Howard B. Schaffer has spent much of his 36-year career dealing with U.S. relations with South Asia, including a stint as ambassador to Bangladesh. He has recently finished writing a book on America’s role in Kashmir, titled ‘The Limits of Influence’, which will be published by the Brookings Institute early next year. He is now the Deputy Director at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

In a 23 minute interview, we spoke about the history of America’s role in the Indian sub-continent and how it is likely to change in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack.

Ambassador Schaffer believes that we will have a replay of the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan we saw in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament. However, given the transitional government in United States, a weak government in Pakistan, and an end of term government in India, no decisive action is likely to be taken by any of the three governments.

Here is the video version of the interview –

Here is a lighter audio version of the interview –

As a background, here are two recent articles by Howard B. Schaffer on America’s interests in the India-Pakistan relations –The Washington Times and Council on Foreign Affairs.

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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.

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I’m sure that there is much anger in general against the Indian mainstream media both online and offline. Since mainstream media is unlikely to highlight such stories themselves, the anger is more visible online.

As I can see, there are three themes in the anger against Indian news media’s coverage of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack –

1. Criticism for broadcasting sensitive information and sensationalizing the news coverage.

2. Criticism for giving more importance to the attacks on the Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident hotels than the attack on the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST).

3. Criticism (by Pakistani media) for not questioning the government’s version of the story.

I can understand #1, but my personal view is that conventional media did a reasonable job in covering the crisis, in spite of its tendency to sensationalize the news and its inability to draw the line at showing sensitive news about the movement of the security forces. In general, more information is often better than less information during a crisis and a free but foolish media is preferable to a mature but muzzled media. #2 is so absurd that I wouldn’t even comment on it. #3 is to be expected given that Pakistan’s role in the Mumbai terror attack is under a serious international spotlight, but I’m sure that it is not helping Pakistan’s cause at all.

Here is a regularly updated list of blog posts and newspaper articles on the role of Indian news media in the 11/26 Mumbai attacks. I’m trying to include a diverse set of views here, but, as I have said before, I don’t necessarily agree with all of them and even find some of them naive, misleading, or even malicious.

Neha Vishwanathan at Global Voices takes the pulse of the sentiment in Indian blogosphere –

Anger at the media for their coverage of the terror attacks in Mumbai is apparent on the blogosphere (as)… the mainstream media appears to have taken the approach of “shock and shake”, as opposed to verifying rumors before reporting them.

Falstaff criticizes Indian news media for indiscriminately broadcasting information that might have been useful to the terrorists –

It seems to me that most media channels are too busy trying to sensationalize the news to bother thinking through the consequences of what they’re saying. It’s not just that much of the coverage seems to be designed to amplify the general hysteria and panic, it’s also that watching journalists describe what the police are doing or report on who is still trapped inside the hotels, I find myself wondering whether anyone’s considered that at least some of that information might be helping the attackers.

– then draws lessons from it in an update —

Television reporters have their own pressures and incentives. With the multiplicity of channels covering these events, responsibility is necessarily diffuse, and voluntary restraint would require a level of disinterested collaboration that is always going to be fragile. Even if n-1 channels self-censored, there would always be the 1 channel that would broadcast sensitive information just to get its ratings up. This doesn’t excuse the media’s behavior, doesn’t make them less responsible for any and all negative consequences of their reporting; but it does mean that the media response we’re seeing is predictable and unsurprising, and should have been planned for in advance.

It’s not simply a question of whether live feeds have finally been disabled, or television input to the hotel eventually been cut. It’s not even really a question of how much the information given out by the media helped the attackers this time around. The real question - to me, at least - is: if the government needed to clamp down on the media and cut communication channels in an emergency, could it do so quickly, efficiently and comprehensively? The answer, based on what we’re currently seeing, is a frightening no. That’s a vulnerability that future terrorist groups - groups far more sophisticated in their manipulation of information than the ones currently attacking Mumbai - could exploit to devastating advantage.

Shefali Anand and Vibhuti Agarwal in The Wall Street Journal chronicle the highs and lows of the Indian media’s coverage of the Mumbai terror attack –

Most of the Indian television news channels have been around for less than five years. For some, the Mumbai siege, which began Wednesday night, was the first major event they had covered live, and they rushed to provide nonstop coverage to the riveted national audience.

