What the world said about immigration on Thursday
Note: I started a new feature this week. It’s what I like to call Cover it Live Thursday and it will use the Cover it Live service to record all tweets on a single topic for 24 hours.
My first topic of choice was immigration. Not sure what next week will be. Let’s just see what the news brings us, shall we?
It ran from 12:18 a.m. Thursday to just before midnight that night.
The feed caught thousands of tweets. I didn’t count them, but I stopped past 500 in the first four hours of the feed. So, I think it’s safe to say thousands.
So, what was on the world’s mind? The tweets were all over the place. It began with a tweet about an immigration show. It continued with a look at how immigration has impacted workers….in the UK.
The tweet was linking to a story posted in a UK MigrantWatch website that referenced a study, which found that areas with high immigration also have high unemployment.
Two immigration tweets later was a Swedish girl worried about the treatment of refugee children in her home town, in Sweden.
There were tweets discussion racism, a Russian immigrant who could benefit from the Dream Act, and even a link to a story advancing a Tea Pary protest in Arizona.
All that before 12:30 a.m.
What proceeded was a running stream of consciousness on all the immigration issues facing the world. There were calls for closing borders, amnesty, opening borders, deportations, protests against illegal immigration, protest for tougher laws.
By the way, people in Denmark – Denmarkites? – are hoping to stop all “non-Western immigration”.
Then, right about noon, came a tweet about Florida possibly becoming the next Arizona. That was one of the early tweets that revealed states and cities all over the United States are looking to create or fight laws dealing with immigration.
Even more interesting than the tweets, though, were the users. It’s more of a window into exactly how much we’re all dealing with or thinking about immigration.
Some of my favorite users were: TheAngryIndian, DetentionWatch, immigrationsource, AmericanPatrol, TweetTeaParty, and ImmigrateCanda.
What’s my point? Well, I can tell you that it has nothing to do with politics. I don’t care how people feel about the topic or really the topic itself, beyond the incredible news value it has.
What I do care about is how journalists cover it and what tools we have available to do so. I care about helping us help our readers, regardless of their location, understand what’s going on outside our newsrooms.
Doing this Cover it Live feed definitely helped me get a snapshot of what people and organizations have to say about immigration and it’s impact.
I would have gotten tons of story ideas if I was still an immigration reporter. Instead, I’m a blogger who decided to see what the world has to say about a topic that can sometimes feel very local.
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