By Chelsea Dowling
As the magnitude of the July 20 Aurora, Colorado shooting tragedy hit our country, those at the Century 16 theater endured a devastating trauma that most of us, fortunately, will never have to experience — unless of course we follow a friend on Twitter who was at the Batman premiere the night of the shooting massacre.
The shooting left 12 dead and dozens injured. As the shooter approached the audience, firing aimlessly up and down the aisles, victims began to reach for their smart phones, tweeting about what was happening at the premiere, even as they fought to escape. Tweets about the film that night drastically shifted from eliciting excitement to petrifying images of horror.
This use of social media — Twitter, in particular — created a news channel for those immediately affected by this catastrophe, one that was wide open and pumping out news even before police and other authorities were even notified.
What does this say about society and social media?
Personally, Twitter is my main news source, Facebook a close second and the faint announcements I can hear from the office TV near my desk are a runner up. Every time I check my Twitter I can rely on some sort of new information — whether it comes from @katespadeny or from @FoxNews. I like to think I am up-to-date on important news stories.
This Monday, as I sat in front of the office TV watching the Penn State news conference, I checked my Twitter, and of course, the most recent tweets paraphrased the NCAA’s Mark Emmert and the college sports authority’s sanctions against Penn State for the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal. Sometimes I catch myself wondering why I don’t just cut TV out of my life and catch up on the news vicariously through the Twitter accounts of news channels and friends.
Again, what does this say about society and social media?
For one, it denotes a change in the way our society tells a story, whether it’s a tragedy or gossip. We want our followers and friends to know what we are doing, what our opinions are and that we are in the social and news “loop.” Instead of a half-hearted television interview, we now can watch current events unfold in real-time, through our mobile social media apps.
Ten years ago, witnesses would have interviewed with TV crews, but at the Century 16 shooting, witnesses first posted their personal stories to their Twitter and Facebook accounts. And then they talked to the news crews.
This also marks the dawn of an era in which grieving (and celebrating) is done in a much more public, immediate way. We are inclined to share our emotions and experiences — the good and the bad — mostly because we deem these emotions and experiences noteworthy and want to share our personal news and opinions with our friends.
It’s not just a personal phenomenon. The recent State of the News Media 2012 study by the Pew Research Center, noted, on average that more than 75% of Twitter and Facebook users get their news from links shared on these social media sites. The organizations and institutions we rely upon for guidance in these kinds of situations also recognize this shift in how we receive and share news and are making changes to accommodate these shifts.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Aurora, the American Red Cross asked witnesses to use social media to let loved ones know that they were okay, further illustrating that social media sites are replacing the immediacy of journalist-reported news. Instead of being interviewed on TV or texting each individual contact in your phone, sending out a quick 140-character tweet to your followers has become a convenient, quick, way to share the news that you’re OK.
Overall, social media sites provide real-time, always-available news stories that any user may deem newsworthy. As I wonder whether engagement in the evening news or Twitter is better, I can only conclude that news is still news.
It’s just that news is now happening in social media, everywhere from Aurora, Colorado where innocent lives were wrongfully taken to State College, Pa, where the image of Penn State may be forever tainted — all appearing on a smartphone screen in front of my eyes.
Society craves news. Whether we want to engage in it or share it — we are constantly reaching for our smartphones or the TV remote. Personally, I choose to engage in news on Twitter, where I can get the real news, social news, and others’ opinions on the news. I don’t know what that says about me, but based on what I see in my Twitter newsfeed, I can’t be that different than those I choose to follow and by extension, the rest of society.
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Chelsea Dowling is an intern for WordWrite Communications.
