Jun
14
posted at: 9:45 AM
As we all now know, the aftermath of the Iranian elections is upon us, resulting in violent clashes between protestors and police due to presumed fraudulent voting practices by the incumbent political party. Yesterday, Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb wrote about the absence of CNN from the coverage, and the message has resonated, as CNN has since escalated the election riots to become their top story.
Selective coverage of major international events by mainstream American media outlets has long been thought to be influenced by the Federal Government, particularly in wartime. Conspiracy theories aside, this latest development validates the power and relevancy of Twitter as a major media platform, and that thousands of tiny voices can generate enough noise to influence the media, instead of the other way around.
Twitter's relevancy has become too large to be ignored, despite recent reports that there aren't as many voices on Twitter as originally believed. Media propaganda is dead, if it even still existed, as we know that our voice can still be heard. As long as you can tweet about something and still see your content show up on an application powered by Twitter Search, you know your speech is still free.
Despite it's ability to influence major channels, Twitter has also been providing more relevant, raw and uncensored coverage of the events than traditional sources. We are all able to see the real story, often through powerful images and video, that we wouldn't see through FCC regulated outlets, and we see all of it right as it happens.
If you aren't watching this, you're missing everything. And I don't just mean with the Iran Election story, but the story of how we perceive the world. Everything is changing right before our eyes, and we're all writing the story.