Media Helping Media

Twitter, the news wire for activists

Published on Monday, 19 October 2009

Written by David Brewer

  

The Azerbaijani bloggers, Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev have now spent more than 100 days in pre-trial detention.

They were arrested following a disturbance in a Baku restaurant in July.

As the two men wait for their next hearing, blogger continue to use Twitter and Facebook to feed a daily update on their situation.

In the past a story would only make it in print or on air if an editor decided it should run. Now, with free and readily-available tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the decision about whether or not a story should be told is in the hands of those who consume the news.

If you type “Adnan + Emin” into Google and search “news” you will find several updates from blogs such as Global Voices and a couple of regional websites; there isn’t much there from traditional mainstream media.

Of course, if the two are sentenced to seven years, as could happen, that will change. But for now, and with the story just ticking along (the next hearing is October 27), it is left to a handful of supporters and media freedom activists to provide the social network equivalent of a news wire.

And they are doing that with an amazing regularity.

If you follow the Twitter hashtag #EminAdnan you will notice a couple of bloggers providing at least two updates each day; updates that are cleverly tagged to achieve widespread exposure and which often contain links to blogs urging people to campaign on behalf of the two.

If you download and run a Twitter aggregation tool such as Tweet Deck and set up columns to search for the words [[Baku]] and [[Azerbaijan]] you will find even more references.

Those tweets are probably feeding a dozen well-written, respected, well-researched and authoritative blogs. Those blogs, once update from the tweets will, in turn, be tweeted.

Those following may retweet and their followers may do the same. This article will no doubt be retweeted a few times.

Others will find it another way and start a fresh tweet. Their followers will probably pick it up. The hashtags added to the first tweet of this article (below) may help.

Everyday the viral dissemination of the news continues.

It probably doesn’t make it any easier sitting in a Baku cell hoping for a fair trial and freedom, but Adnan Hajizade and Emin Abdullayev will know they have not been forgotten, that their supporters are still campaigning, and the story that possibly doesn't rate as news for mainstream media just now has guarenteed exposure by being delivered directly to an audience that has asked to be kept updated.

  

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