Viewers’ feedback on coverage of the siege has been uneven. While millions of viewers remained glued to their screens for the latest information, some criticized the coverage in their blogs — irritated with the hyperbole and melodramatic rhetoric of some TV reporters.

The live coverage of the attack raised concerns about potential risks to India’s security operations. Some TV channels showed the positions of security forces stationed outside the buildings that were under siege, and some aired information about commandoes’ movements. That alarmed security officials: They worried that the information might reach the terrorists, who Indian authorities believe carried cellphones.

Security officials and a broadcasting-industry association eventually asked TV channels to exercise restraint in what they aired.

Faiz Dadarkar asks the Indian media what they were thinking during the Mumbai terror attack –

Tahmineh Khajotia at The Huffington Post critiques the oneupmanship in the Indian media’s coverage of the Mumbai terror attack —

It has been impossible to ignore the countless times news channels claim to be the first to report a certain incident. It is almost sickening. Before the incident is reported, they remind us that they are the first to be reporting it. Is that really the most important side of a developing crisis?

Faking News has a hilarious take on the Indian media’s mistakes during the coverage –

Our readers must have been watching television news for most of the day to get latest updates on the terrorist strikes in Mumbai.

And I’m sure our readers not only got latest updates, they would have got to see latest ‘LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE’ videos and pictures on most of the news channels. The channels surely did a good job at getting news and information, whatever the source was, fast.

And the terrorists inside the hotels must have deputed one person to keep track of news reports to track movements of the security personnel and the army, and to finalize strategies to attack them.

Journalist friends of our team inform us that Home Ministry had called up editorial heads of news channels to direct them to stop reporting about deployment and movement of security agencies as it could compromise their safety, but the channels had some ‘internal resistance’ as they thought compliance with Ministry’s advices would compromise their ‘LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE’ status and TRPs.

But we watch the ‘LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE’ things and give them the TRPs. Maybe there should be an option of negative TRPs, just like we want negative vote in our electoral process.

Anyway, we might be overreacting (are we?). But what explains the rationale behind India TV’s decision to broadcast a phone call by an alleged terrorist LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE?

The voice, listened to by millions all over India and abroad, claimed that the “Muslims of India would be proud of this act. Muslims of India are feeling relaxed and satisfied at their heart for this. Allah is with us and we’ll strike again” and similar messages.

And this audio clip was played again and again. Unedited, unrestrained, and unexplained. And a CNN reporter from Mumbai told his studio in Atlanta that some parts of India were feeling communal tensions and there could be communal riots.

India TV proudly claimed – आतंकवादी इंडिया टीवी देख रहे हैं – Terrorists Are Watching India TV. Poetic!

Lord, forgive them as they don’t know what they are doing.

Mutiny says that the Indian news media’s coverage of the Mumbai terror attack was an eye-opener –

Another eye-opener is the role of the media. The same pseudo-secular reporters “terrorizing” people across the country with their spot commentary and “latest updates”.

Their coverage of the attacks has been completely self-defeating and highly immoral, if nothing else. They are causing as much damage to us right now, just not in terms of lives. Shameful irreverence from such tardy mediapersons is shocking in such times. They definitely have an agenda of their own, and I can bet my entire fortune on it that the unity of the people or strict action on terrorism is not part of it. They are too happy in their petty world of pointless debates, disuniting and cynical rhetoric and brainless remarks on sensitive issues.

Chetan Kunte singles out NDTV anchor Barkha Dutt for criticism –

Appalling journalism. Absolute blasphemy! As I watch the news from home, I am dumbfounded to see Barkha Dutt of NDTV break every rule of ethical journalism in reporting the Mumbai mayhem.

You do not need to be a journalist to understand the basic premise of ethics, which starts with protecting victims first; and that is done by avoiding key information from being aired publicly—such as but not limited to revealing the number of possible people still in, the hideouts of hostages and people stuck in buildings.

One of the criticisms about Barkha Dutt on Wikipedia reads thus: “During the Kargil conflict, Indian Army sources repeatedly complained to her channel that she was giving away locations in her broadcasts, thus causing Indian casualties.” Looks like the idiot journalist has not learnt anything since then.

In fact, I am willing to believe that Hemant Karkare died because these channels showed him prepare (wear helmet, wear bullet-proof vest.) in excruciating detail live on television.

