Mainstream Media, Politicos and the absurd lionisation of Twitter

Oh dear - it seems but a few short weeks ago that the media could not pour enough scorn on Twitter, and as for government, well it had a few fans.... but all has changed this week, and the Twitter Bandwagon has a horde of new joiners.

Firstly, the mainstream media has gone totally overboard about Twitter's role in the Iran election (the US Government even asked them to delay system downtime), but as Ethan Zuckerman and others remind us:

Social media is probably more important as a tool to share the protests with the rest of the world than it is as an organizing tool on the ground....

....One of the reasons MSM outlets are so focused on social media is that they’re not able to deploy reporters to cover these protests. In some cases, the majority of reporting from the ground is coming from social media. It’s worth asking what the biases might be in amplifying those social media reports.

But this is mild compared to our Politicos - today, our Prime Minister has over-reacted in the most astonishing fashion:

"You cannot have Rwanda again," he said. "This week's events in Iran are a reminder of the way that people are using new technology to come together in new ways to make their views known."

"You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken."

Well no, because Social Media needs Social Networks - ie it still needs the underlying networks and computers, which Africa has far less of than Iran - hence Zimbabwe, Somalia, Congo etc.