How does social media alter politics?

[Pat Coyle]

How Social Media Changes Political Landscape
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. Comment on this talk here

[Amy Stark]

This TED Talk was initially published -during the height of the Iran Election riots- with the title "How TWITTER Changes ..." Not Social Media. Clay's first TED Talk is about crowdsourcing, decentralized organizational structures and paradigm shifts. You can also find him on twitter as @ClayShirky .

Thanks for posting this, Pat, I'm a Shirky fan- if you didn't notice. Social media is an evolutionary game changer, and thanks to Smaller Indiana Smoosiers have court-side seats.

[Mike Seidle]

A little cold water for everyone: people find ways to pass messages around censors, oppression and propagandists. Technology to do so quickly has been around since Marconi.

Being able to be a voyeur and see what was going on in Iran with Twitter is what was new, and cool. Letting the revolution create content, wrapping it with ads and spam, now that's new and useful too.