Twitter finds its voice, and roars!
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Twitter, Blog, Internet on
This week, the true power of Twitter was revealed and oh boy was it a sight to behold. Who said Twitter was just a bunch of willy waving celebs polishing egos and plugging books, followed by a bunch of sad geeks with nothing better to do?
First there was the not so small matter of Carter Ruck, Trafigura, Parliamentary proceedings and The Guardian. When The Guardian was prevented on reporting a question to be asked in Parliament by a so-called super-injunction taken out by solicitors Carter Ruck acting on behalf of oil trader Trafigura, Twitter went ballistic.
The super-injunction not only prevented The Guardian from reporting on the question about Trafigura being asked in Parliament, but also prevented them from reporting that the injunction had been taken out in the first place.
That didn’t prevent The Guardian from publishing that “the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck” or that published House of Commons order papers contained “a question to be answered by a minister later this week” which might somehow be involved. “The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found” it admitted.
But that was enough for quick witted Twitter users to join the dots and work out exactly what was going on. Within a few hours not only had the hashtag #trafigura topped the Twitter trending list, but by the next morning Trafigura, Carter-Ruck and CarterRuck occupied three out of the four top trending keywords on Twitter for good measure.
By the time that Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger had confirmed that he was due at the High Court in London to argue that the injunction be lifted, not least because it was a clear infraction of the 1688 Bill of Rights which protects Parliamentary privilege and the rights of the press to report upon Parliamentary proceedings, the damage had already been done. It came as no real surprise when Carter Ruck lifted the injunction against the newspaper with Twitter users absolutely playing a part in ensuring that happened.
And so it was revealed that the fuss was all about a question from Labour MP Paul Farrelly asking about the reporting of a toxic waste dumping incident in the Ivory Coast, and which wanted to know if ministers had taken any measures to protect whistle blowers and the press following the obtaining of an injunction against publication of a report which looked at the incident.
The Minton Report, which at the time remained subject of an injunction, has since also been released from that legal stranglehold and you can read what all the fuss was about here.
Then, later the same week, came the Daily Mail and a columnist called Jan Moir. Ordinarily, nobody really pays much attention to the Daily Mail publishing a homophobic rant, but this particular one came at exactly the wrong time. Not only was the UK genuinely grieving the loss of a popular boy band singer, Stephen Gately, but Twitter was still psyched by the success earlier in the week.
So when this particular columnist appeared to be insinuating that Stephen Gately had died because he was gay, even though the coroner reported that he died of natural causes, Twitter exploded once more. The column in question included such lines as “Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again” and went on to state that the death was not a natural one. Of course, a little research quickly reveals that healthy 30 year olds do die in their sleep with alarming regularity.
But it was the attempt to somehow connect the fact that Gately had been out clubbing with his partner, and that they had returned home with another man, to the death that just proved too much. It could not have been more offensive, nor more insensitive, had the newspaper used a headline of ‘Gayness kills popstar’ to be honest.
Knowing that Twitter users know had a sense of the power of the community, instead of just tweeting outrage at the comments, Twitter users started to encourage each other to petition the companies which advertised on the Daily Mail website instead. Although I am sure that Twitter will never get official recognition for the role that it played, surely it is too much of a coincidence that within just a matter of hours every single advert had vanished from the page carrying the column in question.
What’s more, the Press Complaints Commission received more than one thousand complaints about the column. Again, this was at least partly due to people on Twitter pointing others in the right direction. When the PCC website crumbled under the strain, it was Twitter telling folk where complaints could be emailed instead.
Until now, it had been pretty easy for people to dismiss Twitter as nothing more than a geek messageboard. As The Powers That Be in the US are discovering those days are over, Twitter has found its voice.
Rated: 80% (4 votes)
Loading ...Pingback by - October 18, 2009 on 7:19 pm
[…] IT PRO: Blogs: Davey Winder: Twitter finds its voice, and roars! www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/10/18/twitter-finds-its-voice-and-roars/ – view page – cached , This week, the true power of Twitter was revealed and oh boy was it a sight to behold. Who said Twitter was just a bunch of willy waving celebs polishing egos — From the page […]
Trackback by - October 18, 2009 on 7:24 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by happygeek: Just posted to IT Pro: Twitter finds its voice, and roars! - http://bit.ly/DqNN0 #janmoir #trafigura #twitter…
Pingback by - October 18, 2009 on 8:22 pm
[…] IT PRO: Blogs: Davey Winder: Twitter finds its voice, and roars! www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/10/18/twitter-finds-its-voice-and-roars – view page – cached , This week, the true power of Twitter was revealed and oh boy was it a sight to behold. Who said Twitter was just a bunch of willy waving celebs polishing egos — From the page […]
Pingback by - October 31, 2009 on 1:11 am
[…] Twitter finds its voice, and roars! Davey Winder - PeopleRank: 1 - October 18, 2009 …Paul Farrelly asking about the reporting of a toxic waste dumping incident in the Ivory Coast, and which wanted to know if ministers had taken any measures to protect whistle blowers and the press following the obtaining of an injunction against publication… Cited people : Stephen Gately Alan Rusbridger Carter Ruck Jan Moir + vote […]
Comment by - November 4, 2009 on 10:04 am
. I wonder that in certain cases clicking on phishing links can be good for security. Thanks for sharing .
Comment by MzzX19 - December 17, 2009 on 12:28 pm
Nice article! What is your email Davey? I would like to communicate more direct with you, you’re a smart cookie! I loved your info about MJ - and the Joshua reference. 
Hopefully the sun shines soon for the 2. Hopefully they walk to the light together, they seem right to do so.
Comment by MzzX19 - December 17, 2009 on 12:29 pm
good point with clicking on phishing… probably not the best idea eh?
Pingback by - December 20, 2009 on 11:12 pm
[…] there you have it, we saw it before when a Daily Mail columnist annoyed the Twitterati and we’ve seen it again with Facebook and Twitter users deciding to make a point. With an […]
Comment by - January 24, 2010 on 1:50 pm
MzzX19 - you can find more info and contact details for me at: http://www.happygeek.com
Make a comment
Tag cloud
Archives
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
Most commented posts
- Has Microsoft gone mental?
80 comments
- Cuil frozen out: market share drops to next to nothing
- Xbox 360 FAIL
- 80 percent of viruses love Windows 7
- The 24GB RAM Desktop is born
- Use old version of Windows instead of Linux, says teacher
- Microsoft reveals time-based licensing model
- Google to buy Twitter?
- Has the US Army declared war on Windows 7?
- Windows XP: the invincible OS
Highest Rated Blog Posts
- Why ecommerce fails (100%)
- Google Chrome stands alone at PWN2OWN (100%)
- Betting on Hubdub technology (100%)
- Has Google gone insane as GMail goes back to beta? (100%)
- Chinese whispers as government implicated in UK hack attacks (100%)
- Crimeware toolkit targets 10,000 trusted sites (100%)
- Black Hat risk to migrating VMs (100%)
- Tough on cyber crime, tough on the causes of cyber crime (100%)
- Firefox 3, Beta 4, Enhancements 900, Tested 5 (100%)
- Has the US Army declared war on Windows 7? (100%)