Mumbai Attacks: Twitter Adds to the Noise but Is Still Valuable
by
on November 27, 2008,
As you have certainly heard already, a new terrorist attack took place in Mumbai, India with terrorists attacking multiple locations, including hotels, café, and a hospital. The attack left more than 85 people dead and 200 injured - and there are also people taken hostage by the terrorists (mainly US and Britain citizens). Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is a financial capital of India and a very important city as that - and probably an appealing target for terrorists as such. Wired has a good roundup of where to find first-hand reports on the Mumbai attacks across various social media sites, Flickr, YouTube, and blogs from local bloggers.
But our usual discussion when something important happens is how Twitter is better than mainstream news outlets and even bloggers in covering the event and letting everyone willing to listen know what is going on. So just as usual we can’t help but engage in the discussion of the extremely important role of Twitter and how it can be a great source of journalism.
Mathew Ingram writes a great post on this particular subject stating why he is thinking that Twitter actually is a good source of news and why Twitter updates can be considered journalism in certain cases as what people actually do using the micromessaging network is reporting breaking news - even if without verification and sometimes with mistakes.
While I tend to agree with Mathew on this issue, I don’t really know why it should be important at all if Twitter is a good source of news or not - it is good in what it does and you can call it news since this is exactly what people share with us - news. And I don’t really think that people sending updates from their cell phones to let the world know what was going on were really trying to act like journalists - they wanted to share the news with anyone who was interested and that’s it.
Twitter is a great tool to see what people have to say about current events - and while the facts may stay unverified, everyone will still try to look for first-hand reports and Twitter is a great place to get them, especially when the situation is important to you personally for a reason - like, you have a family member in Mumbai.
The point is that Twitter is just the right place to get the information - and get it quick. When mainstream media takes time to bring reporters to site or at least find and verify a couple of sources and even bloggers taking a few minutes to type a post and hit that “Publish” button, Twitter is already here with multiple reports from people witnessing the entire situation directly where the situation is. And no, hardly all the facts will be correct but you will get to know something is happening - and you will have at least some understanding of what is going on. Besides, the wrong facts will probably be corrected soon right there on Twitter and if you watch with attention enough, you will get a more or less comprehensive picture.
Of course on Twitter there is a huge problem of noise that everyone is willing to contribute to and this noise will make it even more difficult to find the facts that are true and sort out all the echoing of what someone else said somewhere earlier. The number of tweets you can find searching for Mumbai or #Mumbai is definitely amazing and is difficult to consume. First, there are people who are actually in Mumbai updating their Twitter streams with what they get to know on spot. Then we get multiple Twitter accounts constantly updated with headlines from mainstream media outlets with reporters eagerly reporting on every new detail they get to know - and one fact gets hundreds of mentions on Twitter as a result, true or not. And, finally, we get the largest group of people - those who simply like watching and discussing news. Some of these people are shocked, others are sympathetic and both types are willing to express their feelings about what is going on. And no matter what anyone in these three groups says, we all add to the noise - making it difficult to find real facts and first-hand reports either.
But while noise at this level is typical mainly for Twitter only, there is another problem that Twitter shares with media outlets. The thing is that at crazy times like this you can never really trust anyone - be it a tweet from a person in the thick of things or a report from a reputable news organization. Simply because even news professionals can be wrong because their reporters can hardly get the full picture on site and often report mainly what they see themselves - which is not very different from what simple bystanders get to know. And we need to understand that when everything is equally disorganized and chaotic you will hardly find any source that will be actually reliable.
So my opinion is that Twitter is valuable because it does is job well: it lets you know what people think, including those people in the place you are concerned about. So if you want to get all the first-hand details from witnesses, search Twitter or blogs for all the right terms. If you only want to see the bigger picture with only 100% verified facts, wait for a few hours for reporters to check and double check all the details - and watch or read some news at the appropriate time only. It is just a matter of what you want to get - and the tools that will be better for you to do just that.
