Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds

Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds
SXSW Panel, March 17th, 2009

Alex de Carvalho
@alexdc
alexdc.org
StartPR.com

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

“People need information as much as water, food, medicine or
shelter. Information can save lives, livelihoods and resources.
Information bestows power.”

- Markku Niskala
Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross


The challenge:

Tracking

Organizing

The random stuff


Every Cell Phone Is A Media Outlet

http://mobileactive.org/mobile-voice-use-mobile-phones-citizen-media

Mexico Earthquake
April 12th, 2007
andresb my whole apartment creaked and bent a little half a minute ago from twitterrific
andresb The strongest tremor I’ve felt since I’m here
BioXD Acaba de temblar :S….estuvo muy fuerte
andresb woooooow, earthquake in Mexico City
CyberMJ75 Damn! Just experienced an earthquake. That sucker lasted some minutes.
paranoideo Very strong earthquake in Mexico City, paranoideo.com is reporting live (:P)
earcos Very strong earthquake in Mexico City, VivirMexico.com is reporting live (in
spanish, sorry)
Satrina Earthquake in Mexico City, was long and a little bit strong
dotmotion That was a hell of an earthquake.. and I’m on a 7th floor… I still feel sick
rogeriogal Earthquake in Cuernavaca, just passed. I’m still dizzy.
trisignia wow, earthquake in Mexico City…my first ever
helmi Mexico earthquake now on german news tv
robblatt Earthquake still not on cnn.com (at approx. 11:10 p.m. Pacific)
Robert Scoble http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/12/mexico-city-earthquake-reported-on-twitter-first/

How did I ﬁnd out about the Mexico City
Earthquake? On Twitter. As soon as people started
reporting it on Twitter, I looked at the USGS maps.
The Twitterers beat the USGS by several minutes.

-Robert Scoble


China Earthquake
May 12th, 2008

“I reported the major quake to my followers on Twitter before the
USGS Website had a report up and about an hour before CNN or
major press started talking about it.

How did I do that? Well, I was watching Twitter on Google Talk.
Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT
WAS GOING ON!!!”

-Robert Scoble

http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/12/quake-in-china/

Curtis Williams http://twitter.com/lenier/statuses/376713132

Most mainstream media are
just broadcasting ...

Photo by juliebee http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/69148125@N00/326386880/

... rather than listening and tracking reports from the ground
(from users of twitter, ﬂickr, etc.)

Photo by Paulo Alegria http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/49457106@N00/280789933/
✤


We need new ways to identify news as it breaks

http://startpr.com

Mumbai Attacks

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=18.922445,72.832242&spn=0.007054,0.007864&z=17&msid=105055855763538009401.00045c9d8b16af3ad1008


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26_November_2008_Mumbai_attacks


http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Mumbai+attacks&aq=f


http://www.ﬂickr.com/search/?q=mumbai%20attacks&w=all


California Fires

http://www.ﬂickr.com/search/?q=california%20wildﬁre&w=7550402%40N02

http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/statuses/786571964


http://twitter.com/jamesbuck/status/853029967


However ...

Erroneous Amber Alert Spread Via Twitter
February 17, 2009

“AMBER ALERT A 7 yr old girl was taken by a man driving a newer silver truck.
The license plate reads 72b381 please please pass on.”

Utah authorities claimed the reports to be a false instance of an Amber Alert and
issued a statement.

However, Twitter users continued to report the missing girl, going so far as to tie up
the lines of police stations across the country with tips on the supposed abductor...

http://instantamber.com/news/breaking-news-erroneous-amber-alert-spread-via-twitter/

An attempt to provide context

“Twitter messages were providing incredible focus on the
important subtopics that had yet to become popular in the
traditional media… what I found most interesting… was
that news articles did exist on these topics, but just
weren't valued highly enough yet r not focusing on the
right stories (as the majority of tweets were).”

-Vik Singh

Architect, Yahoo! BOSS diy search engine


(1) Real-time search +
freshness

(2) Stitching social
commentary to
authoritative sources
of information

-Vik Singh

http://tweetnews.appspot.com/fresh?q=earthquake


Building a news organization from scratch on Twitter:


Social media allows not only for the reporting of
hyper-local breaking news, but also for distributing
helpful information after the fact and particularly for
organizing collective action to help deal with crises.


Instedd

quot;It's a familiar scene. Following the onset of a major disease
outbreak or natural disaster, government agencies, non-
governmental organizations and the local community must
join forces and act quickly to alleviate suffering. You, your
colleagues and groups that don't normally work together
now need to communicate, assemble teams, share
information, make plans and coordinate a response.”

http://instedd.org/


http://instedd.org/


http://gustav08.ning.com/

http://www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Main_Page


We can do a lot to prepare in advance, by learning to
✤

better identify breaking news (and providing tools and
training to people) and by planning effective methods
for crisis response using social media.

We can also work to minimize the impacts of the most
✤

random types of breaking crises and their
consequences.


“Oh, during the quake we didn’t lose power, didn’t
lose cell phones, and didn’t lose access to Twitter.

During a really big quake there will be lots of
infrastructure down, but SOMEONE will be able to get
messages out and that’ll really be interesting to watch
how information gets shared if, say, all of San Francisco
isn’t able to communicate with the Internet.”

-Robert Scoble


Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds

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