'Frontline' tweet 'earth-shattering'

'Frontline' tweet 'earth-shattering'

This article from the Irish Times newspaper looks at a number of issues arising from the chairperson of the final Irish Presidential debate before the election asking a question prompted by a tweet.

Indeed in the creation of liveness, spontaneity and engagement many current affairs programs use twitter and SMS as ways of allowing their audiences to engage with material under discussion. The difference here it seems, is that the production team took a tweet as being from a particular source, but that tweet was not from where it appeared to be from. It was not checked - no one looked at the other tweets from the source, or checked to look at the tweets from the political party it claimed to represent - and the result (we voters in Ireland know) was 'earth shattering'. New media and old media are not the same - the new mimics the old, but is utterly different in many respects. Authenticity is at the heart of this - anonymity and the filters that old media must uphold...