Twitter Revolutions and other nonsense

Stories like this (Activist Charged for Inciting ‘Twitter Revolution’) and this (Inside Moldova’s Twitter Revolution) from Wired are always hard to gauge. Are they deliberately trying to be silly, or are they just reporting the silliness of the world? In this case it is hopefully the latter. Here’s the grab from Wired:

A Moldovan activist faces criminal charges for organizing demonstrations that were enabled by social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, the Russian press reports.

The story revolves around the recent anti-communist demonstrations/protests that turned a little ugly and ended with riots and a bonfire in Chisinau, Moldova. Not pretty by any means, and not what I’m interested in commenting on. My interest is in how social networking tools (Twitter, Facebook and others) are the only thing that makes this a news story. Consider whether you’d be reading about any of this if it were ‘just another protest’ going on. Unlikely.

The difference of course is that communication methods are changing, and they’re getting harder to block no matter what Government censorship might be put in its way. Twitter is just another mechanism, similar to the mobile phone in years gone by. The ability to follow as an audience member is of course a fundamental difference, but it certainly isn’t the cause. Although it may account for some of the spectators who turned up (video was on the Wired post). It’s a little silly really.

This is no Twitter Revolution. At the end of the day if a person or group damages property, or breaks the law, then they will likely be prosecuted. The fact that they’ve used a certain communication mechanism to organise their activities is irrelevant. Although in this case it is probably fundamental to them being caught so easily.

So, really this just comes down to a slow news day. What next? Twitter causing relationship breakups or being used to replace the police.