While this past week’s readings aimed to define globalization, I recently read an article about one communication tool that combines all of the –scapes theorized by Appadurai and “space of flows of the global network society” of Castells: in 140 characters or less. In this article by the Wall Street Journal, researchers following the flow of popular hashtags have found that Twitter is a viable, timely source for obtaining information about disasters, public events, politics or other information that garners opinions. When they are taken together Tweets form a pattern of movement that can serve as a record of social history.
“When Virginia's magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit last August, the first Twitter reports sent from people at the epicenter began almost instantly at 1:51 p.m.—and reached New York about 40 seconds ahead of the quake's first shock waves, according to calculations by the social media company SocialFlow. The flood of messages peaked at 5,500 tweets a second.”
When I used to write for a blog on innovation and information and communication technologies for development, I found that Twitter was one of my best sources to find people who I would not have been able to connect with any other way. The interconnectedness and virtual pockets of community, or deterritorialization, allowed me to contact Nigerians and Kenyans who were heads of innovation hubs in their respective countries and interview them online as primary sources for stories. Twitter can be used to connect people who may not have shared nationalism but may have the same identities, ideas, beliefs, practices, and even those rituals that we say only exist within our own individual culture practices. It allows us to weave a social fabric that transcends boundaries constricted by our nation-state.
However, as the article cautions, Twitter is just like all other social media websites that bring people together based on similar interests, it can gauge those interests to take advantage of people. Targeted campaigns, fake users, and “Twitterbots” can be used to trick people who are part of the global networked society into believing mistruths.
This was a great article. Thanks for sharing! I actually learned that I had just been in an earthquake from a co-worker who had a friend that twitted him from North Carolina. We ran out of Hamilton Building at AU then looked around stupidly at each other because outside, nothing seemed to be wrong. I went to USGS geological survey and they had a message saying "Felt an earthquake? Tell us about it on FB or Twitter!" This is an excellent way from them to measure where people felt it. I currently do not use Twitter very often, but this article has made me think a little differently about what it has to offer. Influence for health professions, US Geological survey, politics, int'l development work etc seems to be endless. USGS now has millions of very finely tuned, advanced and accurate little machines (humans) running around the earth willing to share their information and experiences for free. Though not as sensitive as the equipment strategically placed around the world, we are very organic and cover more ground. With all this data, the seismology field may be able to reach the point of predicting earthquakes before they strike. I am intrigued to see how social media will influence the field.
Thanks for the comment Sharena!!! I think in addition to all that you have mentioned of the benefits that social media being a surveying tool, Twitter can also be an amazing resource for citizen journalism as a tool for social change. The infamous Chinese "netizens" used Weibo, which is a microblogging service, to uncover what really happened during the train crash this past August when the government failed to tell them what happened. The technique of citizens reporting events in real time is fundamental to circumventing oppressive governments and has been an amazing tool to empower civil society. This brings up the question if the Internet and social media sites like Twitter can be used as instruments to connect citizens to the public sphere and enable them to break out of the their oppression. Or on the other side, whether it widens the divide between those who have the luxury of access to participate in citizen journalism and question authority, and those who do not have access at all.
Katie,
Great post. I think the most important part of it, though, is what you bring up at the end—the way social media networks can be used to deceive and take advantage of people. When anyone can be a "journalist," who are we supposed to trust for our information? In fact, this seems to apply to most media these days, not just Twitter and other social media sites. When you can choose from ten or twenty different news channels, which one are you going to turn to, and why? There is a much greater burden on the consumer now than there ever was before to verify the trustworthiness and accuracy of an outlet—when you only had three major networks to choose from, you pretty much knew what you were going to get. I wonder if it's not the increased burden put on consumers that's driving the failure of our public sphere? It recalls Barry Schwartz's theory on the "paradox of choice:" presenting a consumer with unlimited options can actually cause intense anxiety and drive him to inaction, for of fear of picking the "wrong" one.