Drishtikone calls Barkha Dutt a dream come true for the terrorists –

Barkha Dutt and NDTV is a terrorist’s DREAM COME TRUE!! They must really love having Barkha Dutt cover every strike they do… hoping that she will help them by facilitating more KILLINGS and slayings. I am sure ONE of the special preparation by the terrorists have been subscription to NDTV’s live news coverage.. maybe they their masters have been running a live audio cast on the satellite phone for them from Pakistan.

Ankit Sharma joins in the Barkha-bashing –

Barkha Dutt – an icon of Indian broadcast media, a padma shri recipient and a ‘war reporter’ is a journalist I have grown to despise. She symbolizes the new breed of sensationalism that has become synonymous with much of the what passes off as ‘news’ in India.

Reporting is almost always melodramatic, ridden with emotional outbursts with no structure or thought given to the rapid diarrhoea of words during interviews and live reporting. This was most apparent during the Bombay terror attacks when victims and hostages are posed with plain daft and platitudinous questions such as “How do you feel? Are you distraught?”. While this is the general quality of reporting, I find it amusing that reporters like Barkha Dutt are made out to be an exception to this wider incompetence, when in fact she is merely part of the pack, the only difference being that she participates in the trend with a conceited confidence. Objectivity is non-existent and live television is an opportunity to have emotional (read loud) outbursts of ‘disaster’ rhetoric, incoherent reports, garish on-screen chyrons, all of this synchronized with distasteful manufactured dramatic music.

Prakash Francis compiles a list of tweets bashing Barkha Dutt.

The Facebook Group that advocates taking Barkha Dutt off air has 1500+ members.

An online petition that asks Indian news channels to show maturity has more than 1300 signatures –

We, the ordinary citizens of India, are asking TV reporters to show some maturity.

We don’t want your “news updates” or “breaking news”. We don’t need to see everything live. We don’t want sensationalism, we want real journalism.

So please think before you turn your cameras on. And think about the society before you think about TRPs and ad revenues.

Govind Kansi criticized Western media along with the Indian news media –

Western media painted as if this was important since only westerners were targeted (across US/ UK/ Australia).They conveniently forgot there were lot of brown skinned commoners whose lives were abrupted.

I for one cannot forget why Guardian/ BBC/ CNN quickly term everything on themselves as terrorist attacks but in India as unidentified gunmen. I am sick and tired of their biased view and condesceding behavior.

Ashok Bhattacharya in Business Standard wonders why the attack at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) wasn’t covered as prominently as the attacks on the Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident hotels –

Could it be because the media’s concern with the killing of some ordinary middle-class citizens in a railway station was far less than that with the attack on members of the elite India, who had gathered in those luxury hotels?

Clearly, the problem is not with the kind of coverage given to last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The problem arises when similar events affecting the common man do not get the same treatment. It is then that questions arise on whether the media’s coverage is influenced by its consideration of reaching a larger number of viewers or readers and in the process gaining more mileage for its advertisers.

Gnani Sankaran rails against the double standards of the Indian media –

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news channels and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is enough, said Pranoy Roy’s channel on the left side of the channel spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in this game of one upmanship over TRPs ? They all attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm action from the government in tackling terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class of Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves and refused to be resilient themselves.

Sans Serif does a roundup of the war of words between Indian and Pakistani media –

India and Pakistan may only just have begun rattling their sabres in the aftermath of the terror attack on Bombay, but a fullblown war has already broken out between the media of the two countries over the Indian media’s “unquestioning acceptance” of the Indian government’s “unsubstantiated” claim of a Pakistani link.

Hindustan Times reports that Pakistani media is coming together to counter India’s accusations that the terrorists had links to Pakistan –

Three days after Mumbai siege ended, Pakistan media launched a counter offensive lampooning Indian security agencies and claiming that Pakistan is not behind these terror attacks.

Pak media made a strong pitch that it is India’s own fanatic groups who are behind those terror attacks. Quoting Samjhauta Express bomb blast, they are constantly conducting discussions on the news channels and slamming Indians for holding Paksitan responsible for the Mumbai attack.

