For example, when Hurricane Sandy hit, if you followed the tweets containing the hashtag #hurricanesandy, you'd get to see all of these photos and tweets from New Yorkers who were actually there. They posted pictures of cars overturned in the water, the skyline when a majority of the cities power went out, and some that were endangered even tweeted for help and assistance. I was reading tweets about events that many news stations had yet to pick up on. I even remember seeing a tweet from a reputable journalist account that contained a picture of a mainstream news anchors on their smartphones checking twitter.
I think it's safe to say that Twitter has definitely become the fastest news source to date. Although, some of the information posted may be invalid or false news, information is posted so rapidly that if illegitimate data is posted it is quickly analyzed and debunked in a matter of minutes.
Twitter can also be a starting ground for discovering other news articles, if you follow the right accounts. All mainstream news companies have Twitter accounts, as well as the journalists that work for them.
During the election, all I had to do was keep refreshing my timeline to see who was in the lead, and I even found out that Obama was re-elected before viewing CNN's online election race or watching the TV updates.
The thing about Twitter is is that it's easily accessible on smartphones that it's also impossible to keep up with. Everyone has a smartphone nowadays and almost everyone has a Twitter account so whenever you refresh your timeline you learn about events you're unfamiliar with and then have the option of digging further and finding more information on the topic.
Twitter has definitely become the ultimate news platform of our societies generation
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