The Revolution Will Be Twitterized

Established Mainstream Media vs Twitter News Snippets?

"We know from crisis communication research that people typically search for corroborating information before they take a corrective action—their TV tells them there's a tornado brewing and they talk to relatives and neighbors. And now they look at Twitter."  Bill Braniff, Executive Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism.

"I have been following my friend's Facebook who is near the scene and she is updating everyone before it even gets to the news".  Email sent during Boston Marathon.

The way we get our news is changing. Paper newspapers are going digital. Digital subscriptions have forced newsprint to come up with inventive ways to package news. Nothing seems to last for long since it is impossible to compete with the immediacy of digital information. Even reading the entire paper in digital format is time consuming. 

Twitter is becoming the news preference.

Marcus Messner, a communications professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the rash of mainstream media errors [of Boston Marathon bombing news coverage] stemmed at least in part from pressure to compete with fast-flowing social media. 

"If you look at Twitter, the news snippets on the events are a lot more advanced than what you're seeing on websites or even what you're seeing on the air," Messner said. "Twitter, especially, has put a lot more pressure on news organization to get it out fast."

Social media is changing everything, that is the need for quick, cinematic messages that may or may not be accurate, information that can be skimmed in a heartbeat, and forgotten in a nano second. The paradigm shift awaits for the entire work force to adapt to the digital revolution. Standing with your pitchfork in protest as the agrarians did during the industrial revolution will not matter.

The revolution IS digitalized and will continue.