I have vivid memories of the Boston Marathon from growing up in the Boston metro area. The Marathon came right down Route 16 through the middle of Natick where we lived. We used to watch the fun from the top of the parking garage at Newton-Wellesley Hospital where my step-father worked. Later, after college, I lived in Back Bay near the finish line.
The craziness of the bombing and aftermath came as a big shock to me, seeing all those familiar places splashed across the TV screen. I was watching in Florida, a thousand miles away. What kept me in touch were the old standbys, now on Twitter – the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) and the Boston Police Department. It was a jump to the social media age.
When law enforcement agencies finally captured Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the first official announcement wasn’t made at a press conference. Instead, the news was broadcast in two Twitter messages: “Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info,” read the first tweet from the Boston Police Department on April 19, followed by “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”
Score one for the good guys!
Those were the positives. On the negative side was a huge social media vigilante effort to identify the perps from the massive amount of photos and tips surrounding the race. In particular, one missing college student was incorrectly tagged as a suspect, and the New York Post fingered two innocents on their cover and never retracted the article or apologized.
Some pundit jerks used the occasion to make the bombing all about immigration and gun control. It was hard to separate the signal from the noise. Still, as in the Arab Spring, social media triumphed in reporting the breaking news and making quick corrections of bad information – as exemplified by the Boston Police Department.
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