Abstract
In a recent issue of this journal, Rebillard and Toubol (2010) concluded that the egalitarian promises of Web 2.0 for citizen journalists have not panned out. Rather, professiona news media websites are built around content from professional journalistic sources and most ‘citizen journalism’ online relies on and links back to professional news media websites. This commentary explores whether Twitter, the popular social media website in which individuals are asked to respond to the question ‘What are you doing?’ (and now ‘What’s happening?’) in 140 characters, has changed this relationship. As even the most basic mobile phone can be used with Twitter, the technology is potentially acces sible even in impoverished countries. But, despite its base of over 75 million users (Gaudin, 2010) and its coverage in the news, most Americans and Europeans are no versed in the medium. This was exemplified when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted she could not tell ‘a Twitter from a tweeter, but apparently, it’s very important.This article examines citizen journalism and Twitter. The site’s role in being the first to report on the Mumbai bomb blasts in 2008 and the downed US Airways flight in 2009 are used as case studies. This article also explores the question of whether Twitter has transformed ordinary individuals into citizen journalists whom the newsreading public follows or whether their voices are merely subsumed by traditional media. In other words, has Twitter really produced a new space in which ordinary people meaningfully interact with ordinary people around the world who have rich insider accounts pertaining to diverse forms of socioeconomic life? An argument is made that ordinary people on Twitter are producing news and consuming news (especially ‘breaking news’) produced by other ordinary people. However, counter-arguments are presented which make the case that perhaps the individual tweets and Twitter users breaking news stories experi-ence a short-lived fame as the public follows stories of interest through professional news media outlets.