Re:Twitter Suggested for Nobel Peace Prize
by timr on Monday July 13, 2009 @10:17AM
(#701719)
Yes, it's completely absurd.
I mean...if you're going to suggest that a technology provider be given a Nobel Peace Prize for Iranian protests, at least pick something that had a significant effect -- like a cell phone network. Because despite all of the press that Twitter received, there's not that much evidence that it played any significant role in the protests. And for every one person using Twitter, there were hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people using cell-phones to communicate about the protests, with little fanfare or media attention.
I suppose that you could argue that Twitter was responsible for bringing the Iranian protests into the American media spotlight, but the thing about the coverage was that it was mostly about Twitter, only superficially about Iran. You could tune into any major media outlet and hear gobs about how precious, precocious Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests that the US State Department wouldn't let them take downtime -- but you didn't hear that much about the Iranian protests! It was an example of US media navel-gazing, at its finest.
I mean...if you're going to suggest that a technology provider be given a Nobel Peace Prize for Iranian protests, at least pick something that had a significant effect -- like a cell phone network. Because despite all of the press that Twitter received, there's not that much evidence that it played any significant role in the protests. And for every one person using Twitter, there were hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people using cell-phones to communicate about the protests, with little fanfare or media attention.
http://www.slate.com/id/2220736/
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/remember_moldova.php
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/04/17/04
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/06/19/01
I suppose that you could argue that Twitter was responsible for bringing the Iranian protests into the American media spotlight, but the thing about the coverage was that it was mostly about Twitter, only superficially about Iran. You could tune into any major media outlet and hear gobs about how precious, precocious Twitter was so important to the Iranian protests that the US State Department wouldn't let them take downtime -- but you didn't hear that much about the Iranian protests! It was an example of US media navel-gazing, at its finest.