Access for all and for how long?

Abstract

The paper presents a case study of the “Twitter Revolution” that took place in Moldova in April 2009. The fight for democracy in a small country with a totalitarian history received global attention also because it was portrayed as an event in which Web 2.0 tools were empowering the citizens. Online commentary through Twitter posts (that included video recordings and images of the protests) were made in tandem with the onsite events. Blogs and youtube.com provided additional venues for commentary and access for individuals following the events. However, there is no process or device to effectively gather the rich contextual information generated by these online sources in a structural way and save it for future research use. Many of the electronic documents that circulated, such as some video recordings from the events and thousands of twitter messages, cannot be accessed online anymore.