Amid the incessant chatter about tags, buzz, pokes, and followers, it can be easy to forget the media's role as the Fourth Estate, alerting the world to injustice and holding the iniquitous to account. In her recently published paper for the Suffolk Transnational Law Review, Carly Fowler, a Senior Account Executive  at Cognito, examines the media's variegated role in the Rwandan and Bosnian Genocides.

At 214 characters it's gratifying to know that the title itself wouldn't even fit in a tweet: The responsibility to protect and the duty to prevent genocide: lessons to be learned from the role of the international community and the media during the Rwandan genocide and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia

During a conference on social media which I attended earlier this week, one of the speakers used the term "snack-sized content". Several PRs agreed that this was an excellent designation and, just for moment, I contemplated quitting my job and working on a farm. Or bludgeoning myself to death with my iPhone.

As the media industry attempts to slice information in to smaller and smaller pieces, into chicken nuggets of data - high in crunch and low in nutriotional value - it's encouraging to know that some of us can still settle down with a thick book. Thank you Carly Fowler.