Last Thursday, I sat alone at home watching the Oregon-Cal football game (I’m super popular and have tons of friends), when LaMichael James had that disgusting elbow dislocation. Not having anyone nearby to talk to, I turned to my dear friend Twitter to see what people were saying about LaMike’s injury.
First, I tried my phone. Not loading. Crap.
Then I got on my laptop and refreshed Twitter. And refreshed. And refreshed. And refreshed. Nothing.
Oh no. Twitter was experiencing one of its dreaded meltdowns.
No lie, I panicked a little. LaMichael James, our Heisman hopeful and all-around badass, was carted off the field with a potentially broken arm, and ESPN had no information for me. Nada. On Twitter, there could have at least been speculation about what kind of injury it was, whether he would play next week or whether he was done forever. Through some sort of Twitter voodoo, I may have learned some precious nugget of information that would have calmed my heart rate a little bit, but nothing. My lifeline to knowledge had been severed, and I felt totally lost.
It wasn’t always like this. A year ago, a Twitter freak-out wouldn’t have affected me in the least. I was blissfully unaware of the frustrations one can endure when you are the last to hear about a major news event. A year ago, a hashtag was just a pound sign. A year ago, “following” someone just sounded creepy. But once I declared as a journalism major, it seemed like I was a complete nonentity until I had a Twitter account.
Twitter has changed the way people consume news, and boy, did I end up falling in love. It has become my first — and sometimes only — source of news on such diverse topics as sports, politics and entertainment.
Kelli Matthews@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=staff&d=person&b=name&s=Kelli+Matthews@@, a public relations instructor at the University, agrees.
“The popularity of Twitter as a tool reflects our expectation that we can get immediate, on-demand information,” Matthews says. “Twitter is certainly my favorite example of how that works and how it’s changed the way we communicate. Lots of people use Twitter as a news feed to learn about breaking news — both in the traditional sense (world events, for example) or in the narrower sense of news of our friends, family or community.”
For our generation, which has grown up with Facebook and constant updates on what people are doing, thinking, eating and watching, it only makes sense that we would expect our news to be as up-to-the-minute as our social lives. It’s no longer acceptable to hear about an event the next day; hell, I would feel out of the loop if I learned about a news story just a few hours after it occurred.
Because of Twitter, I learned of the death of Osama bin Laden@@http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden@@ a full 20 minutes before any of the news networks even hinted at it. I followed the Boston Police Department’s raid on the Occupy Boston protesters Monday night in real-time on Twitter — even watching a live-stream of this I heard about through one of the accounts I follow. I read about Steve Jobs’ death via the site as well and have followed dozens of comedians I never would have found out about without it.
There are, of course, certain flaws to the site.
“The danger, of course, is the temptation to share news before it’s been fully vetted and verified,” Matthews says. “Major news organizations still have the responsibility to be accurate. Real-time information makes it even more important to have systems in place that allow that to occur while still being accurate, ethical and credible.”
Yes, Twitter has a bit of a reputation for spreading celebrity death rumors and false information, but it’s also an incredible resource where people can be exposed to stories, people and cultures of which they otherwise would be ignorant. Its ability to disseminate information at a lightning-fast pace is nothing short of revolutionary.
When Twitter came back last Thursday, it was with good news: LaMichael had taken the podium at the postgame media session and was assuring reporters that his elbow would be fine and he would be back soon. I breathed a sigh of relief. LaMike was all right but — more importantly — I was back in the loop.