As news of the Fort Hood shooting rampage spread last week, media outlets and readers both put Twitter and its new lists feature to the test.
Just as the service was instrumental in providing updates during the summer’s election protests in Iran, Twitter feeds from Texas-based news sources such as the Austin-American Statesman and the Killeen Daily Herald provided a stream of local updates.
The creators of a program aimed at counteracting Iran’s Internet filters have issued a call for something that lies around unused on plenty of desks: USB thumb drives.
Everyone’s coverage of the uprising in Iran has been Twitter-centric, for obvious reasons. But CNN, in an apparent attempt to look like they have real, non-Twitter newsgathering capabilities, has been regurgitating Twitter posts and attributing them to unnamed “sources.”
“Check the source” may be the first rule of journalism. But in the coverage of the protests in Iran this month, some news organizations have adopted a different stance: publish first, ask questions later. If you still don’t know the answer, ask your readers.
Just before ending his news conference Tuesday, President Obama called on CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux for one last question.
In the wake of the disputed Iranian election, American Internet companies including Facebook and Twitter have given Iranians an avenue to voice their opinions and to break through the wall of censorship their embattled government has built around the country’s traditional media.
Last night’s “Charlie Rose” featured an interview with Ivan Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon, who talked about communications in Iran, the company’s prospects for carrying Apple’s iPhone and the recent news that Verizon Wireless will carry a Google Android-powered cellphone.
With the Iranian government blocking and limiting the use of social networking sites, cellphone signals and Internet connections, Twitter has proved to be a crucial tool for embattled Iranian protesters to alert the rest of the world about the nation’s post-election conflicts.
On a warm spring evening in Iraq this April, months before Iranians made global headlines with angry Twitter posts, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and several other American tech leaders sipped wine with Barham Salih in the garden of his Baghdad home.
How can and should news organizations and others add value to the new news ecosystem that is being used in the Iran story?
Or to put the question another way: The New York Times keeps talking about how expensive its Baghdad bureau is and what a fix we’d be in without it.
Iranian protesters looking for unblocked avenues on the Internet might consider World of Warcraft.
Network-security firm Arbor Networks says it has a rough sketch of how the government’s firewall works and that it appears to be selectively blocking Internet applications, particularly online video and email.
Given the buzz over the last few days about the role that Twitter has played as a communications platform for the Iranian protesters, it would be tempting to take a cynical view about the fact that Facebook today is announcing that it is launching a new version of the site…in Persian.
As the Iranian government continues a cat-and-mouse game of limiting or blocking access to social networking sites, instant messaging, cellphone service and the Internet in general, citizens and onlookers keep developing workarounds to help protesters stay online.
Social networking services like Facebook and Twitter have played a remarkable role in breaking the Iranian government’s grip on information, both before and after last Friday’s election. But lately, access to the Internet in Iran has slowed to a crawl, demonstrating considerable technical sophistication on the part of Iranian authorities.
As voting protests in Iran devolved into violence, and communications remained sporadic, Internet users in the country are calling for proxies they can use to stay online unmonitored. Twitter, a hub of activity since the rallies began, saw its own protests as users begged the microblogging service to postpone a maintenance period that is scheduled tonight.
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