Blogs and cell phones coverage of Virginia Tech shootings
As a follow up to my earlier post entitled “what does community mean to you?”, it is interesting to see how social networking sites and blogs helped the Virginia Tech community communicate during the shootings. InformationWeek reported that day: “Virginia Tech students and staff reported on what appeared to be the deadliest shooting on a U.S. college campus as it unfolded, using blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, and cell phones to do it…A student captured the sound of several gunshots on campus.”
You can see some of the blog entries posted during the time of the shooting on CollegeMedia.com, the website of the publisher of Virginia Tech’s campus newspaper. Cybersoc.com has rounded up a few shocking first hand accounts from bloggers on the traumatic events, as well as Boing Boing which also has a roundup of first-hand coverage that includes Flickr photos of police cars on the scene.
Dan Gillmor from Center for Citizen Media Blog writes: “More and more major news stories will be amplified in this way. Spot news will be, in part, a citizen-captured phenomenon, and there’s no going back.”
I think that news events being covered by citizens in this format is definitely the wave of the future and this will allow us all to further understand the power of these social tools and to record events in a more truthful and accurate manner.
Thanks to Kevin Cupp for the pic.
Technorati tags: blogs, cell phones, virginia tech, shootings, community, social networking, informationweek, podcasts, collegemedia, cybersoc, boingboing, flickr, dan gillmor, center for citizen media, news
April 20th, 2007 at 5:36 am
It is interesting to see how relatively new web products change the information flow. now, with video, it is even stronger than before. check out Jim Long’s point of view here -
http://vergenewmedia.com/2007/04/19/jamal-albarghouti-spotlights-the-role-of-citizen-journalists-in-va-tech-massacre/
April 20th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
no tags
this is atrocious. we had newspapers, and now blogs as info links for community and culture.
however, did you know that google is wanting to post all information so as to illiminate need for newspapers and blogs.
Insider plan told to me showed that they are including all search results against e mail and linking all stories in am that suit you then pm that suit you.
depending on wok patterns they will tilt info that you need or may be interested in.
Newspapers cheerio,, big brother as in George orwell HELLO
Blog and enjot because one day it will be regulated and we will not own our own words.
April 20th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Kfir:
I read Jim Long’s post and I believe that big media coverage along with such blog/video/social network coverage is the way to go. One should not replace the other.
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:30 am
There’s no doubt that interactive and instant technology will give us more and more information about events in real time. Whether that is necessarily good is a moot point. We are already pretty stressed by emails that need to be answered immediately, in place of mail (delivered through our non-virtual mail boxes) that took a few days to arrive at its destination and another few days to get back. I honestly don’t know whether it is better for us to be available 24 hours a day so that our work day encroaches upon what used to be called “our private life.”
And now with instant news, we are being assaulted by events that we cannot avoid. Is this good?
As for blogged and video instant reporting being necessarily “more truthful and more accurate”, this is not necessarily so. What is shown through different angles (both literaly and figuratively) is as subjective as a newspaper report.
Not everything that is new and instantaneous is “good.” We need to be as wary of the new as we are of the old.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 am
Larry:
I think that the more information we get, the better and more accurate a picture we have of events.
And yes, instant news is good. We may not want to always hear it, but then that’s our choice. No one forces us to anything. We do it because we want to be more aware of what’s happening outside of our world.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:42 am
Statistically you are right that the more information we get, the more accurate the picture of events will be, i.e. the closer to the truth it will be. But statistics are just that: numbers. For it to work, we would have to get ALL the angles from ALL sources. Failing that, we will not have a completely accurate picture. Size counts - but only in theory.
As for our having a choice in whether we want to hear all the news, I disagree. We don’t have a choice - unless we shut ourselves off completely. We are assaulted all day by news. And neither do we have a choice whether to read all our emails - if they are are part of our work. They come pouring in and we have to keep on churning back answers.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Larry:
By reading the blog entries, podcasts, comments, and seeing the pics posted by different people, I think we are getting as much of the picture as we can and from different angles. Since you weren’t there and I wasn’t there, of course we will never know the complete truth, but then again, I rather have a few pieces of the puzzle than none at all.