Twitter Inundated: Social Media Plays Critical Role In Mumbai

Twitter, and Social Media have today, come of age. Even before the terrorist attacks on Mubai, India broke mainstream media, social media sites like Twitter were inundated with a huge volume of messages providing eyewitness accounts, updates, live reporting of lists of the dead and injured from hospitals in Mumbai and tweets pleaing for blood doners to come to the hospitals as casualities mounted. With over 6 million users, an estimated 80 tweets providing eyewitness accounts were being sent every 5 seconds from Mubai.

Neha Viswanathan, a former regional editor for Southeast Asia and a volunteer at Global Voices, told CNN.com, “Even before I actually heard of it on the news I saw stuff about this on Twitter.

Several people who were trapped inside the hotel were tweeting their locations asking for help, and another was tweeting that terrorists were asking for the hotel rooms of American citizens and holding them hostage on the floor.

CNN.com summed it up; “It was the day social media appeared to come of age and signaled itself as a news-gathering force to be reckoned with.”

Twitter users mobilized immediately tweeting phone numbers for helplines for family members with loved ones caught up in the attacks, and tweeters were key in quickly creating lists of the dead and injured beteween hospitals which were quickly posted online in real time. Twitter users posted at hospitals kept stock of blood supplies and pleaded for volunteers to come down and donate blood as stocks ran low with directions to the hospital.

Twitter user “naomieve” wrote: “Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action.”

Twitter was not the only social media site that played a critical role in the hours after the attacks began.

Google Maps showed the key locations and buildings being held with links to news stories, eyewitness accounts and links to images, as Flickr provided a streaming feed of haunting images live from the attacks. CNN reporters and other major broadcasters uploaded their Flickr images as well.

One of the major drawbacks, as in any situation where information is being virally spread, it’s likely that some of the posts on Twitter were unsubstantiated rumor or inaccuracies.

One major news website had egg on it’s face after reporting a couple of the inaccurate tweets, one of which was a tweet that circulated saying the Indian Gvt. was asking Twitter users to please stop tweeting live because of security issues.

It was suggested at one point as the Twitter-fury esclated that the terrorists were using Twitter to get information about what the Indian security forces were doing, which led to an avalanche of Twitter users tweeting, “Die DIE DIE if you are reading this!” Some Twitter users and bloggers later complained it was an avalanche of tweets and re-tweets that was hard to sort through.

One thing is clear: Twitter and Social Media have proven that social news sharing, can be faster and more critical in moments of emergency than mainstream media, and that the news is no longer under the global control of mainstream media, but in the hands of the people. At least in the hands of people with Blackberries or text-enabled cell phones.

~ Erika, http://TechnologyGoddess.com Social Media News

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