Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Who Was Behind @Irene? An Agency, Of Course.

http://adage.com/article/digital/irene-agency/229516/

This article, which acts as an example of the many ways in which Twitter is utilized today in social media, was written by a woman whose Twitter account was used as an interesting project in the development of Hurricane Irene. Irene (@Irene), a young woman who seems to one of a fair few with a Twitter name composed of simply her first name, began to receive many tweets regarding the hurricane itself. Her sarcastic tweet "Btw, tweeting messages to @irene doesn't deliver any messages to the hurricane. Sorry," quickly gained her new followers and attracted the attention of a couple of her co-workers. These co-workers then proceeded to borrow her Twitter account in order to demonstrate its use as a central base for information about Hurricane Irene, as well as to provide the public with general entertainment while many awaited Irene's arrival. 

I found this piece to be particularly interesting for a couple of reasons: firstly, the first place that I found this article was on Free Press which is a non-profit organization whose primary goal is to "Save the News," which in my eyes proves that this piece is a prime example of the ways in which news is changing and the many new ways in which we may be able to encounter various stories; secondly, it also acts as a great example in the different ways that Twitter is being used. Businesses promote their services and images through the use of Twitter, students may use it as a means of creating a cyber-persona, and others may misuse the use of hashtags or tweets at individuals, which can (as we have seen in this article) cause a great deal of confusion or even indirectly create a new trend. Lastly, the article itself proved to be interesting in its writing style as Irene writes this article from the perspective of herself and her co-workers, drawing conclusions as to the ways in which this project was indeed successful.

1 comment:

  1. What a great piece, and a wonderful commentary, Sasha. It seems like you hear about this stuff every so often--especially when folks have the same name as a famous person (or, in this case, famous hurricane!). I've known people who get barraged with FB friend requests simply because they have a name similar to someone famous.

    You're right, though, that social media is changing the way we gather and disseminate news, and also changing the tone of that news.

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