. No sh*t. We expect a round of reports about Twitter every time there's a major news event now, and yesterday's earthquake in Southern California was no exception. Even Twitter themselves wrote about it this time, graphing a spike in tweets that mentioned 'earthquake' in the few minutes after the quake. The mainstream press didn't catch on until nearly ten minutes later. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 30 July 2008 To tweet or not to tweet: How and when to use Twitter in PR efforts Already, Twitter has proven to be a powerful tool. It was one of the first communication methods to report scenes from the natural disasters in Myanmar and China in May, and the Red Cross has used it to keep people updated on relief efforts and needs. Political candidates used it to keep supporters up to date on their campaigns. In April 2008, American journalism graduate student James Buck sent a one-word message, "Arrested," to let friends in the United States know heÕd been detained at an Egyptian anti-war protest. His subsequent posts helped his colleagues hire a lawyer on his behalf. PRSA PR Tactics, 30 June 2008 Future of Journalism: Crowds and amateurs - New ways of getting stories Crowd sourcing is already a reality in today's journalism world. Since the July 2005 Tube bombings in London, we've grown used to news organisations using amateur photography and video of major events. Now the wisdom of the crowd is becoming a source for generating stories as well as reacting to them. Two examples – Reuters is working on a tool to monitor the microblogging service Twitter for mentions of newsworthy keywords such as "earthquake," while AP has agreed to buy content from the user-generated site www.nowpublic.com. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 20 June 2008 Future of Journalism: Blogging, twittering and live video Discussion of the phenomenon of live blogging, Twitter and the swathe of accessible live news tools The Guardian newspaper, UK, 13 June 2008 Using real-time news tools Twitter scooped even the US Geological Survey in reporting the earthquakes in China. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 14 May 2008 Twitter is not a newswire Downing Street is the latest organization to pile on to Twitter. Much time and energy needs to be invested in cultivating a critical mass of friends on Twitter before it really makes sense – something that's the biggest barrier to wider adoption, aside from explaining what it is in the first place. There are a couple of problems with using it like an RSS delivery tool. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 28 March 2008 How We Use Twitter for Journalism How useful can communication limited to 140 characters be for serious journalism? It turns out that the short messages you find on Twitter have proven wildly useful for some writers penning larger pieces. Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb, 25 April 2008 The incredible shrinking campaign dispatch One of the things we're supposed to do as journalists is take people where they can't go. Microblogging really comes from inside the room. PRSA PR Tactics, 24 January 2008 2007 Results of the Twitter news site survey A mini-survey on the use of Twitter by news organizations. The Guardian newspaper, UK, 02 October 2007 How news organizations are using Twitter News organizations use Twitter as one way of connecting to audience members who may not otherwise read a newspaper or visit a news organization's Web site. PRSA PR Tactics, 06 September 2007 Mini-blogs an "untapped gold mine" for sales and marketing A communications revolution is coming that will make e-mail seem as antiquated as the mimeograph. The professional intimacy such services create can help people win clients. PRSA PR Tactics, 28 August 2007 Twitter: New sensation Twitter is the latest viral Internet application with the potential to attract massive online audiences. PRSA PR Tactics, 27 March 2007 Twitter Fan Wiki Twitter is a way of life. It's living with a publicity policy. It's friends, Romans and country people the world over engaged in timely snippet conversations that fit into 140 character chunks. 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