The events in Boston have remained heavy on my heart today. I continue to read articles, watch videos, listen to phone calls.
One thing amazes me through all of it.
The need to share.
As someone who is deeply interested and invested in social media and communications/marketing, it has been absolutely amazing to see the way social media affected the events of yesterday.
I, along with many others, found out about the event from Facebook. I saw several posts saying "how terrible," "thoughts and prayers," and "I cannot believe it." It wasn't until I saw one that read "Bombing at the Boston Marathon? What is the world coming to?" that I realized something seriously wrong had gone on. I took to the Internet and began to watch a live telecast from CNN. I was drawn to my computer screen and almost obsessed with the details. It was just one of those moments where as much as you don't want to know, you do.
As soon as the first bomb went off Twitter and Facebook exploded (OK, too much?) with people expressing their thoughts, fears and sorrows. The exact minute that the first bomb went off, there was a Twitter user who posted the photo, questioning what was going on. Within 5 minutes there were thousands of tweets, photos and videos using the hashtags #Boston, #BostonMarathon and #PrayersforBoston. Vine videos, which were very gruesome, also began surfacing.
What is it that makes people grab their phones to capture video and photos, even when they may be in danger? It is the need to share. Everyone wants to share what they have seen, and wants to see what everyone else has seen. Thanks to social media, and this footage, police have many different angles of what happened and who was around when the bombs went off.
Many news stations are using tweets and posts from social media sites as the photos in their articles.
One of the most amazing things I have found on social media in relation to this event is the use of social media from the Boston Police Department. They used their account to give instructions to people in the area of the bombings, ask for photos and videos to assist in their investigation, keep the injured/dead totals accurate, and even provide information relating to the JFK situation, which was briefly believed to be connected but was discovered to be just a fire. The fact that Boston police felt confident that social media was a viable way to communicate with millions of people is incredible. It just shows the credibility social media can have. Granted, BPD has a verified Twitter account (meaning the owner and operator went through background checks and are who they say they are) which adds to their credibility in a huge way. Other Twitter users were posting fake, irrelevant and wrong information and feeding into rumors that were incorrect. Once it was announced that one of the fatalities was an 8 year old child a photo of a young girl began circulating. The photo claimed to be of the young girl (who was not a girl at all!) who was killed by the bomb. Putting a photo with the facts causes lots of emotion and many people were deeply saddened by this image. At least 20 of my friends shared this fake image, not knowing any better. However, even after all that being said, the main thing found on social media sites in connection with Boston is support.
Millions are reaching out and offering their support in so many different ways. People in Boston were offering up rooms for families, especially those that have extra beds and live near the hospitals where victims were located. #PrayersforBoston was trending, and still is trending, all over the world.
Google released Google person finder (a google.org project) that allowed people to search people they knew that were in Boston during the marathon. They could read information either posted from people who were in contact with them or read direct posts from people themselves. Some posts read "I am okay." "I am staying with students from Emerson College." "I have returned home safe." If you haven't seen it yet, check out the site. It provides so much information and more than likely comforted so many people during all of this. Google Person Finder - Boston
Social media is making waves and really capturing the world of journalism, marketing and communication and who knows where it will go in the future. All of this is because people have a need to share.
Goodnight
xo
You touch on many good points. Social media is largely fed by our societies compulsion to share everything. We want to share what is going on around us, what we've seen, and like to see what others are seeing. This proves to propel news and events quickly through the digisphere and gets it into each individuals hands that much quicker. It's great to see when this "virality" of video and media is used for good, instead of the seeming celebrity gossip and sex scandals that it is often associated with perpetuating.
ReplyDeleteYou could also touch on the massive amounts of support, relief, and aid that millions of people have donated to helping out those that were involved, due much in part to the relative ease the internet and social media has given us in sending relief and support.