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Jamillah Knowles from BBC interviewed me last week for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Here is the podcast –

– and here is the full text of the story –

Mumbai online and a virtual World Aids Day

Jamillah Knowles 3 Dec 08, 03:57 AM
The podcast is ready and waiting for you! This week we take a look at the online side of the attacks in Mumbai from the shape of data to the aid on the ground. If you would like to follow up and visit the sites you heard in the show, here’s where you can find them:

Gaurav Mishra is the Yahoo fellow in communications technology and intermational values at Georgetown University - he primarily does research on developing countries and talks about the shape of information online during crisis reporting.

Kamla Bhatt is the host and producer of an award winning syndicated online radio show about life, people and ideas. She tells us her online decisions as events unfolded.

Peter Griffin is a journalist, blogger and is part of a global network of people who try their best to organise aid, provide support and help those affected in a crisis.

My blog was mentioned as a source in a Associated Press story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The story was reproduced in several newspapers including Hindustan Times, Huffington Post, Business Week, Fox News, New York Times and Salon, amongst others.

Here is the full text of the Associated Press story (AP has very graciously waived off the reproduction fees) –

Bloggers provide raw view of Mumbai attacks
By SAM DOLNICK – 1 day ago

NEW DELHI (AP) — When gunmen started spraying Mumbai with bullets and seizing the city’s landmarks, countless people around the globe turned not to the television or the radio for news, but to each other.

Blogs and social networking sites like Twitter and Flickr buzzed with eyewitness accounts from India’s financial capital, providing some of the first photos of the besieged targets and serving as a forum for pleas for updates on friends and family.

Photos posted on Flickr just 90 minutes after the attacks had been viewed at least 110,000 times by Sunday.

Twitter users, who simply tagged their comments “mumbai,” traded information at a rate of 50-100 posts a minute in messages that were sometimes wrong, often fragmented, but always instant.

I was interviewed by Los Angeles Times last week for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Here is the full text of the Los Angeles Times story –

Mumbai news fished from Twitter’s rapids
9:45 AM, December 2, 2008

Grenade attack in Colaba market,” read a Twitter message from a user named Abhishek Baxi on Saturday. Then a few minutes later. “Blast outside Oberoi Hotel in South Mumbai.”

Baxi was one of the first Twitter users to post updates about the attacks in Mumbai. But he was far from the last.

The microblogging medium, along with several other new media platforms, saw its first sustained action in an international crisis. As awareness of the attacks spread, the Twitter throughput soared. Once a way for friends to keep each other updated on daily routines, Twitter is now looking more like a legitimate medium for short bits of information. The problem is there’s just way too much of it.

During the attacks, users from around the world posted tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of short notes, updates, musings and links to the latest information on Mumbai — many, if not most, of the facts coming from mainstream news outlets.

I have been tracking the role of citizen journalism in the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack in a timeline, a work-in-progress case study and a Flickr set of screenshots.

Hundreds of people — led by Vinukumar Ranganathan, Dina Mehta and Peter Griffin — shared news and other useful information from Mumbai on Twitter, Flickr and their blogs. Several bloggers live-blogged the event while Global Voices and DesiPundit worked hard to highlight the best posts.

However, even as we spent sleepless nights highlighting the most useful information on the Mumbai terror attack, several other people were busy spreading hate through some of the same online tools.

I don’t think of myself as particularly political and, in three years of blogging, I haven’t written even one post that is political in nature. My first tendency is to shy away from participating in emotionally charged political discussions like the ones beginning to dominate the Indian blogosphere now. I’m sure many of you feel the same way.

However, we will be doing ourselves great disservice if we step back and let the loonies take over. The 11/26 Mumbai terror attack is over, but the work of the online community in India is not over.

( The Mumbai terror attack has finally ended after more than 60 hours.

Finally, the role of the online community in India has not ended with the Mumbai terror attack. We need to come together to shape a moderate, nuanced online discussion on the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack to bring back calm and peace to Mumbai and ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes others have made after such tragedies.

I was interviews by CBS News yesterday for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

A small clip from the interview was shown on The Early Show at CBS News today morning (YouTube)–

Here is the full text of the CBS News story –

Web A Reliable Resource In Mumbai Madness
New Media Allowed The World To Look In On A City In Crisis
NEW YORK, Nov. 28, 2008

(CBS) The reach of the Internet proved a reliable resource when madness took to the streets of Mumbai on Wednesday as new media allowed the world to look in on a city in crisis and receive real-time information from citizen journalists as events were first unfolding.

