Mumbai Terror: Twitter, Flickr & YouTube = Cutting-Edge News Media

by Erik Larson | November 28, 2008 at 02:03 pm

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Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other people-driven new media are increasingly the front lines of news coverage on important breaking events. While they sometimes include erroneous information, they are proving to be a valuable resource for firsthand reports, and local knowledge and opinion regarding events. Misinformation, if reported, is soon corrected by both the blogosphere and mainstream media.

Mumbai Attacks: Twitter Adds to the Noise but Is Still Valuable

As you have certainly heard already, a new terrorist attack took place in Mumbai, India with terrorists attacking multiple locations, including hotels, café, and a hospital. The attack left more than 85 people dead and 200 injured - and there are also people taken hostage by the terrorists (mainly US and Britain citizens). Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is a financial capital of India and a very important city as that - and probably an appealing target for terrorists as such. Wired has a good roundup of where to find first-hand reports on the Mumbai attacks across various social media sites, Flickr, YouTube, and blogs from local bloggers.

But our usual discussion when something important happens is how Twitter is better than mainstream news outlets and even bloggers in covering the event and letting everyone willing to listen know what is going on. So just as usual we can’t help but engage in the discussion of the extremely important role of Twitter and how it can be a great source of journalism.