Rumours are not confined to Twitter
The Washington Post appears to have inaccurately reported that "the Twitter interface does not support the use of Farsi". The ‘fact’ that Twitter didn’t support Farsi was news to me because I have been watching tweets come into my Twitter feed in Farsi. (Fairly useless from my point of view because I can’t read them, […]
Iran and those elections – Live tonight
We’re discussing the aftermath of the June 12 presidential elections in Iran tonight. We start at 7pm GMT/11am PST and as usual, if you can’t make it to the Club in person, do please join us online in what should be a fantastic debate. We’ll be streaming the event on the Frontline Club broadcast channel, […]
Going beyond the hashtag to follow Iran
Over on Slate Jack Shafer is concerned that his "cognitive colander isn’t big enough to strain out Iran information" on Twitter. For the last couple of days I’ve been tracking what has been going on in Iran and suffering from a similar problem. But hopefully this post might help. To begin with I fired up […]
Iran Election: links on media coverage 2
The same deal as yesterday but today instead: Al Jazeera English Journalist uses Twitter to get commentary on Iran. BBC Changing the website to green was NOT a gesture of support to the protesters. Director of Global News says UGC offers authenticity to BBC coverage. Have Your Say team interact with Twitterer. Jon […]
Iran Election: links on media coverage
This is a list of links I’ve been collecting on media coverage of the Iran election protests. It’s far from complete but it’s a start at least and hopefully it helps identify some of the main themes that are emerging. To that end, I’ve tried to group together links, although you’ll notice that there […]
MoD and digital media: “We haven’t gripped it, but we’re getting there”
"I could not write about the past week without mentioning the tragic death of Rifleman Adrian Sheldon. Shelly was a much loved member of the Fire Support Platoon here at FOB [Forward Operating Base] Inkerman and his loss has been extremely hard to come to terms with." In among the stories about political meltdown you […]
WRL: Twitter and the Global Media Forum
A few war reporting links to keep you moderately entertained while I put together a hopefully more enlightening post. (I was hoping to have it for today, but there’s been a slight delay.) 1. Hello, Twitter: Goodbye, McKiernan. The US military has launched an Afghanistan Twitter feed. Just recently the feed has been providing updates […]
Media140: Tweeting from the field
Media140 brought together twitterers (and maybe some people who aren’t on Twitter) to talk about the impact of everyone’s favourite 140 character tool on news journalism. Using Twitter to do journalism We learnt what most people know if they’ve been using Twitter to do any sort of journalism. Twitter is pretty darn useful for monitoring […]
Frontline bloggers at Media140
Tomorrow, I’ll be heading along to Media140. It’s a conference that will look at the impact of Twitter and other social media tools on news coverage and journalistic practice. I seem to be pretty interested in this sort of stuff. After all, I’ve written a few things on Twitter – its use as a reporting […]
ISAF launches Twitter feed
Earlier today, I was alerted to the ISAFmedia Twitter feed by my Frontline colleague, Alex Strick van Linschoten. I contacted ISAF, (NATO’s multinational International Security Assistance Force fighting in Afghanistan) and they confirmed that the Twitter feed is an official ISAF operation. A spokesperson said the project "is in its infancy", but ISAF hope to […]
#Winnenden and Twitter: German media’s conversation of a shooting
"Kein zweiter Hudson-River-Tweet" (Stefan Winterbauer, Meedia.de) "Not a second Hudson River tweet" Two months have past since Germany was stunned by a killing spree in which 15 people died in Winnenden, just north of Stuttgart. At about 0930 on March 11 a former pupil of the Albertville Secondary School walked into the school and […]
Battle of the Queens
The YouTube Queen of Jordan has taken another step towards becoming the world’s most technologically connected Royal. She’s now posting minute-by-minute updates on Twitter. In a couple of days she’s rocketed up from a handful of followers to around four thousand. So far, we’ve heard of her ariel acrobatics, as her husband pilots the royal […]
More on the role of social media in Moldova
A few weeks ago, I was part of an interesting debate about the role of Twitter in a protest against the Communist Party’s election in Moldova. I’d like to say that I think it has been a valuable exchange of ideas conducted in excellent order. I particularly want to thank all the people who commented […]
Frontline bloggers – from Syria to Swine Flu
Our ever growing band of Frontline bloggers were busy this past week. Mexico City based Deborah Bonello reports from the unusually empty streets of the Mexican capital, the hospital wards and the restaurants as she follows the swine flu story. Nairobi based Rob Crilly continues to wrestle with mortality statistics as he battles his way towards a November deadline for his first book on Darfur. Meanwhile, we welcomed the latest addition to the Frontline blogging stable, the London and Damascus based Sasa, who will be reporting on and from the Syrian capital. Read more on the blogs…
Frontline Club on Twitter
