Twittering the Passion of Christ

The use of new media to attract the public is used in a unique way this Good Friday as Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church twittered the Passion of Christ, the story of the crucifixion. For 3 hours the church posted tweets adapted from the Gospel of Mark into 140 character tweets for an audience of more than 1,700. "The story was largely told through the eyes of six characters: Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Peter, a serving girl and Pontius Pilate."

"What we are trying to do at Trinity Wall Street is to communicate the story of Christ in as many ways as we can," said Linda Hanick, Trinity's vice president of communication and marketing."

While it may be new to Twitter, Trinity, founded in the 17th century, is not new to the Web. The parish near the World Trade Center site has been streaming events, services and concerts on the Internet since the late 1990s, and last year joined Facebook. Twitter "was kind of the next evolution in communicating the Gospel message," Hanick said. Twitter makes sense for congregations to spread their word, said the Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian minister and founder of the First Church of Cyberspace, GodWeb.org. Twitter has 10 million users, according to ComScore, an Internet market research firm.

Revolution in Moldova sparked by Twitter.

According the NYT, on Tuesday, more than 10,000 young Moldovans gathered out of nowhere to protest against Moldova’s Communist leadership. According to the report, the crowed ransacked government buildings and clashing with the police.

The riot of young people "reflected the deep generation gap that has developed in Moldova, and the protesters used their generation’s tools, gathering the crowd by enlisting text-messaging, Facebook and Twitter, the social messaging network."

The protesters created their own searchable tag on Twitter, rallying Moldovans to join and propelling events in this small former Soviet state onto a Twitter list of newly popular topics, so people around the world could keep track.

Apparently, the riot was quite strong as reports say "the seat of government had been badly battered and scores of people had been injured." Though, riot police did regain control of the president’s offices and Parliament the next day.

"After hundreds of firsthand accounts flooded onto the Internet via Twitter, Internet service in Chisinau, the capital, was abruptly cut off"

“Moldova is like a sealed jar, and youth want more access to Europe,” he said. “Everyone knows that Moldova is the smallest, poorest and the most disgraceful country. And youth are talking about how they want freedom, Europe and a different life.” Young people have increasingly used the Internet to mobilize politically; cellphones and text messages helped swell protests in Ukraine in 2004, and in Belarus in 2006.