What the Japan Earthquake and Michael Jackson Have In Common: Twitter and the New Flow of Information

I started writing a blog post yesterday about hackers, but then I woke up this morning to the news about the earthquake in Japan and subsequent effects to Hawaii and possibly the West Coast. I learned of this through a channel I never would have imagined a few years ago: Twitter. Thinking back, I also first found out about the Iran elections, Michael Jackson’s death, the trapped Chilean miners, the hostage situation at the Discovery building in Maryland, and the chemical laced packages around the corner at the MDOT and Annapolis in January - all through Twitter. And I know I’m probably forgetting a few other major news events in that list.

I’m still amazed by how the flow of information has changed so drastically in such a short time. Curious to find out how many people are now getting their news and information from Twitter versus television coverage, phone calls, email or other online news sources, I have started doing a little research. Although I haven’t yet found hard statistics about how sources of information have changed over the years, I did find a study about Internet usage put out last year by the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School. According to the highlights of the report, about half of those who go online are using micro-blogs like Twitter and Facebook, so it’s a good bet that those users are also getting a percentage of their news and information through these sites as well. The study also reveals that nobody is willing to pay for social networking services that are already free but 18 percent of Internet users report that they have canceled a printed newspaper subscription because they can get the same information online. Oddly, this percentage has actually decreased from 22 percent in 2008. Another surprising decrease is the amount of trust Internet users have for information available online. Although the percentages vary among sources (search engines, online news sites, and social media sites) trust in accuracy is decreasing for all of them. A blog post put out by Social Citizens digs into the issue of trusting Twitter as an information source. However, according to the statistics, just because people are seeing it there first doesn’t necessarily mean they trust it first.

The highlights of the USC study are available in a PDF document that is definitely worth the read or skim. The report offers quick reading statistics broken down by topic. You can get it by clicking the highlights link at the bottom of this page:  http://www.digitalcenter.org/pages/current_report.asp?intGlobalId=19

Are any of you getting your information first through Twitter? If not, how are you hearing about breaking news?

Let us know your thoughts and come connect to us on Twitter and Facebook.

About the Author: Jandee Ferland is the Social Network Engineer at IC. She is an avid fan of any technology that makes life a little easier and can often be found checking out new apps, posting on Twitter (@ICtweet), or learning how to podcast.