Social Media and Citizen Voice
Social media started as a simple and quick way to stay in touch with friends and family. For some it is still just that but for others it has become a powerful tool that gives political voice to ordinary citizens and has given rise to mass collaboration that has the ability to change history. We cover this in more detail in a presentation here.
Looking at the Election in Iran we only have to search Google New Timeline to see that journalists and photographers are documenting the situation. However they are not alone, the Iranian people are also using networks such as Facebook and Twitter to document their stories and opinion in real time. Suddenly social networks are providing us with a new way of seeing world change, via the citizens’ voice. Twitter is one of the best places to follow what is happening in real time, it is also a source of unique documentation, such as the Tweet from Mousavi saying that he had been placed under house arrest. Blogs allow more detailed coverage from both inside and outside Iran. A search on Google Blogger Search shows that there are over 2.7M blog results for Iran Election in the UK in the past month. YouTube is a good source of video content from inside Iran, and users of Flickr are building a library of images documenting the aftermath of the election.
There is a depth to the information found on the web, allowing us to draw a unique picture from both mainstream media and the citizen journalists. As a result, people proactively search the web for information and are now more in control of the media they consume. Google Insights for Search shows that when the story first broke search volumes for Iran Election rose by nearly 2000% relative to the News and Current Events category. Sysomos (A company that developed a tool to track Twitter usage) found that Iran had a total of 19,235 Twitter users in June, compared with 8,654 in mid-May, up 122%. They also looked to see when Twitter accounts were created, the most active months were March and June when 9.81% and 9.93% of all Twitter accounts were created.
Another country where citizens are empowered to document change is Kenya. Crowdsourcing to document civil unrest was implemented during the post election troubles, by a group of concerned bloggers who set up Ushahidi. Ushahidi mobilizes Kenyan citizens to report and map conflict or peace efforts in real time. The information is then documented in a Google Maps Mashup. Crisis information can be submitted by mobile phone, email or web form. Reports are then generated to promote peace efforts, increases awareness of violence and provide a permanent log of events.
Social media and collaborative applications will not replace the great work of journalists but they do give those searching an added depth and variety of information.