MIT in Boston Shooting proves, once again, that Social Media beats Mainstream Media by miles. The central tools in the monitoring of the horror at MIT, which has now turned into a chase for a car-jacked Mercedes Benz SUV in Cambridge, complete with shots fired at pursuing officers, is this online police scanner:
Broadcastify: Boston Police, Fire, and EMT
The second tool is Twitter, where we can see this feed for MIT Boston:
Tweets about “”MIT in Boston””
And these updates:
Reports of a 2nd officer down at 94 Spruce. Injured police officer is on the way to the hospital. There are reports of explosives at Dexter and Laural. Officers are ordered to GO BACK. Explosives. Police retreating. Black Mercedes SUV at 94 Spruce – suspects not inside, now. Suspects were two Middle Eastern men.
Twitter shifts to #Gunbattle #Watertown –
#Watertown updates:
Then..
Terrible updates specific to #Watertown now. Automatic weapons, gunfights, explosives rebelmouse.com/MITShooting/Wa…
— RebelMouse (@RebelMouse) April 19, 2013
And then there’s Reddit, and other platforms. Television is last to know it seems.
While all of this was going on CNN was focusing on the old news of the released photos in the Boston Marathon Shooting. As Erin Burnett was talking, Twitter was exploding with the news about the MIT Shooting.
I and others got after Burnett and CNN for not responding, but then they finally did.
So, to those of you who have doubts about the power of Social Media, get over it. It works.
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll