News at Eleven: Twitter tops in India

newsguy 1 720 Views

What do you use Twitter for? Telling your circle of online friends what you are up to? As an alternative to email? Maybe a little bit of legal celebrity stalking? Perhaps, but if you are an Indian Twitter user the chances are you are treating it primarily as an online news source.

That is the surprising conclusion of a new survey which reveals that the majority of those asked (16%) regularly turn to tweets for their news updates. A trend which really started during the 26/11 attacks when there were nearly 1000 Tweets a minute being posted by eyewitnesses to the horrific events as they unfolded. This helped propel Twitter into the big time in India, which now has the largest number of Twitter users of any country other than US and Germany according to .

Of course, Twitter is used to making the news as well as distributing it. With more than 5 billion Tweets already, it is hardly surprising that Twitter is becoming a news medium in its own right.

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As pointed out, many people treat Twitter as a realtime news feed. That community reporting is powerful — and, as noted, it can act like thousands of fast messengers — but it also raises verification and amplification risks. The practical value of this thread is knowing how to use Twitter signals without amplifying mistakes.

Quick verification checklist you can apply immediately:

  • Find the origin: locate the earliest tweet in a thread and check the account history for consistent posts.
  • Account signals: look for account age, bio details, follower patterns and a verified badge; sudden follower spikes are a red flag.
  • Cross-confirmation: require at least one independent eyewitness or a reputable outlet before treating something as confirmed.
  • Visual checks: run reverse image searches on photos/videos and compare landmarks, signage and timestamps.
  • Preserve provenance: save the tweet URL, take screenshots and archive pages when content may be removed.

A simple monitoring workflow for marketers and journalists:

  • Curate Twitter Lists of trusted reporters, bureaus and official agencies.
  • Use a column-based tool (TweetDeck or similar) with columns for Lists, saved searches and a specific hashtag or keyword stream.
  • Create targeted searches using operators like from:, since:, min_retweets:, filter:links. Example:
    from:TrustedReporter since:2020-01-01 min_retweets:50 filter:links

    (Replace placeholders with real accounts/dates.)

Cautions: avoid retweeting raw eyewitness claims as fact, label unverified material clearly, and respect privacy when sharing user-generated content. Past posts in this thread show why Twitter matters for news; these steps help you use it responsibly and effectively without repeating earlier errors.

Member Avatar for MktgRob
MktgRob 7 Nearly a Posting Virtuoso

Twitters use during the attacks in India and the vote suppression in Iraq was essentially the creation of thousands of Paul Revere's. Personally, I think that is a great counter-balance to the use of twitter by people like Diddy and Ashton Kutcher!

Member Avatar for falotfalon
falotfalon 0 Newbie Poster

Nice

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