Social Media and Disasters
I’m taking a social media class, and we have been assigned to blog at least twice a week with “significant” posts on the class’s private social network. I’ll be reposting my articles (with some edits) here on Tumblr for all to see.
Also: admittedly this article was quite hastily written.One thing that I find absolutely fascinating about technology is how people are using it on a daily basis to broadcast their lives. On a more possibly morbid side, what I find even more fascinating is how people use the same social technologies during a disaster.
I got to thinking about this on September 11th this past Friday. Back in 2001, there was no Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. And really, digital cameras were a luxury because they were so expensive. The majority of Americans received news of the terrorist attacks from mainstream media, including any stories about the everyday people going through the horror in Lower Manhattan. There were no people tweeting their experience.
Fast forward a little over seven years to January 2009. A commercial plane crash lands into the Hudson River along the west side of Manhattan shortly after take-off from JFK. I distinctly remember being on Tumblr that day when someone I follow posted a picture of the plane in the water, with people on the wings, all wearing their floatation devices. When it comes to internet stories like that, I tend to take it with a hefty dose of skepticism, but then other pictures began showing up on my dashboard from other New York people.
I turned on my TV and flipped to CNN. They were talking about the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama. I went back to my web browser and checked CNN.com, and there was also nothing regarding a plane crash. 10 minutes passed before I saw any mainstream media source mention anything about the plane crash.
I found it highly interesting that Twitter, Flickr, and bloggers all got the scoop before the mainstream media did. It makes sense, after all a blogger has no editors to check his or her story.
So thinking about that plane crash makes me wonder what September 11th would’ve been like if we had today’s social media back then. I can only imagine it being even more of a frenzy and more disturbing than what actually happened that day. People would be making snap predictions of who or what group was responsible; I remember early that day everyone was convinced that Sadaam Hussein and Iraq was responsible for the attack. The wild accusations flew around quickly before we heard the name Osama bin Laden from any official channel.
I think that to a certain extent the instant communication of today would just help to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt at a higher rate of speed than ever before in human history. Indeed, breaking news comes from Twitter first than from CNN. But is this what news of the future will be like? Will people trust the mass of people tweeting what is happening as opposed to a certified journalistic source?
I guess it all depends. 2012 isn’t that far away, I wonder how many people will tweet until the world ends.
