With the launch of Twitter book club 1book140, Dan Misener explains the appealof a shared collective experience despite the increasingly on-demand media options available. This month’s book is Margaret Atwood‘s The Blind Assassin.- In his lifetime, Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) wrote about the transition from a written culture to an oral culture using television as a prime example of a technology that stresses the oral aspect of communication. More recently, Atlantic contributor Zeynep Tufekci and the New York Times‘ Bill Keller have rekindled this debate about the direction of communication, and the impact of social media (Twitter mostly) on the reemergence of oral culture to the public sphere, and the dearth of literate thinking, which makes it possible to debate ideas at length and produce analytic thought.
- WNYC On the Media producer and former Twitter skeptic Sarah Abdurrahman said last week that social media’s role in the Arab Awakening has awakened many journalists to the changing face of journalism. While stopping short at saying that social media can cause a revolution, Abdurrahman and other media professionals have noted that services like Twitter can help give voice to the people journalists are writing about, and correct misinformation such as a media report that incorrectly reported 12 people had died in a particular incident, when the figure was closer to 1,200.
Atlantic launches Twitter book club; debate rages over the oral impact of social media; and journalists say technology has changed how they report news
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