Here is the podcast –

– and here is the full text of the story –

The Twitter Wire Service
December 05, 2008
The Western media had few reporters on the ground in Mumbai during the three-day siege so many turned to services like Twitter to make sense of what was happening. Gaurav Mishra, an expert in social media, says a new ecosystem for crisis reporting emerged when western journalists mined twitter posts for details and twitter posters in turn linked to the best reports from the newspapers and TV networks.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Most of the western media relied on the Indian news channels, of which there are dozens, for footage as the attacks unfolded.

To Gaurav Mishra, an expert in social media, when the shooting started, outsiders were forced to rely on Twitter feeds, brief dispatches sent by text message to countless computers and cell phones. Mishra says the global power of Twitter was really put to the test in Mumbai.

GAURAV MISHRA: For most Western audiences, the only real source of news for the first six hours or so was the Twitter feed from people in Mumbai staying close to the scene of the event or people who had friends close to the scene of the events.

Many people outside Bombay, and especially outside India, were trying to use Twitter to make sense of what was happening in Bombay, and Twitter users in Bombay were trying to help out these people by sharing help line numbers, also by offering to convey some information themselves.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So were these citizen journalists or were they really just disseminators of mainstream news information?

GAURAV MISHRA: There were some who did journalism in the traditional sense. One person called Vinukumar Ranganathan went out very early in the crisis and took hundred-odd pictures on the crisis scene, uploaded them to Flickr, then Tweeted about it. Some of us started posting links to his Flickr photo pool and suddenly everybody was using those photos in their coverage. That was clearly citizen journalism, in its best sense.

What was happening on Twitter was not analysis but, yes, there were elements of breaking news on Twitter.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But there was a lot of confusion about the basic facts on television. Do you think that their reliance on some social sites, like Twitter, actually caused unsubstantiated rumors to get broadcast?

GAURAV MISHRA: Yes, some of that happened, but even though thousands of people in India, or at least close to a thousand there were Twittering about the events, it very quickly became obvious who were the people who were doing it responsibly. And very quickly people started sharing lists of Twitter users in India to follow, and they became the conduits through which information was flowing.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You’ve suggested a kind of code of ethics for the online community.

GAURAV MISHRA: Actually, I saw very specific examples of people online using great restraint in posting stories about the crisis. For instance, Vinu who posted some of the first photos of the crisis on Flickr, he had some pictures of the injured and the dead, and he asked us on his blog if he should post those pictures. And we said no, and he refrained from posting those pictures.

Similarly, another photo blogger who was taking pictures of the site on the second day of the crisis specifically wrote on his blog that he had posted these pictures with more than one hour’s time lag so that it doesn’t give any sensitive information to the terrorists.

So people were showing restraint. I think it’s a personal choice mostly. There will be some chaos online. I don’t think it’s possible to implement a code of conduct.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: There’s been lots of criticism of the network coverage giving the terrorists a tactical advantage by showing them too much, by making them into celebrities.

GAURAV MISHRA: Yes, the television channels did cross a line between breaking news and broadcasting sensitive information, which might have been useful to the terrorists.

But we also need to remember that while some of the Indian television news channels have been around for close to a decade, most of them have been around for less than five years. Many people have argued that this was the first big test for the television journalists. And as much as I hate to defend Indian news media on this, I would say that given all these constraints, they did a reasonably good job.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So, in the wake of these attacks, are there narratives springing up on the new media versus the old media?

GAURAV MISHRA: For me, the story is that many people, thousands of people, came together and tried to make sense of what was happening, using a new service like Twitter, and new media and mainstream media complemented each other in covering this story.

And increasingly I see that traditional newspapers and television journalists and news organizations of all sorts will have in-house people who have high levels of familiarity with new media, who are good at curating news coming out of new media. So I see that as one of the lessons going forward.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Gaurav, thank you very much.

GAURAV MISHRA: Thank you for speaking to me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Gaurav Mishra is the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology and Global Internet at Georgetown University.

I am co-founder of social media research and analytics company 20:20 Web Tech. In my previous avatars, I have done marketing at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do consider interviewing me, inviting me to speak, or working with 20:20 WebTech. I am gauravonomics @ Twitter/ FriendFeed/ Skype/ GTalk/ GMail.

Howard B. Schaffer has spent much of his 36-year career dealing with U.S. relations with South Asia, including a stint as ambassador to Bangladesh. He has recently finished writing a book on America’s role in Kashmir, titled ‘The Limits of Influence’, which will be published by the Brookings Institute early next year. He is now the Deputy Director at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

In a 23 minute interview, we spoke about the history of America’s role in the Indian sub-continent and how it is likely to change in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack.

