Twitter? Educational? Same Sentence?

Earlier this year, the Twitterati were smitten with @MayorEmanuel, the fake account of the infamous Chicago mayoral candidate. The account was laced with profanity ("When I run for reelection, I'm having a motherfucking hand-shaking robot built.") and random hilarity ("Girl Scouts on Cottage Grove! I am going to fuck up this box of Samoas!") It was clearly fiction, and after almost 2,000 tweets, journalist Dan Sinker ended the ruse in February, the day after the real Emanuel won the election.

But the best part about @MayorEmanuel was not the profanity (entertaining), the target himself (easy pickings), or even the creativity of the writer behind it. It's not even that Sinker helped popularize a new type of short-form storytelling, with narratives spanning multiple tweets, a method I dissected in my blog Context back in March.

No, the best part was watching the fake Emanuel react in real time to real events -- pretty much the hallmark purpose of Twitter, yes, but Sinker took it to new heights. In his final day of posting, Sinker essentially live-tweeted the mayoral election results (through the lens of @MayorEmanuel, of course): "Axelrod's in with the early results: 51 motherfucking percent. Still a long night, but SUCK ON THAT, CHICO."

It wasn't exactly educational, but in the same way that Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show use humor to impart knowledge of current events, followers of @MayorEmanuel were likely some of the most informed voters in the history of a mayoral race. In between his ridiculous outbursts, the fake Emanuel kept tabs on the real Emanuel's schedule: "LAST DEBATE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING RACE, I MADE YOU MY BITCH." and "I am still 100 percent fucking positive that this debate would be way fucking better if we were using muppets." This, the real time component, is the basis of our fascination with Twitter, and the reason we spend hours and days of our lives following the thoughts and actions of favorite celebrities and writers and random Twitterati. It's real life, and it's sharing, but again, it's not necessarily educational.

This week I read a New York Times article about a guy who is reenacting World War II, in real time, via Twitter (@RealTimeWWII). Just fifteen minutes ago, the feed reported a "Russian ultimatum, now being read on Radio Helsinki: surrender by 3AM tomorrow or 'all cities & strategic centres will be destroyed.'" Other events, announcements, and even authentic documents (Soviet propaganda leaflet dropped on Helsinki this morning: "Throw away your guns, return to your homes...") are tweeted at a force of 40 per day. The Times article describes the intent of the author, 24-year-old Alwyn Collinson:

"Mr. Collinson said his goals are to educate his followers about the basic sequence of events and give a sense of what the war felt like to ordinary people who had no idea how it would end.

"'I still get dozens of tweets every day from people who say, 'I forgot I was following World War II, and I suddenly thought the Germans were about to invade Holland,' Mr. Collinson said. 'That’s exactly the effect I want: to convey the fear, the uncertainty, the shock. That’s what it was like for the people who lived through it.'"

And he's not alone -- there's one for the Civil War (@CivilWarwp), the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (@1948War), and even @ukwarcabinet, detailing Winston Churchill’s 1941 cabinet debates.

It's the kind of idea that could finally and intentionally hook high school history classes to Twitter. The WWII feed is being translated into multiple languages, and at the very least it's started discussions amongst historians. Of course, not all attempts are tactful: The Guardian shut down its @911tenyearsago after just 16 tweets.