If you use the increasingly popular microblogging service Twitter, you might be interested to know who is on Twitter from the Frontline blogs, how often they tweet and how to follow them. First up, you’ll need an account, Second, find and follow the bloggers that interest you most. Here’s a round up of Frontline bloggers […]
More on Twitter and Moldova
You can find the latest on the progress of the dispute over Moldova’s election over at Reuters and the BBC. The government has agreed to recount the votes from the elections on 5 April. Opposition parties say this course of action takes no account of their concerns over fradulent voter lists. They are also worried […]
Citizen media and the Tbilisi protests
We’ve heard a lot about the use of social networking sites and services such as Twitter and Facebook by political activists in the past week, but opposition protests in Georgia have also shown that they are valuable tools in the hands of student and professional journalists alike. As an editor for Global Voices Online, a site which […]
The myth of the Moldova ‘Twitter revolution’
According to the BBC thousands of protesters descended on Moldova’s parliament building yesterday to demonstrate against the Communist Party’s victory in last Sunday’s elections. The protesters are thought to be primarily made up of students and young people who claim the results of the election were fradulent despite being approved by election monitors. Twitter Unsurprisingly […]
The myth of the Moldova ‘Twitter revolution’
According to the BBC thousands of protesters descended on Moldova’s parliament building yesterday to demonstrate against the Communist Party’s victory in last Sunday’s elections. The protesters are thought to be primarily made up of students and young people who claim the results of the election were fradulent despite being approved by election monitors. Twitter Unsurprisingly […]
#G20 – Twitter dominates mainstream media coverage
I’m feeling rather overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information on the G20 protests and I’m just sitting and watching. But maybe that’s my problem – there is so much to watch. I’m currently waiting for 2,383 queued tweets on a #G20 search of Twitterfall (and later I realised that I need to keep it […]
Ministry of Defence blog rumbling forward
The Ministry of Defence has been rather slow on the uptake in the social media world. Partly because they’ve just been slow – it happens in large bureaucratic organisations and partly because there are a lot of difficulties working out how best to play the communication game when lives are at stake and sensitive issues […]
(Not) contacting the IDF through social media
In my post about the Israeli Defence Force and their use of social media during the Gaza conflict, I said I was trying to chase up the IDF for a comment or response to it. I, for one, would be interested to hear their take on it. Several emails have met with no response, so […]
How the IDF fell off the social media bandwagon
I’ve been thinking for a while about how the Israeli Defence Force used social media during the conflict in Gaza and I’m not at all convinced the campaign was successful. Yes, the IDF was right to engage with the Internet and social media. But the way they went about it was questionable. I have two […]
Attacks on the Press
The Committee to protect journalists launched Attacks on the Press 2008 today. The CPJ will be holding a press conference at the United Nations later to publicize the report. You can watch the livestream on the UN website at 9.30am EST Tuesday 10 February. Taking part will be, Joel Simon, CPJ Executive Director, Paul Steiger, […]
I’d like to see more military style from the Ministry of Defence’s Twitter feed
I’ve just come across @defencehq. It’s the official twitter feed of the Minstry of Defence and more or less exclusively links to Defence News articles. I scrolled back to the first few updates which I couldn’t help but have a little chuckle at: “testing twitter 8:06 PM Sep 4th, 2008 from web” “testing twitter 2 […]
Inside Gaza
There have been many harrowing images of the effects of Israel’s military operation in Gaza. But few have come through the lenses of western photographers. One man who does have a record of life amid the danger is Flickr user nineteenseventy6. I stumbled across his Flickr stream the other day after following a link posted […]
Gaza media coverage – war 2.0, social media and cyberwar
War 2.0 Adrian Monck assesses Israel’s online propaganda operation. He notes: “Back in January 2008, 26 IDF ‘combat cameramen’ held a fortnight long exercise with US military camera teams, and were “drilled in the use of wireless image transmission technology.” Which is interesting. You can’t help but think that the IDF must have had a […]
More Twitter conventions would have aided Mumbai coverage
The recent attacks on Mumbai marked a moment when Twitter appeared to reach a critical threshhold. In the UK, various media outlets made use of the 140 character tool to augment their reporting. In fact, a journalist I spoke to today, said: if journalists hadn’t heard of Twitter, then they probably weren’t doing their job […]
Mumbai – twitter, blogging, and social media
I’m collecting a series of links on how Mumbai has been covered by blogs and social media. You can find all the links on my delicious account.
Terrorists to use Twitter?
A report by the US Army says Twitter, the popular microblogging tool, is a weapon that could be used by Al Qaeda to help them carry out attacks. The full report put together by the 304th Military Infantry Battalion can be viewed here (pdf) and Wired magazine has a good summary of the main points. […]