Is Twitter a reliable news source?
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, have once again brought Twitter into mainstream focus. The micro-blogging service was one of the first places where news of these attacks broke, beating traditional new media by quite a margin. But the question remains as to whether Twitter can be classed as a reliable news source.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service where anyone with access to the Internet, either by way of a computer or cellphone, can post updates of 140 characters or less to their followers. These updates also enter the public Twitter stream where anyone, follower or otherwise, can access them.
This has lead Twitter to become a main resource for citizen journalism, with ordinary people being able to report on news stories taking place in their local area. Journalists the world over, as well as bloggers, and just people seeking the latest news reports from around the world, can therefore use the service as an alternative to more traditional forms of news media.
The earthquakes in China were the first major news story where Twitter proved its worth, with people on the ground being able to instantly report the latest happenings, keeping a much broader base of people in the know. And now, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai have proved Twitter’s worth again.
This time, as well as a plethora of technology bloggers talking Twitter up as a legitimate source of news, CNN has also got in on the act, calling Nov. 27, 2008 “the day social media appeared to come of age and signaled itself as a news-gathering force to be reckoned with.”
Most agree with this sentiment, especially the tech bloggers who were already on board the Twitter bandwagon before CNN decided to see the light. Mathew Ingram has written a particularly impassioned backing of Twitter as a news source, while Michael Arrington can’t quite believe there are still those out there who are disbelievers. But there are.
Tom’s Tech Blog isn’t a fan because he argues that there isn’t enough validity to the Twitter updates. He argues that only the truth matters, and some of the early tweets coming in about the Mumbai attacks were low on fact and high on opinion.
Twitter is definitely a news source, and a good one at that. News, especially from countries not always covered well by the mainstream media, often breaks on Twitter, and that proves without a shadow of a doubt its claim to be a source of news. But Tom has a point, because reliability counts for a great deal in becoming a recognized and respected news source.
In the same way that blogs and bloggers had to start citing sources and knowing what they were talking about before they were taken seriously, so Twitter will have to learn to sort the wheat from the chaff. Twitter is a brilliant source for news, but its reliability is still in question.
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November 27th, 2008
I think you can put as much trust in tweets as you do in gossip – interesting, but not always informative.