The Independent Uncensored News Views And Analysis

Last week's riots led to something of a phenomenon in Uganda. In a country that has only recently gotten access to a fibre-optic cable and where a tiny fraction of the population are online, the Internet, for the first time, played a central role in disseminating information.  

A number of bloggers have already described what took place and added their own valuable commentary on the subject. Each is worth reading in full.

Solomon King starts it off: “During the worst parts of the riots, there was a massive media blackout, and TV and radio stations were courting irrelevance. I could not believe that at a time when a country was burning itself to the ground, most TV stations were showing music videos, foreign news and Spanish soaps.”

Rebekah Heacock continues by describing the necessity for real-time information: “Though newspapers were allowed to continue reporting, their news was often delayed by hours, if not an entire day. The absence of real-time coverage led many Kampalans to seek out alternative sources of information.”

So, (naturally?), Ugandans turned to the Internet—namely Twitter.

Solomon King: “It was in essence, a coming of age. We were seeing technology in Uganda rise up to fill a gaping void and empower social change. It was the start of something wonderful, amazing, and big.”

In places like Iran, (which had it’s own much-publicised Twitter revolution), citizen reporting is not as surprising—there are large, already-developed social networks and blogging is a common practice. Uganda's Internet culture, however, is in an embryonic stage. The speed with which Ugandans turned to Twitter for information, shows how powerful virtual social networks really are. In essence, just a handful of citizen reporters were able to report the news more efficiently than all the country’s media outlets—radio stations, television broadcasts and newspaper—combined.

The way in which Twitter was used last week in Uganda highlights three advantages of social networks in crisis reporting:

1. The news becomes far more agile and dynamic. News is spread faster and from more points of view. Important tidbits of information that might otherwise be lost in the whirlwind of information, are picked up.

2. News intermediaries are put aside. Individuals can explore the news on their own: reliability relies on reputation and corroborating evidence. One has to actively parse and integrate information. People are no longer spoon-fed pre-processed news.

3. Networks create a word-of-mouth amplifier effect. Although there may only be a handful of local people reporting on the ground, there is a global audience that feeds demand and encourages the process.

Jon Gosier, has put much more thought into his must-read post on the subject: Asynchronous Info, Disjointed Data and Crisis Reporting.

And Siena Anstis insightfully adds that the implications go far beyond crisis reporting:

“A key point in the development of social media tools like Twitter is that they are being used to circumvent all types of “traditional” structures that are rigid in control and content. Twitter enables news to circumvent the tightly controlled radio stations and newspapers in Uganda and ensures that citizens are given an idea of how their friends and families are doing; social media in general is circumventing time worn international aid structures that have consistently hampered the development of home-grown ideas and projects through foreign-controlled and imposed development ideas and ideals.”

One can’t help think that this is only the start of something bigger. Are we seeing a Media Reformation?