The use of Twitter by people around the world to express shock, disappointment, frustration and anger at News International, News Corp. and the Murdochs over the phone hacking scandal and subsequent cover up will be referred to in the future as another moment when the extraordinary power of Twitter was on full display.
The protests made through tweets are having an impact in News revenue and its share price.
Whereas in the past it was the fourth estate on which we the people relied to put issues under the spotlight and through which campaigns of justice are run. Twitter has given anyone with a mobile device or a computer a worldwide podium from which to speak. And speak they are. Hashtags enable people who have never met to unite around a cause. We can see that there have been close to 40,000 tweets in the last 24 hours and 3,900 in the last hour.
The extraordinary tweet traffic using the #NotW hashtag over the last couple of days is evidence of people power in action. It appears that rolling tsunamis of tweets calling for advertisers to pull advertising from News of the World and other News International titles is a key reason advertisers have been doing just that and a key reason that News International has decided to shut the newspaper down after this weekend’s edition.
The decision to shut the newspaper is like the action of a surgeon removing a cancerous growth from a human body. Time will tell is this surgery by News removes all the cancer.
But back to the point of this post. Given the dominance of print media outlets here in Australia by News and the lack of in-depth coverage by News outlets of the phone hacking scandal and subsequent cover-up, Twitter is proving to be an excellent source for up to the minute news.
Twitter has no borders and no editors. It has been wonderful to see people across the globe come together on this issue, ahead of the politicians, unified by hashtags.
Based on the extraordinary traffic of Tweets which is not showing any sign of slowing, News is going to need to improve its efforts at damage control if it is to mitigate the situation – including News here in Australia.
From a newsagent perspective, what we are seeing is a platform which disrupts print in action. This story and how people are interacting with it is a story about print. It demonstrates how the story is the thing as opposed to the feel of the paper and the smell of the ink to which which many newspaper lovers often refer when saying the medium will go on for decades.
Update and Footnote: with speculation mounting that News International will extend The Sun to a Sunday edition, the closure of the News of the World could be seen as cynical and not actually reasonably addressing the problem.
Shutting NotW Murdoch is just trying to save his and top cronies asses. Reminds me a bit of the Melbourne Storm, a News Ltd business. The execs there also totally dismissed the idea they should be responsible for a business they owned.
When I saw how twitter brought down the govt in Tunisia I got a newfound respect for it. Until then I considered it to be a “timewaster” for which I had no time.
Now I am a follower (but still not a “tweeter”.
The power is quite
awesome as NOTW must now know. Rupert may live to rue the day.
Rob,
If one of your employees commits a criminal offence in the course of doing their job, and they were not instructed to do so by you, should you as an owner be responsible for their actions?
Jarryd, if one of your employees bought a few boxes of stationary (or more) into the store which ‘fell of the back of a truck’, and you then sold them, I am pretty sure the police would be wanting to talk to you. The News Ltd people weren’t stealing from News, they were stealing for News.
The questions being asked relate to the culture of News and whether it is this which enabled or even facilitated some in the company to behave as they did.
Certainly, the subsequent cover-up indicates a flawed moral compass.