In addition to the 140+ people killed this week, many have been quick to triumphantly name another victim in the Mumbai attacks: the Main Stream Media. The attacks are being hailed as a watershed moment for citizen-generated journalism, and to some extent that is true. We’ve always relied on the CNNs of the world to be the first to clue us in. I vividly remember being glued to the screen (and radio) during the Gulf War, and CNN on 9/11 (with their website being somewhat of an afterthought).
On Wednesday, however, things were profoundly different. I first learned of the Mumbai attacks through a friend’s Facebook status update. After being frustrated by the lack of information at my usual online stops (CNN, NYTimes, BBC etc), I turned to Twitter and Wikipedia, both of which were updating at a furious pace. Twitter in particular was serving up close to 300 updates a minute on #mumbai, often beating the large MSM networks to key info by half an hour or more via eyewitness accounts or re-tweeting news from Indian sources like NDTV. This was augmented by fantastic photo uploads from Flickr users. Cumulatively these sources provided a pretty compelling view of what it was like to be in the chaos of Mumbai on the 26th. CNN even gave props to Twitter as a news-gathering source. It didn’t take long for the Twitter mob to revert to meta-tweets congratulating itself for out-reporting the media, without regard to the questionable accuracy of most of the information it was circulating.
This has sparked an excellent debate on the changing role of the internets and its reportage-loving nerd denizens, as social networking sites evolve rapidly and are used in unanticipated ways. Here are some highlights:
- Telegraph story on the use of Twitter, blogs and Google Maps during the first day of the attacks (Link)
- Mathew Ingram’s well thought-out argument that Twitter is a valid source of journalism as a “first draft of history” (Link)
- Tim Malbon, however, figures the signal to noise ratio is far too low (Link)
- Indian police have apparently asked people to stop using Twitter to report on the attacks, as the open flow of information may give terrorists a strategic advantage (Link)
- NowPublic, an excellent site that filters citizen journalism into something more coherent and legitimate (Link)
- The aforementioned Wikipedia entry for the attacks, which is already astonishingly comprehensive. Check the History and Discussion pages to see would-be historians dispute unsettled facts and assumptions. (Link)
Filed under: Uncategorized , Facebook, Flickr, Journalism, Media, microblogging, Mumbai, Social Networking, Twitter, Wikipedia
Outstanding, keys! I spent most of the afternoon on wednesday refreshing twitter’s #mumbai tags so I could stay up to date with everything as well.
Certainly, there’s a high signal to noise ratio on these media, but I would argue it’s not much different wrt initial reports from CNN or other MSM sites. Think of all the bogus, unconfirmed reports that were released immediately after the WCT was hit in 2001.
The major difference here is that MSM sites, TV news shows, etc, have a large staff of people who take the initial garbage and build anf filter until by the end of the day or the next day, you have a complete picture of what took place.
I see this sort of filtering and building starting to take place among social network users more and more organically all the time. This tech is in its youth. But it’s turning into a real force in the world of information distribution.
Nice rundown, keys.
I got an email from a friend that just last month relocated to Mumbai… (you and rollingstop have met him, we met up with him for a drink last time I was in the tdot) on this subject:
“I’ve received a ton of emails and I thank you all for the concern – I only have time to send this one mass email to let you know that everything is fine. The attacks took place at both the hotel we were recently staying at (The Oberoi in Mumbai), and the hotel we were going to stay in for 3 months starting January (The Taj Palace in Mumbai). Fortunately, we had just left Mumbai for Delhi, and so besides all my luggage (which is still at the Oberoi, and I presume gone) … I am 100% safe and sound. We were actually supposed to go back to Mumbai yesterday, back to the Oberoi where hostages are still being held, but as luck would have it we extended our stay in Delhi by 1 day for follow-up meetings.”
Agreed, excellent treatment of this situation and the constantly evolving importance of non-mainstream media.
@Bingo: high signal to noise ratio (SNR) means a good signal; low SNR is when it’s harder to distinguish signal from noise.
re: the high SNR comment: I believe that’s my fault – I had originally written “high” in my post, but upon re-reading realized I was re-tarded, and changed it.