DigiActive, a community of people who care passionately about digital activism, and are actively creating a world of activists empowered by digital technology, has recently published an E-Book on Twitter Activism, which explains in simple layman terms on what twitter actually is while shedding light on how it can be used for activism. We here in Pakistan do get a mention in this E-book for our efforts on twitter. I believe if they were impressed by our efforts back in December 2007 well then they still have to evaluate our combined efforts in the Long March in 2008 [here] and subsequently the Long March in 2009
In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, then leader of the Pakistani opposition party Pakistan People’s Party was killed in an attack during a political rally (BBC News 2007). For the first time, the news coverage on established media was not only accompanied through news coverage on blogs, but also on Twitter feeds. Local Twitterers, like Dr. Awab Alvi (@teeth) or social media consultant Dina Mehta (@dina, Mehta 2007) started to monitor local and international media outlets and posted their observations and comments on their personal Twitter feeds and blogs. Prominent Twitterers like Dave Winer (@davewiner), Laura Finton (@pistachio) and Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) also started to post snippets of different news sources to their respective Twitter feeds. From then on the Twitterverse was abuzz with discussion on the events in Rawalpindi and their possible repercussions (Howlett 2008).