Based on how word of Osama bin Laden’s demise this week broke and unfolded on social networks, national security beat reporters might want to be sure they’re following members of Congress — and key officials from previous administrations — on Twitter.
Or at least are receiving breaking news alerts from key media via Twitter or SMS and checking in on Facebook, not just checking web sites or cable channels now and again.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s chief of staff, Keith Urbahn, is believed to be among the first to break the news on Twitter, with this tweet at 10: 24 p.m. EDT.
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/keithurbahn/status/64877790624886784″]
Within minutes came this tweet from U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Florida.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/RepDennisRoss/status/64882180811276288″]
Media tweets followed with the news.
Watching the TV news frenzy develop in the ramp-up to Obama’s speech on Sunday night, it was very clear that the key sources who were cluing in reporters were members of Congress who had been briefed by the White House before the speech. Some of them, including Ross and used social media to go public.
A spokesman for Ross told CNET that Urbahn tweeted based on from “other news and Twitter reports” — not a briefing.
“Dennis was watching news channels and they were talking about how it was Qaddafi-related or possibly something bigger, but no one was sure,” aide Fred Piccolo said. “There were multiple tweets about it and so after seeing a half dozen or more tweets from reputable sources, Dennis tweeted ‘bin Laden is dead. God Bless America.'”
“It was another example of how social media and traditional media deal with the same news in different ways and at different speeds. Just as CNN once challenged newspapers and evening newscasts with a constant stream of images from the Persian Gulf war, Twitter and Facebook have become early warning systems for breaking news — albeit not always reliable ones.
Several online surveys the day after the announcement suggested social media was a dominant — if not the dominant — way that Americans learned the news. Given that these are online surveys, it’s probably not surprising that the results skew toward social media.
- Mashable.com: 50% heard from Twitter or Facebook vs. 17% for TV.
- PCMag.com: 38% Twitter, Facebook and web sites; 24% TV.
- A Huffington Post survey on Facebook had Facebook as the No. 1 source (9,635 votes) and TV at 8,966, followed by phone/text (3,999) and Twitter (2,174).
Not all surveys showed social media as the breaking news champ. A telephone survey of 500 people in the state of Washington had 60% saying TV was their source of the news vs. 17% for Twitter, Facebook and the Web.
A Pew survey showed a clear age gap. About 1 in 5 of those aged 18-34 cited online sources for the first news — double that of the population as a whole.
On a personal note, I was alerted to the story while watching TV (I admit it — Celebrity Apprenctice) with a crawl around 9:30 CT that Obama was going to speak — but no word about what, exactly. Curious, I bopped over to the cable channels and the web, soon began receiving breaking new tweets, and Celebrity Apprentice was eventually preempted by live news (still don’t know who was fired).
It was a record night for Twitter, which maxed out at 5,100 tweets a second at 11 p.m. EDT.
Twitter shared that data via tweets, of course, starting with this one. [blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/twitterglobalpr/status/65125115272249344″]
It also shared via Flickr a graphic showing the trajectory of tweets.
The biggest social media star of the news cycle turned out to be a a tech guy in Pakistan who unwittingly live-tweeted the news as it unfolded down the street from his house in Abbottabad.
Here is how it unfolded via Sohaib Athar, “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains” (in reverse order).
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64780730286358528″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64782523485528065″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64783440226168832″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64792407144796160″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64792874516094978″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64793269908930560″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/han3yy/status/64792521141796864″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64796769418088448″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64797406323154944″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64798882332278785″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64800071971127296″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64800262354763776″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64804984142839808″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64807284689211393″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/terminalxpk/status/64810589498777600″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/terminalxpk/status/64810768109023233″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64812616601714688″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64821273301229568″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ibi2010/status/64825777694318592″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/naqvi/status/64883228590350336″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64887574866575360″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64889534189547520″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64892915167657984″]
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[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64927163761168384″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64931568094953472″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64938561320919040″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64964128116191233″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/65002955681697792″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/65015803543695360″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/65085855315931136″]
