Question Time is Twitter Time

While no doubt BBC Question Time‘s traditional audience figures rocketed tonight as viewers tuned in to watch the spectacle of BNP leader Nick Griffen’s first and hopefully last appearance on the flagship current affairs programme,  the media’s new kid on the block proved itself to be a real voice for democracy.

Just as the Twitter community turned on the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir following her insensitive and ignorant rant about Stephen Gately’s death, they unleashed their full force against Griffen and his sorry band of followers.

While the panelists and studio audience took every opportunity to expose Griffen and his sick policies as he tried to hide behind a veneer of respectability (hear, hear to the woman who likened him to a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”), the public turned to the social media tool to join in at the rate of a thousand Tweets a minute (on the bbcqt hashtag alone) – 54,000 Tweets by the close of the programme.   (Source: tweetminster)

While Question Time has been encouraging tweets for some time now, the controversial nature of this particular programme highlighted the growth of the active media audience and the rise of many to many broadcasting in tandem with the traditional one to many broadcasting we’ve been used to.  Twitter, it seems, has now come of age.

Still not convinced about Twitter?

I know.  I admit to remaining somewhat sceptical about Twitter myself.  But it is rather infectious and when you look at the handy list of tweeting journalists in the UK compiled by PRblogger.com, can you really afford to be left behind?

Exactly how journalists are using Twitter may vary widely, but at the end of the day it’s all about networking and sharing information – the basic building blocks of good journalism.  The technology and its use will continue to evolve, but telling a good story will always draw a crowd, or should that be flock?