On Monday 15th April 2013 two explosions went off on the final stretch of the Boston marathon. Over 150 people were reported to be injured and 3 people were unfortunately killed.
Social media has played a huge role this week. It has been both a huge advantage yet also a big disadvantage.
Amazingly, news broke about the bombings by a Tweet on Twitter which news corporations and publishers picked up. Within minutes of the explosions there were hundreds of reporters, photographers and camera men on the scene getting in the way of the police and marathon organisers.
People just like you and me who were at the marathon were taking photos and videos and then uploading them to Vine, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for the world to see. This is called Citizen Journalism.
Because television can’t keep up with social media and news on the internet. Some news anchors resorted to reading out rumours and comments from their Twitter feed. As you can expect, these were uncensored and risky to say on air. There was lots of inappropriate content on the internet that night as people jumped to conclusions and blamed certain groups of people for the bombings. Some of the racist comments even started trending on Twitter.
Yesterday, a shootout between a suspect and the police was recorded on camera by somebody living in the local area and then published onto YouTube. This was also citizen journalism which was used by hundreds of news publishers.
This morning (Saturday 20th April 2013) news broke that the final suspect had finally been arrested. This is a huge relief for everyone in Boston.
In conclusion, we've now learnt that in the future no matter how tragic a news story is, it will be photographed, filmed and written about not just by news publishers but also by the general public. Is this a good thing though?
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