1. Mumbai Attacks: 2008 in Review

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Mumbai Attacks

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When a series of coordinated attacks struck India’s financial capital on November 26th, blogs, photo-sharing site Flickr, Google Maps and Wikipedia were all brought into service as news of the atrocity emerged. But it was Twitter that gained most attention as the biggest social media player in the story.
 
The microblogging site quickly became the place to which people flocked to share first-hand information about the unfolding incident, or offer their views about what was happening. The “hashtag” #mumbai was established as a means of grouping the content, but such was the volume of tweets that the stream of information quickly became overwhelming. At NowPublic we deployed our Scan tool to pick out the most relevant tweets using dynamic search terms. 
 
Described by some as Twitter’s coming of age for its ability to distribute information at speed, the event is also an example of how Asia's urban populations are increasingly the first sources of information on breaking news stories, especially through cell phones and SMS messages.

Questions were raised about Twitter’s validity as an accurate source of breaking news. The BBC was among the mainstream news organizations which used tweets in its reporting.

The BBC News website faced criticism from some readers for including tweets – unverified information - in its “live update” page about the unfolding story, alongside reports from other sources including BBC correspondents and news agencies. The BBC said that, on a major story, there was a case for passing on new information as soon as possible and leaving the audience to assess it.
 
Some commentators were concerned that “retweeting” of information created only “noise” on Twitter, but the other effect of retweeting was to broadcast important information more widely. Rumors also abounded about a request from the Indian government for people to stop posting “sensitive information” on Twitter.
 
Flickr users were in demand for their first-hand photos from the scene of the attacks, in the urban centre. Among them was NowPublic member Vinu who took photos immediately after the attack on the Nariman House. His photos were used by a variety of organizations and he was kind enough to share them with NowPublic and many others. NowPublic was also fortunate to receive first-hand round-the-clock updates from contributor and Mumbai resident Ravi Dixit.
 
Blogs such as Mumbai Help and Mumbai MetBlogs also swung into action to provide information and emergency resources in a confused situation. Since the attacks, Mumbai residents have gathered in protest, brought together for the first time by SMS, e-mail and social networking sites like Facebook.