Twitter and Breaking News
Reflections on the Air France 447 Incident
Munindra Khaund

My Timeline
 Approximately 6:30AM CST, Alan Clendenning
[Associated Press] reports about missing Air
France 447 flight
 Twenty-three minutes later I send a solemn tweet
 Begin to follow tweets pertaining to Air France
incident for a few hours
 Subsequent slides are my reflections on the
tweets pertaining to the incident
Munindra Khaund ‹2› 2 June 2009

Twitter Tools Used
 On Twitter Search, I searched for –
 “airfrance” OR Air France
 Translate to English
 Tweets are in several languages [in addition to English] –
Danish, German, Norwegian, Russian, Chinese. Twitter
translate tool helps to keep up with incident details.
 Trending
 “Susan Boyle”, “musicmonday”, and “e3” topping
trends.
 “Atlantic” trending on Twitter.
 “airfrance” not trending but “Air France” appears in
top-10 trends after several hours; later progresses to
second on the list.
Munindra Khaund ‹3› 2 June 2009

Nature of Tweets
 Tweets are mostly sympathetic – thoughts and
prayers – going out to missing individuals, relatives,
and friends.
 Few tweets analyze flight details – technology,
weather, angle of descent, etc.
 A couple of tweets seeks airline safety experts
 Several „I feel lucky‟ tweets about not being on the
flight or relative being on another flight to Paris
 Numerous [in bad taste] comments about LOST and
the missing Air France aircraft
Munindra Khaund ‹4› 2 June 2009

Nature of Tweets
 Few relevant resources shared – Air France Press
Release, contact numbers for relatives and
friends.
 Few retweets of shared resources
 Very different scenario on Twitter in comparison to
the Mumbai Attacks that I followed last November,
which had several retweets of important resources
 Several references to the irony of “2009: Year of
France in Brazil” and the missing flight
 References to Brazilian prince travelling on
missing flight
Munindra Khaund ‹5› 2 June 2009

Official Information*
 Air France sets up page for Press Releases
 Danish Foreign Ministry confirms Danes in missing
flight
 Aftenposten.no confirms Norwegian passengers in
missing flight
 French minister confirms passengers were mostly
Brazilians and French
 Michelin confirms executives in missing flight
* ~4.5 hours after the incident was first reported
Munindra Khaund ‹6› 2 June 2009

Media Stories
 Main story -- GM Files For Bankruptcy
 New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago
Tribune, CNN, MSNBC
 Breaking News on local newspaper
 “Illini, Mizzou calling off annual St. Louis football game”
 “Teen accused of stealing alcohol”
 “Accident leads to marijuana charge”
 “Chicago police office shot dead on South Side”
 “Air France Flight 447” page appears on Wikipedia
 Air France sets up website – “Flight Air France 447 Rio de
Janeiro - Paris-Charles de Gaulle”
 New website launched – flightairfrance447.com
Munindra Khaund ‹7› 2 June 2009

Comparing Tweets
#mumbai #airfrance
 Very large volume of tweets  Volume of tweets is medium
 Tweets primarily in English  Tweets in several languages
 Up-to-date tweets due to  More reflective tweets due to
access to incident zones location of incident zone
 Several retweets of important  Few retweets of resources;
resources – telephone only contact numbers are
numbers, websites, etc. from Air France
 Few incidences of finger-  Numerous tweets that joked
pointing but checks & about the missing plane and
balances in effect by tweeps its reference to LOST
Munindra Khaund ‹#› 2 June 2009

In Sympathy
Munindra Khaund ‹9› 2 June 2009