The group of law enforcement agencies charged with handling security during the Republican National Convention had $50 million to spend on weapons and equipment. Riot police were dressed in black body armor from head to toe, equipped with advanced communications systems and the latest in crowd-control weaponry. However, the greatest advancement in the age-old grudge match between an angry citizenry and the state was not found on the side of the police and it did not come from the millions of taxpayer dollars. A free and public social-media website called Twitter, which publishes brief messages sent in from cell phones and computers, was a game-changer for protesters, organizers, and journalists covering the event.

It all began with a series of pre-convention raids that caught many in the media by surprise. A flurry of posts to Twitter from the Coldsnap Legal Collective, a Twin Cities based legal group working to support “the radical community,” and Twin Cities Independent Media helped provide up-to-the-minute details on the raids, reports on the number of arrested, and pleas for legal observers. Citizen journalists from the Minnesota Independent and The Uptake were some of the first on the scene of the raids and dominated early coverage. As intended, information began spreading rapidly as more citizens and traditional media outlets passed around the burgeoning sources of breaking news.

What developed was an ad hoc information system that provided a vast amount of first-hand accounts, insight and the opportunity for rumors and misinformation. By the end of the convention there had been 1,375 sources posting more than 17,000 messages about the events inside and outside the convention sight.

As the network grew, a few sources emerged as dispatchers filtering the vast amount of information and passing the relevant messages on to new audiences. Twitterer Notq was one of the most effective and productive dispatchers. Surprisingly, Notq stepped into this role not from the streets of St. Paul, but from his home in Arizona. Meanwhile, Minneapolis resident Taylor Carik, who was often on location in St. Paul, relied on Yahoo! Pipes to filter out non-essential information into an RSS (real simple syndication) feed.

This new venue of information is great for bloggers and citizen journalists, but it is worth noting that the most prolific of RNC Twitterers was St. Paul’s hometown paper the Pioneer Press. Julio Ojeda-Zapata posted on behalf of his employer 572 times (MnIndy posted 285 updates over the week). That information comes from another traditional news source, C-Span, which has a dedicated page on its website to Twitter coverage of the convention, including full archives.

Protest organizers were able to use social-networking tools to quickly assemble and disassemble groups of demonstrators, summon media and legal observers, and keep track of the arrested and detained.

Perhaps if the iPhone shot rubber bullets or dispensed mace the police could have joined in on the Twitter fun.

The Twitter network had its fair share of shortcomings. Rumors spread rapidly, opinion and commentary was intermingling with news accounts and more than a few reporters, this one included, spent much of their time running from one intersection in downtown St. Paul to another, often finding nothing more than the lingering burn of tear gas in the air.

Disorganized as it was, Twitter had a major impact on the convention and media coverage and was a learning experience for all involved. New technologies will continue to emerge and the lessons learned from 2008 Republican National Convention will certainly be applied to future news events.