By Tom Kirkham and Jonathan Mathias
The worldwide Twitter community is an excitable bunch to say the least – too often eager to jump on pretty much any bandwagon, irrespective of where it’s headed and whether it’s in anyway a journey worth making. Consequently, the trending-topics on Twitter generally need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Indeed, only a few months back we blogged about why most people still view the traditional media as the real authority on important news matters.
But what happens when a traditional media outlet, through no fault of its own, is unable to act as that authority figure? Well, in the past 24 hours, since The Guardian posted a story about a gagging order it had received, Twitter users have picked up the torch and set about bringing the story to the world’s attention, with electrifying resolve.
Twitter moves so quickly, and generates such vast quantities of content, that it was at first very difficult to determine how the story started spreading. When the Johnson King Twitter team went to post its morning update, ‘Trafigura’ was pretty much the only thing anyone was talking about – and of course, like so many others, this compelled us to follow the weblinks and see what all the fuss was about. For those of you that are still in the dark, you might want to head here.
This incident demonstrates the uncontrollable nature, lightning speed and powerful momentum of social media, with both Trafigura and the Carter-Ruck law firm being mentioned hundreds of times each minute. There are tweets soliciting the BBC to cover the story, tweets encouraging other users to write to their MPs, tweets publishing links containing background information on the story and its key players… and of course, an awful lot of verbal abuse!
It’s far too early to say whether this incident will be defined as the moment at which Twitter ‘came of age’, however it lays down a marker from which we can evaluate and assess the evolution of the media – traditional and social elements working side by side to fight against censorship and shape the public agenda.
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