On the way home from work one evening this week, I enjoyed the distraction of the dulcet tones of Michael Burke on Radio Four’s ‘the Moral Maze’ programme. The topic up for debate on that evening’s offering was the influence of Twitter, and the ‘fine line between popular and spontaneous debate, and mob rule’. Mob rule by the users of Twitter?  It sounded slightly far fetched to me, but who am I to judge? Has Twitter really reached the stage where it can claim to have control over events outside cyberspace?

Admittedly, in the last few weeks the users of Twitter have scored pretty big points against some fairly powerful opponents, in the world of press and beyond. Most of you will certainly be aware of the furore that was caused by some rather choice comments in Jan Moir’s column in the Daily Mail. The day that she decided to attack the late Stephen Gateley with an unpleasant and inflammatory rant about his lifestyle, was one which she will surely live to regret. The furious Twitter campaign which ensued snowballed to such an extent that the Press Complaints Commission received the most objections to a single article in its 18 year history, exceeding 21,000 in all.

There have been other occasions where the so-called ‘Twitterati’ have caused a media storm over seeming insignificant occurrences covered (or not covered – I’ll come to this shortly) in national newspapers. AA Gill, the food critic for the Sunday Times, recently admitted to shooting a baboon, apparently for the sheer fun of it. He confessed, he was tempted by wanting to get ‘a sense of what it might be like to kill someone’. A fairly disturbing sentiment to be sure, but it’s not as if he was cavorting about killing Siberian snow leopards to sport as a fetching coat to all the Christmas parties he has lined up. The particular species that he shot is not endangered, and they are viewed as pests in many of the countries where they thrive. However, after thousands of enraged Tweets from animal lovers and activists alike, widely read nationals like the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Independent and even the Daily Mail picked up the story and reported on it in outraged tones.

So, what have we learnt? That Twitter can be used to get the most respected of columnists in serious hot water. Impressive yes, but is it going to change the world? On this evidence, perhaps not. 

However, in recent weeks the users of Twitter have also scored a victory over a major industrial company. Furious Tweeting made public an injunction by a British oil company, preventing the Guardian from reporting on a question tabled in parliament by the Labour MP Paul Farrelly. The gagging order related to the MP’s concerns about press freedom implications after a ban was obtained stopping the Guardian and other media from publishing the findings of a report related to the toxic oil waste dumped in West Africa in 2006. An incident which led to 1000s of people falling ill in the Ivory Coast.

Now, everyone knows that oil companies possess an immense amount of power, and whether we like it or not, I am sure these sorts of abhorrent incidents are covered up on a regular basis. That the users of Twitter were able to make this episode and the existence of the following damning report public, is impressive to say the least. Oil companies are notoriously dominant; many an opponent has capitulated in the face of fierce opposition from a legal team whose bill is probably bigger than most SMEs’ annual turnover. The fact that Twitter won this particular battle has got to have unscrupulous organisations everywhere quaking in their boots.

You don’t have to like Twitter, you don’t have to use it, you don’t even have to understand it.  But the time has come to accept that it is a powerful force to be reckoned with. Long gone are the days when it was simply a way to find out what Stephen Fry had for breakfast.