The Boston Police Department effectively used Twitter and Google Person Finder to disseminate information during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings when cell service was disrupted. BPD tweeted 148 times over 5 days, growing its Twitter followers from 54,000 to over 330,000. Google Person Finder allowed over 5,400 people to be registered so families could locate loved ones. While some online forums like Reddit dangerously spread misinformation by misidentifying suspects, the BPD and digital tools overall helped provide security and calm the public during the crisis.

1. BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
valinda coyle
student 0004665220

2. Digital Communication Technologies Utilized During
the Boston Marathon Bombings 2013-4-15:2:49 PM EDT
The Boston Police Department (BPD) streaming Twitter and Google’s activation of Person Finder brought Boston Strong a high
level of organization, safety and security during the aftermath of the two explosions ignited by Tamerian Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev. In a frightening event during which cell phone service was blocked out of concern that the explosives might have
been detonated by phones, the public reverted to the BPD Blog for information, causing it to crash. Cheryl Fiandaca, Bureau
Chief of Public Information, managed the crisis and updated the public via “148 tweets during the five day manhunt that ended
with the capture of suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev”. BPD’s Twitter account grew from 54,000 followers to over 330,000 followers
as a result of timely and accurate information with non-emotional, monochromatic delivery. Overall, 49 million people
communicated with BPD’s voice of security and authority during the 5 days, and the BPD was able to correct misinformation
being released by media. Digital Citizenship was exemplified during these efforts.
Google developed a system for use in times of disaster so that family members and loved ones can connect. The Google
Person Finder is one of the company’s Google.org philanthropic initiatives. The Google Crisis Response Team analyzes a
disaster and determines which of its tools would provide the most valuable support. With three dead and 282 injured near the
finish line at the Boston Marathon, Google initiated People Finder immediately after the bombings and by the following afternoon
5,400 people had been entered into the database so that they could respond to the needs of family, friends, and loved ones.
The information can be easily accessed and transferred to other databases due to common file formats. To protect privacy,
once the crisis is over the information is deleted.
Although there were chaotic and rapid succession of events surrounding the Boston Marathon Bombings, Bostonians and other
participants in the event remained calm and vigilant, and reported helpful information to the BPD until the crisis was resolved.
The sense of security was due largely to digital technologies and social media. With access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and
Pinterest, urban police departments are building relationships with those they serve in ways we never imagined possible.

3. OFF TO A GREAT START!
THOUSANDS OF ATHLETES FULL OF HOPE!

4. Media - Ethics = Harm
The Boston Marathon bombings brought out the “online world’s dark side” according to Stephen J.A. Ward, director of the University
of Oregon’s George S. Turnbull Center and author of award winning works on media and journalistic ethics, in his article, “Creating a
Sixth Estate: A Critique of All Media”. He refers to Jay Caspian Kang’s account in the New York Times Magazine of a 22 year old
Brown University student who had been missing since March 16, 2013. His parents had set up a Facebook page in an effort to find
their son. When the news of the Boston Marathon Bombings broke, the public responded to law enforcement requests to remain
calm and vigilant and to report any information they believed would be helpful in finding the suspects to the Boston Police
Department. There was tremendous response to the BPD’s Twitter account. In an online venue, Reddit.com, dangerous crowd
sourcing and vigilantism swelled around the Facebook photo of Sunil Tripathi. The speculation quickly turned into the
misidentification of Sunil as one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Days after the Marathon, Sunil’s body was found in a river in
Providence, R.I. Authorities reported that he had been in the water for some time.
Rather than being concerned with accuracy, verification, and minimizing harm Reddit made an effort to escape responsibility by
“blaming the media platform”. These media start ups, websites, and blogs must conform to the Digital Rights and Responsibilities of
Digital Citizenship. There should be no tolerance for arrogance or avoidance of personal accountability when so much irreversible
damage can be done so quickly by the “wisdom of the crowd”.
Stephen Ward is proposing a Sixth Estate: A Critique of All Media to “monitor and critique the ethical lapses of both mainstream and
non-mainstream media, to outline our digital responsibilities as citizens, citizen journalists, and mainstream journalists to articulate
guiding principles and best practices and seek accountability for all”.

