G20 London Protests a Watershed For Twitter

Yesterday was the first day of the G2 summit meeting in London, a major event for the world economy. It was also a major event in the history of Twitter.

World attention was divided equally between the discussions and pronouncements of summit attendees and the protests of the numerous groups wanting a change in global direction. For the former we had to rely on “old media”. For the latter, Twitter was the place to be.

The day was accompanied by a torrent of tweets from those on the scene including protesters, bystanders and professional journalists. Those of us not in London could follow the action on our favourite Twitter client or by visiting the Twitter search page.

The use of Twitter by professional journos was probably the most significant breakthrough for the future of Twitter. Just about every major news organisation was complementing their old-media coverage with a tweet stream. At one point I even saw a reporter’s twitter ID flashed up on a TV news broadcast.

We’re used to stories in traditional media expressing somewhat petulant surprise that Twitter got the news out before they did. It seems that they’ve decided “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.

From a social perspective the more interesting aspect was the huge amount of information being sent out by those on the streets. It’s simply not possible for camera crews and reporters to be everywhere at once – through Twitter we were able to get a much more complete picture of events. It was particularly interesting that whereas the TV cameras naturally concentrated on the flashpoints, the Twitter coverage made it clear that many other groups of protesters were entirely peaceful.

It all added up to a fascinating 360° view of the protests. I hope that someone has saved all the tweets for future social historians to study.

Of course there were downsides to this mass citizen journalism. It was sometimes difficult to tell fact from rumour from downright lies. The wisdom of the crowd is great but once an untrue belief gets established it can spread quickly.

From the police viewpoint a big downside was clearly the ability of the protesters to communicate quickly and easily. Expect that element to be stressed by those in authority who fear the way the internet enables openness and freedom of speech.