Nirupama Subramanian at The Hindu also reports on the Pakistani media’s criticism of the Indian media –

The escalating tensions between India and Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks have led to the declaration of hostilities in unexpected quarters – Pakistani media has declared a virtual war on Indian media for its “knee-jerk” finger-pointing across the border, and its unquestioning acceptance of the Indian government’s “Pakistan-link” theory.

Leading the charge against the India media are the Pakistani television channels, with panel discussions shows devoted exclusively to the coverage of the Mumbai attacks by the Indian media.

Top Pakistani journalists are asking why the Indian media, more specifically the electronic media, have been so willing to accept the government theory that the attackers came from Pakistan.

They are dismissive of reports in the Indian press that the terrorists had links with Lashkar-e-Taiba, or that they landed in Mumbai in a boat from Karachi. Instead, they are asking why these reports are not demanding the government for evidence of these allegations.

On the whole, Pakistanis — as evident from public phone-ins to talk shows — are even questioning if the entire ghastly episode was not all engineered by Indian intelligence agencies working in connivance with the U.S. to “defame” Pakistan with the intention of dismembering it.

Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal argues that the media’s overzealous coverage of real and imaginary atrocities against Muslims fuels the anger that leads to terrorist attacks like 11/26 in Mumbai –

It’s worth wondering why a media that treats nearly every word uttered by the U.S., British or Israeli governments as inherently suspect has proved so consistently credulous when it comes to every dubious or defamatory claim made against those governments. Or, for that matter, why the media has been so intent on magnifying genuine scandals (like Abu Ghraib) to the point that they become the moral equivalent of 9/11. Some caution is in order: Terrorists, of all people, might actually believe what they read in the papers.

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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.

The lightning-quick updates of the attacks that killed 174 people read like a sketchy but urgent blow-by-blow account of the siege, providing further evidence of a sea change in how people gather their information in an increasingly Internet-savvy world.

“‘Emergency’ can some one check if there bomb blast of some shootout in oberoi hotel of anywhere in Mumbai ? I am at inox inside,” a user named Puneet wrote on Twitter, a popular “microblogging” Web site, shortly after the violence began.

“I just heard what sounded like a bomb blast! I hope I am wrong,” krazyfrog, a user in Mumbai, wrote soon after.

“People stay where you are. We’re under attack,” wrote Whizzkidd, also in the city.
The dramatic siege, which targeted some of the city’s most famous landmarks, threw the user-generated corner of the Internet into high gear.

A Google map of the targets was created hours after the violence began and had received 375,000 hits at last glance. A Wikipedia page was created for the attacks and has been updated thousands of times. Blogs like Mumbai Heros were created to honor the victims.

Vinukumar Ranganathan, 27, posted some of the first photos of the attacks. After hearing the initial blasts Wednesday night, he grabbed his camera and rushed outside his apartment near many of the targets. He found a chaotic scene of destroyed cars, buildings with blown out windows, and pools of blood spreading in the street and finally arrived at the besieged headquarters of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish center ahead most of the local and international press.

An hour and a half later — while much of the world was still struggling to understand what was unfolding — Ranganathan announced on Twitter that he had posted 112 photos on Flickr, a popular photo-sharing Web site.

Over the next three days, he ventured out into the streets several times, photographing and posting what he saw.

The pictures are blurry and raw, but, taken together, provide a compelling portrait of this week’s chaos and carnage.

“I was just updating online because I could see the buildings from my house,” Ranganathan, who works at a mobile texting company, told The Associated Press in an interview. “I just felt that there were lots of people I was communicating with who were also my friends, so it was about the personal connection.”

Some bloggers posted firsthand accounts of the attacks on their own sites.

Sonia Faleiro “ate stir fry and drank campari” at a boutique hotel near the landmark Taj Mahal hotel just before the violence began.

“We stepped out of the hotel and bullets rang in the air, people screamed, a tidal wave raced down the street and the security guard said ‘Inside! Madam, Inside NOW!’” she wrote. “We thought then it was a gang war, and it would end soon.”

Arun Shanbhag, another south Mumbai blogger, wrote of sleeping through the blasts, even though he lives just one block from the Taj. He later posted dramatic photos of the 105-year-old hotel in flames.
“When I saw the dome of the Taj burning, my heart bleeds! It is all in knots! I am overwhelmed! Finally tears, in torrents!…Will the Taj be there when I wake up?” he wrote.

