It is bragged by news stations everywhere that they are ‘the go to location’ for breaking news as it happens. But they now seem to have some unexpected competition since Twitter arrived on the scene. Originally designed to be a brainstorming medium for board members, Twitter has now become a major social networking site. It allows celebrities to converse with their fans, friends are able to discuss their daily lives and now it has also become a tool in times of crisis.
Twitter provides real time updates, allowing for instantaneous communication. The instantaneous nature of twitter enables detailed reports to be sent many times faster than any news media. For example, during the Black Saturday fires in Victoria the State’s fire communication system broke down leaving society with no credible source of information. Residents, friends of victims and emergency services took to tweeting to find out the danger zones, discover information about family members and friends and help emergency services find out where they were needed most. Similarly, during the Queensland floods and the Los Angeles earthquake twitter was also used in this fashion.
These events have highlighted the idea that society can do it themselves. We supposedly need governments to keep countries in order, ensure safety and provide regulations. However, in times of crisis we are left to fend for ourselves when traditional procedures fail. Consequently, we have found ways to do it more successfully than the media or the government officials. Authorities have been left quite gobsmacked when trying to make sense of how twitter accidentally became a crisis platform and how they should control it. Compared to traditional means of communication, twitter is chaos. It allows huge amounts of messages to flow freely without any form of order. However society found a way to create order out of chaos and gain the information they required. The government is beginning to feel uneasy about the issue. What happens when we all realise that we don’t need them anymore? An article by Alan Smith reported that the U.S. Army released a warning that twitter could be used for terrorism and should be shut down. However they were unable to provide evidence to say that this has been the case.
In addition to crisis management, Twitter has assisted in the organisation of massive groups of people to come together and protest for their cause.
Donna Haraway was right to suggest that new technologies provide fresh sources of power. She saw the potential of these technologies to bring about social change and I believe that it has and will continue to do so. Not only are we living up to the predictions that she made, but her concept of a cyborg can also be seen to exist. A cyborg is defined as a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Although this definition sounds like a line straight out of a science fiction movie, this theory has merit. It is suggesting that in the technological age, people will be so connected with their technology that they can manipulate it to meet personal or political needs.
It is time for members of society to step up and realise that we have the potential to take care of ourselves, we are obviously perfectly capable of doing so and social media technologies are enabling these ideas to become a reality.
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