Ambassador Schaffer believes that we will have a replay of the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan we saw in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament and international pressure will mount on Pakistan to take definitive action against Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, given the transitional government in United States, a weak government in Pakistan, and an end of term government in India, no decisive action is likely to be taken by any of the three governments.

Here is the video version of the interview –

Here is a lighter audio version of the interview –

As a background, here are two recent articles by Howard B. Schaffer on America’s interests in the India-Pakistan relations –The Washington Times and Council on Foreign Affairs.

I am co-founder of social media research and analytics company 20:20 Web Tech. In my previous avatars, I have done marketing at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do consider interviewing me, inviting me to speak, or working with 20:20 WebTech. I am gauravonomics @ Twitter/ FriendFeed/ Skype/ GTalk/ GMail.

In the introductory episode of our weekly fellowship podcast, Ben, Pavneet and I explain why our research on social media in BRIC countries is uniquely interdisciplinary, share the personal biases with which we are approaching our research, summarize what we have learned so far, and share our plans for the rest of the year.

The starting point of our research is to understand how differences in culture, access and language in BRIC countries impact the three core values of social media usage — collaboration, community and user generated content — across tools and devices. Pavneet’s focus is on the community and he explores two really important use cases for social media — consumer advocacy and civic engagement. Ben’s focus is on the individual and he explores issues of identity and privacy in the context of social media usage. My role is to pull it all together into a meaningful framework.

So, our research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world. But, beyond that, it’s really rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and borrows heavily from research related to business, government and development.

Our personal research scopes also tie in neatly with our personal biases. Ben’s experiences as a warblogger partly explain his interest in identity and privacy. Pavneet’s focus on business and government explains his interest in how both of them are being transformed by social media. Finally, my own user-centric approach to the research is biased by my previous avatar as ‘the marketer who understood social media’.

The subsequent episodes of the podcasts will be based around interviews. We already have 2.5GB of audio material waiting to be edited and we have some really interesting interviews lined up for the coming weeks. So, do subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or elsewhere and do stay tuned.

I am co-founder of social media research and analytics company 20:20 Web Tech. In my previous avatars, I have done marketing at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do consider interviewing me, inviting me to speak, or working with 20:20 WebTech. I am gauravonomics @ Twitter/ FriendFeed/ Skype/ GTalk/ GMail.

My First Podcast on Indicast

I had a great time last Sunday recording my first podcast with Aditya Mhatre, Aditya Mishra, VeerChand Bothra (tweet) on why startups need workaholics and why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India (tweet).

All three of them have extremely rich backgrounds, resulting in an extremely vibrant discussion —

- Aditya Mhatre is India’s leading podcaster at Indicast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- VeerChand Bothra is at the center of India’s mobile boom, as MobilePundit, as organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and as VP at NetCore Solutions (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Aditya Mishra is deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India through his work (he has the fancy title of Entrepreneur-in-Residence at TCS) and his role as the organizer of BarCamp and Kickstart (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

It was really good fun, like Leo Laporte’s TWiT for India, and Aditya (Mhatre) had a tough time keeping Aditya (Mishra), Veer and me within time (tweet). Aditya has done some brilliant editing on the podcast and it’s now out in a crisp avatar on Indicast —

Part 1: Why Startups Need Workaholics

We first discussed how the Jason Calacanis startups need workaholics controversy plays out in the Indian context. Since both Aditya (Mishra) (his post on the topic) and Veer are deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India, I got some interesting insights on the topic. In the end, we agreed that startups do need people who are totally passionate about the business and people who work for large organizations are indeed in for a culture shock if they move over to a startup. The big insight has that entrepreneurs should set an example for their teams by being passionate about the business and practicing frugality themselves.

Background links: Jason Calacanis, Duncan Riley, Micheal Arrington, Robert Scoble, Michael Ryan, Techmeme, Aditya Mishra, Ashish Sinha, Pranav Dharma, Venturewoods.

Part 2: Why Mobile Will Drive Web 2.0 Usage in India

We then moved on to why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India and why mobile advertising will become really big in India. We agreed that mobile — along with local content, vernacular languages and local social dynamics — will drive web 2.0 usage in India. We also discussed why an Indian web 2.0 model will have the entire cycle — registration, friending, content creation and content consumption — on SMS. Finally, we discussed that new mobile advertising formats based on permission marketing will evolve to tap into this opportunity.

Background Links: Gaurav Mishra, Hindustan Times, Wall Street Journal, Agencyfaqs.

Watch Out For Our Next Podcast

In the next podcast, we will cover how the ‘economics of free’ is hitting the music industry and how the web is getting widgetized (tweet). So, share any interesting links on either topic on del.icio.us using the tag TKM2 and, if we use them, we’ll credit you with a hat-tip (tweet).