During the attacks Twitter became the village square for the online world, and the posts served as all things at once: public service announcements about where to donate blood; news ticker updates of death tolls; and even, sometimes, comic relief.

“Random 3 a.m. question while we wait for news to filter in: Why doesn’t our PM move his facial muscles when he communicates?” a user named orange jammies posted hours after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s address to the nation.

For many Twitter users, traditional media like radio and TV were too slow — and forget about waiting for tomorrow’s newspaper.

“Some channels just keep repeating the same stuff,” said Ranganathan. “I felt more like I was telling friends what was happening.”

At times, Ranganathan found himself facing ethical questions familiar to larger news organizations. He snapped a series of photos of corpses, but felt uneasy about posting the images.
Struggling with the decision, he did what he had done all week: He turned to his online peers. He posted a poll on his blog about whether to publish the photos — the response was 50-50. He decided not to.

On the Net:
http://twitter.com
http://flickr.com/photos/vinu/collections/72157610285196083/
http://www.gauravonomics.com/
http://mumbaiheros.blogspot.com/
http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com
http://arunshanbhag.com

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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.

Baxi listed himself as living in New Delhi, hundreds of miles from the action, which means he was probably repeating something he saw on the news.

Though it’s certainly possible with the right amount of patience and know-how, finding useful “tweets” during a major event like this is a little like panning for gold in a raging river.

Gaurav Mishra, a social media researcher at Georgetown University who’s been tracking the Web’s role in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, was cautious about Twitter’s general usefulness. The service “played an extremely important role when the focus was on sharing news,” he said, meaning that once certain tidbits came out, they spread quickly. But, he added, because so much of it was recycled or dubiously sourced, “the journalistic value of Twitter is suspect.”

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the official counts weren’t in yet but that he was “fairly comfortable saying that this is the biggest international event Twitter has been part of.” When asked about the best ways to sift through all those tweets, Stone offered that “more refined ways of filtering and searching are part of Twitter’s near future. We are focusing on tools now that will help users extract more relevance from the volume of data.”

The Mumbai attacks, and the way they unfolded in online media, are indeed an excellent case study on the idea of “extracting relevance.” For those who prefer sitting back and allowing their information to be doled out to them in nicely digested chunklets, television news remains the La-Z-Boy of news consumption.

On the spectrum’s other end, if you want your information raw — as in, immediate, unprocessed and full of impurities — you can head up to the digital river and roll up your sleeves. It’s a lot of work getting information that’s both reliable and brand new.

A few years ago, sane people would have still argued that the whole point of taking your time with reporting a story is so that you have a chance to synthesize facts, evaluate your sources, double-check and get your story straight. But no one would ever say that anymore: Things are speeding up, not slowing down, and Twitter and its insta-reporting counterparts are here to stay. Separating the signal from the noise has to happen at just about every level of online news consumption.

And that’s where Sreenath Sreenivasan came in. Taking advantage of another new media platform, Sreenivasan, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a technology reporter, began a series of online radio shows to help readers make sense of the sprawling and fragmented situation.

Sreenivasan tapped into a network of peers — the South Asian Journalists Assn. — to find an international group of reporters, historians and novelists, as well as regular people in Mumbai. Internet radio is just like broadcast radio, only it allows listeners to tune in, write in or call in from anywhere in the world. In a sense, then, the virtual brain trust assembled for the SAJA webcast was a living answer to the problem of information overflow: Link together a bunch of varied perspectives, pool a bunch of expert knowledge, and suddenly the picture gets a little less fuzzy.

“I never got the sense that people were competing,” said Sreenivasan, comparing the share-first approach to a group of reporters getting together and reading each other their notes. “That’s a great attitude to have.”

— David Sarno

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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.

We need to ensure that these extremist fundamentalist elements don’t spread hate in the aftermath of the attack. We need to ensure that several more innocent lives are not lost in a Hindu-Muslim riot or an India-Pakistan war triggered off by the 11/26 terror attack. We need to ensure that the upcoming Indian elections are not hijacked by extremist reactions to what happened in Mumbai. And, for those, who insist on comparing 11/26 to 9/11, we need to ensure that we remember to learn from America’s excesses post-9/11.

I agree that our government has failed us in not being able to prevent or control the attack. I share your anger at those who were supposed to protect us and your annoyance with those who want us to show our resilient spirit and return to life as normal. I applaud the thought that we need to stay angry this time to ensure that such an incident doesn’t ever happen again.

