Twitter, Hurricane Irene, and Mayor Bloomberg

There's a fun article in today's NYT about @ElBloombito, the 25 year old native New Yorker, Rachel Figueroa-Levin, who passed time during the storm tweeting about Mayor Bloomberg's attempts at communicating in Spanish. As the article in the NYT notes:


"By Sunday morning, @ElBloombito had about 2,000 followers. By Tuesday afternoon, there were nearly 15,000, among them Mr. Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg)."


Rachel Figueroa-Levin, more commonly known as @Jewyorican on Twitter even exchanged some messages directly with Mayor Bloomberg's staff. 


The whole @ElBloombito story and the burst of attention Figueroa-Levin received is a great example of how Twitter and social media can change the communication landscape and bring 15 minutes of fame (or more) for the average American citizen. Seems Twitter has the potential to make newsmakers out of us all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jon Stewart Interview with Rolling Stone

Image
Jon Stewart's mug graces the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone.  Highlights from the interview with Stewart are available on the Rolling Stone web site along with a fun gallery of behind the scenes photos .  For those who need even more Stewart, check out this video segment with Rolling Stone Executive Editor Eric Bates: Some highlights from the Rolling Stone interview: Stewart says that the Daily Show has a lot in common with Fox News. "We are both reactions to the news and to government," he says. "We're both expressions of dissatisfaction. Obama has been a disappointment to Stewart. "He ran on this idea that the system and the methodology are corrupt," he says. "It felt like the country was upset enough that he had the momentum needed to re-evaluate how business is done. Instead, when he got elected, he acted as though the system is so entrenched that it has to be managed rather than – I don't want to say decim
Read more

The Daily Show, Republicans, and the War on Science

Aasif Mandvi, Daily Show correspondent offers a funny piece on the Republican war on science. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , Political Humor & Satire Blog , The Daily Show on Facebook The science fair kids in the video certainly seem a lot smarter than the GOP nominees featured in the beginning of the video or Noelle Nikpour, the Republican strategist. I'm putting my money on the kids and science.
Read more

Gay Canvassers Study May Rely on Bogus Data, but Social Contact Matters for Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Image
I'm sure that Michael LaCour hoped to make the front page of The New York Times many times over during his career as a Princeton political scientist -- preferably being featured in articles that talked about groundbreaking research (and real results), not his fabrication of a study with Columbia University political scientist Donald Green on the impact of political canvassing on public opinion toward same-sex marriage. The story of the "great gay marriage hoax" is a compelling one for academic researchers, policy activists, and the general public alike. The revelation by Green that the data may have been fabricated , has many reputable news organizations issuing retractions and apologies including Ira Glass over at This American Life . And plenty of academics were jamming up Retraction Watch, making it hard to access Ivan Oransky's breaking post as well as Brockman, Kalla, and Arronow's Irregularities in LaCour (2014) that noted the study's problemat
Read more