I noted this general phenomenon in 2006 in regard to the Iraq War:
When I worked for the University of Michigan, one of my jobs was to replace old worn out publications. One such publication was a British newspaper nicely bound. I can't remember which one, but what struck me was the similarity of the problems they discussed. In particular, I remember (and wish I'd saved) an article written during the Crimean War that decried the impact of the telegraph on public opinion. In particular, the article complained that the speed of the telegraph in bringing up-to-date news to the public had diminished the public's attention span and basically led them to jump from report to report. I was amazed at this oh so very modern critique of war reporting, technology, and the public.
Why this didn't occur to me earlier when the 2014 Crimea War took place is beyond me.
Speed is relative to what you are used to. When you were used to news weeks or even months old shipped by sea, the daily telegraph reports of events the prior days printed for the daily paper (and perhaps afternoon updates) were sensory overload.
When you are used to breaking news at the top of the hour on 24-hour news channels after being processed by television production teams--or even blog posts that use precious minutes or hours to link to online articles that take time to post, and add analysis about the subject--short Twitter feeds of first impressions going directly to your phone as events happen are suddenly the leading edge of news.
Secretary of State Kerry can complain that Putin is guilty of 19th century thinking in the 21st century, but the relative changes in the information flow of the mid-19th century were perhaps greater than the relative changes of the 1st century thus far, no? It's the coping with the delta vee and not the actual method that matters. Lavrov would eat Kerry's lunch no matter what century they competed in.
Of course, it isn't just speed. It's the breadth of Tweets that doesn't get filtered through the few gatekeepers of traditional media. But there was a time when even the newspapers were many and varied, producing multiple editions and extras per day as they competed for eye balls.
One day we'll marvel at the plodding slowness (and depth of thought?) of Twitter. Although I shudder to imagine what technology (direct feeds of emotional reactions to events right to the cerebral cortex?) might make that seem true, I'm confident we'll think that way.
Nonetheless, I'll repeat what I've said before. Communications is just a means. When you Twitter a king, kill him. Otherwise you're just observing events rather than shaping them.