However, even as we hold on to our anger, we need to channel it constructively and I call on you to come together to mobilize a constructive and nuanced discussion on the 11/26 Mumbai terror attacks and drown out the voices of these extremist elements.

Here is what you can do –

1. Delete such extremist comments from your blog posts. If required, activated comment moderation for a week. I have already deleted close to a hundred such comments from my blog and activated comment moderation.

2. Do not link to sensationalist posts that spread hate and divisiveness or propose conspiracy theories. I would especially urge Global Voices and DesiPundit to refrain from linking to such posts. It’s not the time to highlight all perspectives, when some of these perspectives may result in more violence.

3. At the same time, do comment on as many of these extremist posts as you can, to temper the emotionally charged discussions with reason. You may receive some hate mail yourself, but that’s surely a small price to pay.

4. If you write a blog, write a post advocating a calm, sensitive approach to the 11/26 terror attack. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 readers or 10,000; even if your post has a calming influence on one person, you would have made a difference.

5. Link to posts and news article which promote such an approach, like these posts –

Take the time to be a Mumbaikar rather than parasites that live off its resources. Stop looking the other way when unscrupulous politicians and crass media barons offend our sense of civility. Speak up when family, friends or colleagues voice their bigotry. Turn up to vote. Look at, really look, and listen to, and care about the people we share this city with.

And keep doing it, whether anyone else does or not, whether the change it makes is visible or not, whether it makes headlines or not. Or, at the very least, stop the damned platitudes. (Ingrid Srinath)

If the rest of the world wants to help, it should run toward the explosion. It should fly to Mumbai, and spend money. Where else are you going to be safe? New York? London? Madrid?

So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro. (Suketu Mehta in The New York Times)

What I would like to see is a grass-root, decentralized guerrilla movement of our own– Not one that equips youth, the lonely and the estranged with hatred, propaganda, fanaticism, weapon skills and fake passports, but one that equips (them)… with an awareness of what it takes to preserve one’s home and city– the community skills and ideas that make individuals realize that they are the first care-taker and good neighbor, not the police, and that there is no entitlement to safety and well being based solely on social or income levels, anymore. (Priyanka Joseph)

If we are going to be saddled with this stupid India’s 9/11 nonsense, we may as well draw what lessons we can from the analogy. In particular, we should draw the lesson that we must be suspicious of any and all claims that ascribe these attacks to foreign influence, that we must demand strong evidence for every alleged link to an outside terrorist group, that we must not allow ourselves to be fobbed off with poorly specified conspiracy theories, or be blinded to government incompetence by the bluster of their subsequent response. But most of all, that we must not allow ourselves to be taken over by the lethal combination of outrage and ignorance, must not allow our terror over today’s events (and we should be afraid, very afraid) to translate into self-righteousness, prejudice, violence and the surrender of our principles and freedoms. Even if today’s attack really is India’s 9/11 (whatever that means) we must make sure that India’s next seven years are not the US from 2001-2008. (Falstaff)

The ‘spirit of the Mumbaikar’ meme be damned, the state needs to recognize this for what it is: helplessness. We go to work come hell or high water [where Bombay is concerned, hell and high water, literally so] because as long as we are alive, there is nothing else to do; nothing else we can do. We go to work not to prove a point, but because there are no options. We go to work like we breathe—because there is nothing else. Respiro, ergo sum. (Prem Panicker)

But while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, I am still hoping for more. I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers.

Why? Because it takes a village. The best defense against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers — and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or “explain” their activities. (Thomas Friedman in The New York Times)

India and Pakistan are more alike than politicians of either country tend to acknowledge. The triumphal narrative of India as an incredible success, and the defeatist narrative of Pakistan as an impending disaster are both only half true.

The reason to look at the similarities between India and Pakistan is not to drag India down or to deny the wonderful accomplishments of which Indians should be proud. Rather, it is to point out that the countries are in this together. Their fights against extremism cannot be separated by national borders into convenient compartments, one marked “domestic” and the other “foreign”. Just as Pakistan and Afghanistan must cooperate if they are to solve the problems of violent extremism, so must Pakistan and India. (Mohsin Hamid in The Guaradian)

6. Organize an event to show your support to the victims of the 11/26 terror attack or highlight such events organized by other — Nov 30 Tweetup at Leopold Cafe, Facebook Wear White Event, Facebook Support 11/26 Fighters Event, Avaaz Unity Petition.

