

Twits on Twitter are no help in a crisis... - michaelpinto
http://www.nationaltimes.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/twits-on-twitter-are-no-help-in-a-crisis-20110315-1bvgb.html

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noibl
How not to change mass behaviour: insult your audience in the headline, try to
influence the lowest common denominator and ignore trend-setters, tell people
to stop doing something they want to do without providing an alternative.

People who want to talk vacantly about an unfolding event will do so, and will
not read articles like this. If social media adepts see a signal:noise
problem, they know how to create new channels. That's the whole point of the
internet.

~~~
michaelpinto
The article did give some very clear suggestions: \- Give directly to the Red
Cross instead of lady gaga \- Don't abuse hashtags in an emergency

Even back in the days of the CB Radio craze there were very specific rules for
emergencies — if Twitter is going to evolve into something like that it will
need a similar set of rules

~~~
noibl
Donations are not an alternative to chatter though and charity hijacking is
nothing new. 'Don't' is not an alternative to anything and 'abuse' is
subjective, as is 'emergency' incidentally. #jan25 was many things to many
people.

CB is bandwidth-limited and provides few options for resource discovery in
comparison to the internet.

In case it's not clear, what I'm saying is that it's the responsibility of
broadcasters, guerrilla or otherwise, to find effective uses for the
communication tools at hand.

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johnyqi
People use twitter (and other SM sites) mostly as emotional toilets, throwing
out there whatever gets to their mind. This wil not change likely, it's
sickness of the masses who are mostly not taking things responsible, some do
but they get buried by this random nonsense.

Thats why I follow on Twitter maximum 50 people and only those who are focused
on providing useful information and not whether they got drunk yesterday and
today they woke up with huge headache.

Saying that you are sending prayers and light on twitter to people in need is
just one big excuse for doing nothing and continuing with your breakfast while
you feel good about yourself.

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fleitz
Thats like saying going to church is no help in a crisis. It helps people deal
with the emotional toll of loss and a removal of a large part of meaning in
their life. The exchange of thoughts and hopes for another are one of the most
powerful ties that bind humanity.

Wouldn't the japanese largely be using kanji hashtags? This seems like faux
outrage. I have a feeling given the vapidity of Lady Gaga's fan base that it
would lead to more money going to the charity to sell bracelets than would be
donated.

I see a lot of ads on that page isn't the author using a crisis to sell ads on
his paper?

~~~
biot
My read from the article is that it's more akin to calling 911 during an
emergency to tell the operators what a great job they're doing and that your
thoughts are with them. Obviously a tweet has a much smaller impact, but
multiply that behavior by tens of thousands of people it's not hard to imagine
legitimate crisis messages scrolling out of view when someone finally gets
signal and catches up on the last four hours of tweets.

