Misconceptions about the role of new media in protests in Middle East

Posted by Larry Kilman on February 8, 2011 at 6:21 PM

At WAN-IFRA's Middle East Publishing Conference underway in Dubai, one of the speakers pointed out how the ongoing demonstrations in the Middle East illustrate misconceptions about digital media.

Eamonn Byrne of the Byrne Partnership in the UK said there are only 14,000 registered Twitter users in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen combined, compared with a population of 82 million in Egypt alone. "And yet, if you look at the BBC, or Al Jazeera, you could be forgiven for thinking Twitter or Facebook are entirely responsible for the events of the last weeks."

He says that journalistic reliance on new media for reporting can skew the true picture regarding the population at large.

"For the community of journalists, Facebook and Twitter are important, and they communicate this importance to their publishers. But the message gets communicated as, 'it's the only thing that is important.' Those who focus their business plans on this exclusively are foolish."

More on Byrne's provocative presentation can be found here.

Summaries of all conference presentations can be found here.

Posted in : Newsrooms and Journalism

Tags :

 Facebook, Middle East, social media, social network, Twitter

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