Sambrook on Iran and social media-you need an understanding of its power to interpret the facts

Richard Sambrook has been doing a grand job over the weekend monitoring cyberspace whilst watching the events in Tehran.

These are his initial thoughts on how twitter dealt with the weekend's events

If you, as an average news consumer, relied on Twitter you might believe all sorts of things had happened, which simply hadn't, running a high risk of being seriously misled about events on the ground. You might at best, have simply been confused. You probably wouldn't have thought Ahmadinejad enjoys much popular support at all.

but he continues

But if you had a reasonable understanding of social media, how to set up and assess feeds, how to compare and contrast information, if you had a reasonable understanding of news flows, a developed sense of scepticism, and an above average understanding of the political situation in Iran, you would have emerged much better informed than the lay viewer relying on TV or Radio news.