5. Boston Marathon 2013
Explosion

6. How Does the Hatred Begin? The
Challenges of Digital Law
Michael Moynihan, cultural news editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast in his feature article, “My Week in the Online
Terror Underworld”, took it upon himself in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings to explore the possible
origins of the murderous philosophy and bomb building capability of the bombing suspects. By using disposable IP
addresses on radical websites and Facebook pages he sought to understand how “rabid lone wolves” are “self-
radicalized” and lured toward extremism via the Web. For seven days he crept through “the field swamps where self-
made jihadists are allegedly born”. Step by step he followed the “Lone Mujahid Pocketbook” retrieved from the
Internet Archive. With guidance from Inspire, al Qaeda’s slick online magazine, it was rather simple as an e-mujahid to
infiltrate the circles of extreme Islamists, a dark world of pornographic violence and gruesome images, primarily of
innocents, most of whom were murdered children. He noticed something about the presentation and context - “the
fetishization of violence against innocents, followed by the celebration of violence against innocents actually blunted
the emotional effectiveness”. Moynihan had fallen into a surreal world of jihadist recruiters, members of the FBI and
M16 with Internet Service Providers monitoring his every click. He found it “shocking how unconcerned extremists
were with exposing their fanatical views”. He explained the result of his immersion into the terrorist underworld as
“the further I crawled down the extremist rabbit hole and the more caved-in skulls and headless corpses I saw, the
more I found that my natural revulsion, usually an uncontrollable instinct, was easier to suppress”. He imagined the
world of online jihad might have inured the Boston bombers to violence, but believed it unlikely that it could
“immediately capture an undamaged soul”. He was reminded of French Essayist, Alain Finkielkraut’s admonition:
“Barbarism is not the inheritance of our pre-history. It is the companion that dogs our every step.”

7. Boston Marathon
2013
A Tragic Finish

8. Digital Access In Crisis Mode
Jennifer Howard of The Chronicle for Higher Education describes an effective Digital Access Technology in her article,
“For Comfort and Posterity, Digital Archives Gather Crowds”:
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Professor of English at Northeastern University is also co-director of NULab for Texts, Maps,
and Networks, a center for digital humanities and computational social science. In response to the shock of the Boston
Marathon Bombings, she and her colleagues at NULab created Our Marathon, an online community archive. Students
at Northeastern as well as the general public were invited to contribute first-person accounts, photographs, and videos
describing how the bombings affected them. This latest in a series of digital crowd sourced archives following a tragic
event is intended to be a place where communities can find comfort and solidarity through story telling - an impulse
behind the creation of many digital memory-bank projects. Our Marathon is also intended to serve as a resource for
researchers, filling in the gaps left by news-media coverage. Born-digital content and real time archiving are essential
for the success of these projects but difficult because collective memory begins to wane and people move on with their
lives. Our Marathon’s crowd-driven digital collecting parallels Boston’s citywide attempt to preserve physical artifacts
related to the bombing. Community outreach was the primary means for connection between NULab and participants.
Partnerships were formed throughout the city and an online campaign to locate individuals along with the use of Twitter
helped to garner interest in Our Marathon. Contributions repeatedly reflected stories of solidarity and healing, rather
than fear or horror. NULab reported that the university and library have provided good infrastructure and support but
efforts are being made to secure additional funding to ensure the long term storage required to keep the digital archives
open and accessible will be available as technologies change.

9. Boston Marathon
2013
Lelisa Desisa
2:09: 17
Win

10. Digital Literacy and Evidence-Based Claims
The Evolution of Digital Citizenship
Kelly Chandler-Olcott is a professor at Syracuse University and author of “Expanding What It Means To Make Evidence-
Based Claims - Online Comments and The Boston Marathon Bombings”, for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.
She explores the question, “ Whose responsibility is it to teach our students to be engaged, critical, and respectful readers
and writers in the online media sphere?” As a result of the tragedy of the Boston Marathon Bombings the author found
herself “deeply connected with the stories of courage, loss, and heroism”. She resonated with a CNN article by David
Weinberger and a New York Times piece by Oliver Bullough because she felt they, like herself, were trying to make
“provisional sense of events that defied logic and reason”. This led her to think that “student inquiry into such online
communication could be just as important as consideration of the primary texts” and the realization that the Common Core
State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Literacy “should promote multiple perspectives, active citizenship,
and online literacies”. She promotes a revision and 21st Century framing of CCSS to acknowledge the influence of
technology on literacies necessary for success in complex environments. She argues that media coverage, including the
online comments of a story like the Marathon bombings can support youths in reflecting on and thinking critically about a
tragedy and still remain consistent with Common Core State Standards. Students can learn to master complex literacy
practices from participation in online communities if literacy professionals hold fast to the vision of literacy for “life in a
technological society”.

11. References
Diigo:https://www.diigo.com/user/caycoyle
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