Before the sights and sounds of the attacks in Mumbai could be televised, cell phones and the Internet were abuzz, both in blogs and with images as the horror unfolded, reports Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

“What’s important is to get a quick sense of what’s happening,” said social networking expert Gaurav Mishra. “One of the first real photographs of the scene was posted by somebody on Flickr.”

Introduction

Over the last day and a half, I have been following the story on the critical role played by citizen journalism in the 11/26 Mumbai terror attacks.

Mainstream media and the tech blogosphere have also been following the story actively.

The story has been framed in several ways — “new media vs. mainstream media”, “Twitter vs. blogs”, and even “Indian vs. American internet users” — and I thought that it may be worthwhile to write a long article length post and separate the myths from the reality.

I’ll divide my post into three parts —

- Part 1: What happened with citizen journalism during the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack?

- Part 2: How was it different from what has happened with citizen journalism before?

- Part 3: What does it mean for the future of citizen journalism?

Part 1: What happened with citizen journalism during the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack?

The citizen journalism narrative during the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack was not about bloggers going out into the disturbed areas with their camera phones, shooting photos and videos of the live action, then uploading it to their blogs or social networks, and writing in-depth commentary to accompany it.

Earlier today, Indian daily DNA interviewed me for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Here is the full text of the DNA story –

Twitter edges out blogs, Flickr and YouTube survive
Sreejiraj Eluvangal / DNA
Friday, November 28, 2008 03:03 IST

Twitter blew apart the blogosphere, as netizens clamoured for information about the Mumbai attacks

When Vinukumar Ranganathan spent about Rs1 lakh on a digital camera and lenses; he never thought it would one day lead to international fame. But thanks to the increasing power of the Internet, even a hobbyist like Vinu has suddenly become the celebrated face of citizen journalism.

“Yesterday, at about 10.30pm, I heard two loud bangs,” says the 27-year-old mobile software-builder, who lives next to the Colaba Fire Station in South Mumbai. “I did not pay much heed to it. But my sister was watching the TV and suddenly she said, ‘there’s shooting at the railway station’. So, I collected my camera and stepped out to investigate.”

The following Indian bloggers have been live-blogging the Mumbai terror attacks. While most bloggers are posting news and opinion based on mainstream media coverage, a few are posting first hand accounts and even photographs. I still haven’t seen any user generated videos.

Some of these links came from DesiPundit, GlobalVoices and BlogAdda.

I’ll regularly update this post, along with my original post on citizen journalism in Mumbai terrorist attacks.

- Global Voices (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)

- MumbaiHelp Blog (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

- India Uncut (first-hand)

- Sonia Faleiro (first-hand)

- Arun Shanbag (first-hand + photos)

- Manish Vij at Ultrabrown (1, 2 and 3)

- John Mathew (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

- Arzan Sam Wadia at Mumbai Metblogs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)

- Aditya Sengupta

- Saroj (1, 2)

- Kunal Sheth (1, 2, 3, 4)

- Praful

- Falstaff

- Prem Panicker (1, 2)

Earlier today, Indian Daily LiveMint interviewed me for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Here is the full text of the LiveMint story –

Web a-twitter with terror attacks
Social networking sites act as news media for thousands during terrorist attacks that killed over 100 people
Melissa A. Bell

New Delhi: Shortly after terrorist attacks riddled South Mumbai, rather than turning on their televisions, thousands of people across the world turned to the World Wide Web for instant information.

Social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, were instantly updated with on-the-scene information, all compacted into 140-word updates. Twitter seemed to be the most popular site, with 50-100 messages uploaded per minute, and tagged under the chain of “mumbai” or “#mumbai”.

Some pleaded for information: “‘Emergency’ can some one check if there bomb blast of some shootout in Oberoi hotel of anywhere in Mumbai? I am at Inox inside”.

Meanwhile, other users broadcast the news: “Guys pls stay wherever u r…mumbai is under terrorist attacks… god help us.” Throughout the night and into Thursday, the site had a constant stream of voices reporting, commenting and lamenting the state of Mumbai.