Orlando Shootings and Social Media
I originally sent this to Alex as an e-mail but after seeing Alex Ludka's really cool post about her experiences with the Fort Hood tragedy I figured I'd share my story as well.
I intern at Meet the Press and last week we had a bit of a slow day. Because things were so slow, they had us sit in behind the scenes at Andrea Mitchell Reports. We basically sat with all the producers and everything as the show was happening and got to see how everything was put together. This was the same day as the Orlando shootings so they were scrambling to cover it. At one point, they finally got the name of the shooter. The second it happened, I looked over at one of the researchers and noticed that the first two places he looked for the shooters name were Twitter and Facebook. I also couldn't help notice that the profile shot all the news shows were using, including NBC, was just a cropped shot of his profile picture. Social media has definitely taken over our lives.
I intern at Meet the Press and last week we had a bit of a slow day. Because things were so slow, they had us sit in behind the scenes at Andrea Mitchell Reports. We basically sat with all the producers and everything as the show was happening and got to see how everything was put together. This was the same day as the Orlando shootings so they were scrambling to cover it. At one point, they finally got the name of the shooter. The second it happened, I looked over at one of the researchers and noticed that the first two places he looked for the shooters name were Twitter and Facebook. I also couldn't help notice that the profile shot all the news shows were using, including NBC, was just a cropped shot of his profile picture. Social media has definitely taken over our lives.
posted by Ben Goldberg at
9:33 AM
2 Comments:
I definitely agree that social media has taken over in all aspects of our lives. The fact that "big shots" like important researchers at news organizations are turning first to Facebook and Twitter for sources of information is almost comical to me. I personally would be a little nervous to use those as a primary source, especially because of possible factual errors. With the 140 character limit, people shorten what they want to say and sometimes the messages can be taken the wrong way as was the case when Christine Brennan commented on the Erin Andrews incident.
By
Danielle Chazen, At
November 13, 2009 12:18 PM
I agree it is pretty crazy how much influence twitter has garnered in such a short time. One of my responsibilities as an intern at National Geographic is to track our Twitter and take note of what people are saying - whether its about the any of our magazines, our missions, or even the channel. We have been doing a lot with blogging too. I think if I was here 2 years ago my experiences as an intern would be much different.
By
Pete, At
November 16, 2009 12:09 PM
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