I want to begin this post by offering my heartfelt sympathy and thoughts to those affected by the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. There are no words, there is no fix-it phrase or mantra.
I try to engage in social media. I have accounts across the spectrum; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a heckuva lot more. When an earthquake hit Sichuan Province in China, the Twitterverse erupted in a steady stream of information sharing and updates from those in the affected areas. Last night, I rather accidentally read the first of many updates from Jason Calacanis about news of a terrorist attack in Mumbai. Other news began to trickle in, and I flicked between the Beeb, CNN and Al Jazeera at home to get updates. At one point, CNN told its viewers to check Twitter out for latest news and updates.
Okay, so has Twitter (and the wider social media universe) been helpful? While some of the news coming out of Mumbai has been helpful - Aditya Sengupta being particularly helpful by updating maps and the list of injured and deceased as well as an aggregated feed of information from the aptly named account MumbaiAttacks - a lot of it seems to be hysterical chatter and bandwagon jumping. How much of it is genuinely useful to you? I can't say that much of it is to me.
For breaking news, Twitter is great. It's the first place I heard about the Mumbai attacks, the Sichuan earthquake. URL-shortening links from CNN or any other media outlet and tweeting it seems to be clogging the feeds of a lot of people today. The platform is designed for rapid-fire response, but I would venture a theory: the people who are then made aware of the situation are going to get their news elsewhere. They're going to read the viewpoint that's important and relevant to them (i.e. Canadians wanting updates on the status of fellow Canadians might go to the Toronto Star, people wanting updates on the Chabad House attacked by the terrorists might go to VosIzNeias, and British people might go to the BBC). The information on those sites, as much as we love to use hashtags, is far more organized and readable than a random mashup of TinyURLs and advice to stop Tweeting updates because the terrorists might be watching.
The Telegraph breathlessly announced that last night, the social media came of age. Wait a second. Did someone not say this about the earthquake in Sichuan, the cyclone in Myanmar or the arrest of an American in Cairo? It's a great medium and feel free to call me old school here, but let's take a breath. While print newspapers might be taking a last, raspy gasp of air, traditional media outlets are alive and kicking. They integrate social media, alongside real, trained journalists (okay, maybe Faux News doesn't count here). I'll eat my shoe (and it's a big one) if social media overtakes television or the internet as the place where people get their updates - it's simply far too disorganised to become a viable option for the masses.
Maybe it's time we stop thinking we're as important as we want to be or perceive we are in the social media sphere and give a thought to the people who are caught up in this tragedy of unimaginable proportions. I'll venture a tweet here - please be with them, support them and help them as they deal with this attack. It's happened, and I sure as goodness can't do anything about it from where I'm sitting. Pray, meditate, contemplate, reflect. Peace be with them.
