anders deutsch

Almost all of the participants have twitter accounts. And many of them twitter during the whole day. I have to admit twitter for me is still a new technology, I neither write nor read. And I can think of scenarios were synchronous twittering is important. So, for example, there will be protests on the Tahrir Place on Friday. I understand that twittering is a good way of mobilising and spreading news during the protests. But why is anybody interested in live comments from our summit? Nobody can join, the information could also be spread later. Why twittering from the conference? I have read some of the tweets during the sessions and did not find an answer to my questions. I also do not get the point of just quoting one phrase from a talk. In this form decontextualised they do not make much sense for me. Writing and reading the tweets would take my concentration away from what is being said. And I also have the feeling that information can be spread too quickly with the web community, before one is really thinking about whether this is secure for all those involved.

I know that this post can be read as a conservative rejection of a new technology. And there might be some truth in this, because it is a technology I do not use. But at the same time I claim that we have to think about when synchronity of reporting makes sense and when maybe it is not so important or even a bad idea. Only because we have a technology we do not have to use it for all purposes and all the time.

And I am still wondering what the tweet of one of the participants that she is hiding her anti-feminism as so many participants are talking about feminism is meant to do. Is it making a statement against feminism for the other participants, who can follow the tweets, and is thus the opposite of hiding? If so, why is there the claim of hiding? I obviously do not get it.

PS 29.11.11: Currently the next Young Media Summit is staged in Tunis. Since I was a participant at the last one and I know some of the participants of the current one, I am interested in what is happening there. Thus I once in a while check their tweets and the Facebook site. Unfortunately, my impression from above, however, gets confirmed. The tweets provide me with totally unsatisfying information. Lots of it is totally uninteresting to me (in particular the advertisment posts in between for yms) and what is interesting is far too brief to get an impression of what is happening. Thus I have still not progressed in understanding why one should tweet from such a conference and why one should read the tweets.

by twittering her supposedly hidden anti-feminism she's adressing two audiences. she's "coming out" as an anti-feminist to the participants of the summit and adressing other anti-feminist friends who follow her twitter stream. she also indicates that twitter is the "place" where her perspective may be discussed - a place where not everyone is feminist but others share her view... ? /analysis