Twitter reportage on Marikana mine

Various reporters kept the online community up to date with their on-the-scene-tweets on what was actually happening during and after the violent confrontation between the police and the striking miners. This confrontation which resulted in 34 deaths and 74 critically injured miners happened on the 16 August 2012 at the Lonmin Marikana mine in Rustenburg.

Media people often choose angles to base or approach stories in, and because of this and the fact that every news medium has time if not character limits and  sometime this often leads to certain information being leaf out.

We choose to focus out attention on three journalists to see how they reported (tweeted) the modern democratic South African massacre. We tracked down their tweets from on the day the shooting to place.

Gia Nicolaides is a reporter from EWN, she was at the scene with her colleague Taurai Maduna. Her tweets were not only on the shooting at the mine. She tries also letting the public know about the situation itself. She focused them on the police, the worker and also on the journalist who were both on the scene. As more than one them included visuals in the form of pictures showing female journalist sitting behind their male counterpart as they monitor the chanting striking workers at the mine.

Unlike Nicolaides, Lydia Polgreen a New York Times corresponded journalist based in Johannesburg, She was not there when the actual shooting happened on the 16^th but she was able to reach the scene after 45 minutes later. Gathering from her tweet, she was the time concerned the most with deaths hence her first tweet was a description of the shocking scene of the bodies being covered. She was couldn’t count exactly human where there. She tried finding on who fired the first shoot through comparing notes with other media member but she ended up disputing their findings. She then questioned the leadership of the workers union and the mine management.

Ranjeni Munusamy, a journalist from Daily Maverick, her tweet ranged from the describing the shooting scene to the becoming analytical. For example there is once where she starts a debate on when she say that “the Marikana situation need former police commissioner Bheki Cele”. But side that she tries to look at almost every angle to which the story could be told in. She not only tweeted that  about the mines CEO, who was hospitalised on the tragic day but she also tries to get the two union’s reaction to what had happened that lead to the violent confrontation.

It’s pretty clear that technology has enabled news reporters to be in touch with the people whom they act on behalf for. These journalists and more did a great job as were able to keep the people up to date with various aspects of the tragedy that even other news may not be able to show. I also like the face that they added theirs and other people’s opinions on the subject.