Last night was my first experience getting news as it happened via Twitter. Before I came to BYU, I put Twitter in the mental category of "just another social media platform." I was annoyed when my very first journalism class required me to sign up for it. I was even a little annoyed when the teacher required me to start this blog (gasp! Whaaat?), but I got over the latter pretty quickly.
It's taken far longer for me to stop seeing Twitter as annoying. Up until this year, I rarely used it, and whenever I did use it, it was only to promote articles I'd written or read and liked. That was and is still my primary purpose for logging on Twitter, but last night has given me a new perspective. And it's all thanks to Sen. Rand Paul and his millions of Twitter followers going crazy with the tweets about the filibuster Paul initiated.
Not only was I reading about news as it happened, I was reading hundreds of people's opinions about it! Newspapers can't do that; blogs can't do that efficiently; not even television news can handle that much information in an organized fashion. Twitter is truly unique, and last night's experience has cemented in my mind its usefulness as both a newsgathering tool and a news outlet.
My revelation about Twitter was almost as fascinating as the filibuster itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment