Citizen Journalists

01/07/2009

With the Iranian government preventing journalists from reporting on the demonstrations, young Iranians have been using Twitter and YouTube to tell the world what is happening. The BBC reported that at one point it was receiving over five videos a minute with hundreds more appearing across the net via Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites. On Twitter the stream of updates from protestors vastly increased the audience for the videos, which countered much of the information being released by the government. Experts are now discussing how social media may have an effect on the way news is released. In a separate poll by Zogby, it was suggested that 56% of US adults now consider the Internet as their favourite and most reliable source of news, with Newspapers and Television down to 10%.