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The other day I saw a news item that I loved much. This young girl of 19, along with a few other women, was whisked away to the Parliament Street Police Station while she was participating in the Jantar Mantar protest. And not to be outdone by the Police, she went on tweeting on her smart phone:
"Illegally being held here at Parliament St Police Station Delhi w/15 other women. Terrified. plus RT"
Apparently the message reached more than two lakh people in minutes and lawyers (ahem) rushed to her rescue.
I guess RT means Retweet. Many of my young friends had asked me to join Facebook and Twitter but I demurred. Managing a single blog is itself becoming a Herculean task to me.
But I enjoy the new media...till now they were dubbed: 'social media', but in India they are becoming: 'political media' as well. My Gen's (and my next Gen's) politicos are scared stiff not knowing what is hitting them. The news item says:
"They had lost a battle they were accustomed to winning hands down"
The RT phenomenon is not new. It is known as 'dendritic growth' as against 'linear growth'.
A century ago, the hamlets in the Himalayas were using this rural device that supplanted smoke signals and semaphore as message transmitters. Jim Corbett describes it. When a man-eater is spotted near a village, the chap with the most powerful larynx mounts the nearest hillock and shouts the message into his megaphone.
The same principle was tried by a chap who started what was called: "Ravi Money Circulation" into whose trap we all fell in the 1960s when we were students at AU. The circuit got shorted within a week and whomever we approached to sell our tickets tried to sell theirs back to us. Many of us lost our Exam Fees and had to beg our fathers' forgiveness (till we learned they too lost their salary to this circulating greed).
Ravi was caught and shackled in jail (where he tried floating a similar thing among the inmates).
Before the advent of these new media, we had the staid centuries-old journalism. During our youth there was this Newsweek that was a twin rival of Time, like New York Times has its Washington Post, or Times (London) its Daily Telegraph. When we entered our Faculty Club at AU, Vizagh, we were supposed to head straight to the Reading Room and pick up either the Time or Newsweek to impress others that we were 'hardcore intellectuals'. And order Dosa and Coffee. And after gorging on them, go to the Games Room and spend the rest of the day there instead of doing Research...and get kicked out to IIT KGP.
The other day I read that our good old Newsweek folded up like carbon paper.
So sorry. Because it didn't take to dendritic growth but stuck like a leech to the 'hub' model of journalism. This means they had a central office in NYC or wherever and airlifted hundreds of reporters all over the world spending huge sums of money. And they would all file their reports to their Head Office. Costs mounted and it has become a limping online journal. Someone said that online journals have viewership but it is the hard copies that ring in the money.
This hub type of reporting is still common in our towns. For instance I have a cousin (V) who was born and brought up in Nellore and is employed there for all of 3 decades. He is interested in gathering news and spreading it for good purposes. It is his hobby. When our relatives (a hundred and more) came to know of V's abilities, they would flock to his house on their evening walks and report whatever news of our relatives they had gathered. And exchange news. Like the pawnbroker in Holmes's Red-Headed League said:
"I don't have to go and find business...my business comes to me"
Only, with V, it is not business but pleasure. All of us benefit. For instance, for three long months I was sitting in Hyderabad in front of my desktop terminal trying to find suitable brides for my son in 2007. Spent good money registering on marriage portals. Got 120 'alliances', none of them quite suitable and all requiring a lot of legwork to check they are not fake.
I was getting exasperated and happened to ring up my mom at Gudur that we were on the lookout for a bride. That day it so happened that V was visiting her and my mom told him about us being in the market.
Within a week of his getting back to Nellore, we netted the bride we wanted through V's 'connections'.
So, sometimes Dendritic Models are not as effective as Hub Models. Each has its due place and worth.
Three months ago. I had posted a blog called: "Peace & War":
It kept quiet for all of three months getting the usual 30 odd hits. But suddenly within a week its 'viewership' jumped up by leaps and bounds to 360. I was amazed and told my son who said that someone must have Facebooked it (with an RT equivalent).
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