[LINK] COuld Twitter have prevented the Iraq War?!

jore community at thoughtmaybe.com
Thu Mar 21 15:27:05 AEDT 2013


Hmmmm.

My feeling is that the invasion of Iraq would've happened regardless of
whatever anyone said or did. I mean, millions of people took to the
streets all around the globe signalling their strong opposition -- that
didn't stop it. Neither did the collective signalled discontent of
thousands upon thousands of letters to political figureheads and great
work by NGOs the world over. And so neither does the existence of
"social media" today do anything to stop the rapacious militarism still
continuing in Iraq and indeed elsewhere (say, the now-not-so-'secret' US
drone strikes in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan for instance)...

In any event, politely "tweeting" that warmongerers stop being
warmongerers isn't going to do much...




On 21/03/2013 2:10 PM, grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
> http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/03/20/1854249/could-twitter-have-stopped-the-medias-rush-to-war-in-iraq-ten-years-ago
>
> My belief, after being on Twitter since 2010 now (since my first iPad) is Yes!
>
> Twitter has made it possible to communicate to people very rapidly, those 
> news items and media people (journalists, experts etc) who get little 
> coverage in the Mainstream Media cycle a rapid upswing of interest.  It keeps 
> news articles alive, that might otherwise get buried deep in the 24 hour cycle,
> and maintains interest at the same time spreading the message a little bit
> further each time.  When significant hashtags are created, they get a 
> consistent following and often even a handful of tweets from a respected
> identity can often have net.effects far greater than anticipated.
>
> Twitter also keeps the postings focused, in such a way that noise levels 
> in 140 characters are actually quite low and effective retweeting or 
> the subsequent passing on of information eventually makes it to sources
> who can be authoritive on various matters.
>
> One recent example of this is the knowledge of the case related to Tony Abbott
> by Barbara Ramjan, who took out a suit after some comments 
> by Andrew Bolt, Michael Kroger and his familiars. 
> The case did make the news, quietly 
> but has since bubbled down into the dank depths of non-interest.  But it has 
> always been in the Public Interest to know that this case was going ahead
> as Abbott has always denied the event ever took place.  But that is another 
> story.  The point is, Twitter has been useful to maintain some kind of 
> presence in the news cycle that seems to help keep some stories afloat
> long enough to ensure they eventually get a proper airing.
>
> So, back to the War - had Twitter been a part of the dialogue, I am certain
> that certain commentators, military or other experts in the field would 
> have so roundly condemned prior the 2003 invasion that in all likelyhood it 
> would never have gone ahead.  In fact I think that had we had access to
> Twitter during that time in the Howard government, the way twitter works
> outside the conventions of Mainstream Media would mean eventually they 
> would have had to pay attention.   There were so many blog postings 
> and general information against the strategy at the time, but drowned out 
> by the ideological right and their media minders, it would 
> have ultimately come undone under its own reporting.
>
> I may be naive, not knowing much about Tor the other day when I looked 
> at that silkroad URL, but I have become quite interested in Twitter and 
> having spent a considerable amount of time doing my own trivial campaigning 
> and so on, can see the net.effect growing and watch with great interest
> breaking stories that emerge on there days or even weeks before their time.
> I guess as someone who generally dislikes social media, I have adopted twitter
> as it seems to be a great democratic leveller of information.....
>
>
> rachel
>




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