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Twitter's impact on the news and media cycle

Ross Dawson, August 14, 2009 8:01 PM US PT

While online technologies have transformed the media along many dimensions, one of the most important ways of understanding this is in how the news cycle has changed.

In the old days news was broken on real-time channels such as radio and TV, reinforced and pushed out to a broader audience through newspapers, discussed again in chat shows, and sometimes had life added to the news with updates or responses.

Today, while elements of that cycle remain, much of it has changed. Twitter has had one of biggest impacts on the news cycle, firstly by often being the first media to break news, in offering a discussion forum around mainstream media coverage, and amplifying stories that have appeared in traditional formats.

I stumbled across a couple of interesting graphics and analysis by Samuel Degremont at Burson-Marsteller Paris who shows some of these changes visually.

Click on the images to see them in full size and read Samuel's detailed discussion (in French).[UPDATE:] Here is the blog post translated into English.

The PR industry has been the greatest student and practitioner of the media cycle. Now the industry is reinventing itself to deal with a dramatically different cycle for how news disseminates. It is a fascinating process to watch.

For the most current insights and trends in the living networks, follow @rossdawson on Twitter!

3 Comments

David Tensen said:

Some great stats and comments Ross. I'm with you on wondering how long it'll take. Like you, I know quite a few people in PR and "Mainstream" media who thought twitter was just amongst the many other online trends that would just fade away soon. But it's not the case, it's only gained momentum and in the hands of user has turned into reporting tool for the masses - regardless of how public or private their announcement is.

I'm interested in what is taught to journalism students at our Universities etc. Is twitter hashtag searching and filtering a technique they are taught? Should it be?

August 17, 2009 6:27 AM

zorro1x said:

Actually, very little has changed.
The dynamic of spreading news, amplifying stories and creating a discussion forum to breaking news has always been around. It's called word-of-mouth. The only difference is we now have a way of "seeing" it in action through Twitter and, in a way, Twitter facilitates the process.
News still happens the way it always has and it spread the way it has always been spread in the past.
Let's not make too much of Twitter.

September 4, 2009 8:41 AM

mutuelle said:

twitter cant stay like that ,
i hope what the marketing twitter get oout

September 5, 2009 11:33 AM

Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of four companies: professional services and venture firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy consulting group Future Exploration Network, leading events firm The Insight Exchange, and influence ratings start-up Repyoot.

Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.