(Update: Here are two posts from Shefaly on understanding evil before choosing to ignore it or engage with it.)

Let’s come together to shape a moderate, nuanced online discussion on the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack. Let’s come together to ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes others have made after such tragedies. Let’s come together to bring back calm and peace to Mumbai.

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

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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.

Late on November 26, Mumbai was shaken by a series of bomb blasts and shootouts in at least twelve ten prominent locations in the upmarket and densely populated South Mumbai, including hotels (Oberai Trident and Taj Mahal, Marriott and Ramada), the popular restaurant Leopold Cafe, hospitals (Cama Hospital and Bombay Hospital), Nariman House, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station and the police headquarters in South Mumbai.

The situation is still developing and there is wide speculation about whether these incidents are a result of a gang war or a coordinated terrorist attack. Hitherto little-known terrorist organization Deccan Mujahideen has taken responsibility for the attacks but many believe that Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the attacks. The terrorists, young men aged between 20 to 25 years, are believed to have come to Mumbai by sea.

So far at least 25 60 80 87 101 125 143 154 people are feared to be dead and t least 250 900 250 274 327 more are reported to be injured. At least 50 100 more people, especially British and US nationals, have been were held hostage by the terrorists at the Taj Mahal and Oberai Trident hotels and Nariman House, but most of them have been released now. As a result of heavy fighting, both hotels are on fire now the situation is under control now.

So far, micro-blogging service Twitter seems to be the best source for real time citizen news on the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and “Mumbai” & “#Mumbai” are both on Twitter trending topics now.

Some blogs, like Global Voices, are also beginning to write about the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but most active Indian bloggers are talking about the unfolding event on Twitter.

The Mumbai terrorist attack is now on the front page of Google News and Mahalo is doing a great job of compiling the story as it unfolds.

The first photos of the Mumbai terrorist attacks are up on CNN-IBN and NDTV and both (CNN-IBN and NDTV) are streaming live video feeds of the unfolding situation.

I’ll be updating this post with more citizen generated resources on the Mumbai terrorist attacks as they are put up.

Update (Nov 27, 12:45 am India time): The first YouTube videos on the Mumbai terrorist attacks are up (1 and 2), but they aren’t live accounts, just TV recordings. The first Flickr photographs of the Mumbai terrorist attacks are also put up by Vinukumar Ranganathan.

Update (Nov 27, 1:30 am India time): The Mumbai terrorist attack is now on the front page of the citizen journalism website GroundReport.

Update (Nov 27, 2:00 am India time): The phone lines in Mumbai are jammed in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. @Zickzackly is offering to halp pass on messages at the MumbaiHelp blog.

Several people on Twitter are also offering to help pass on messages to friends and family in Mumbai.

Update (Nov 27, 2:15 am India time): Neha Vishwanathan at Global Voices is doing a series of posts on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 2:30 am India time): After Mahalo citizen journalism website NowPublic has the best page on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Several TV recordings of the Mumbai terrorist attack are now up on YouTube, but there aren’t any first hand videos yet.

Update (Nov 27, 2:45 am India time): Both the popular Indian blog aggregators — DesiPundit and BlogBharti — are strangely silent on the Mumbai terrorist attacks!

Maitri Vatul has done a roundup of social media coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks (via Mahalo).

Update (Nov 27, 3:00 am India time): A sketchy Wikipedia page on the Mumbai terrorist attacks is now up. Please help update it.

Now the volume of tweets on the Mumbai terrorist attacks is so high that I can’t keep up! So, I am now checking geo-tagged tweets on the Mumbai terrorist attacks from people living in Mumbai (via @zishaanhayath).

Update (Nov 27, 3:15 am India time): Manish at Ultrabrown is live-blogging the Mumbai terrorist attacks with some first person accounts.

Update (Nov 27, 3:30 am India time): Now, someone has started a dedicated twitter account for updates on the Mumbai terrorist attacks @mumbaiattack

Update (Nov 27, 3:45 am India time): Here’s a Google Map of the key locations in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 4:15 am India time): Indian blog aggregator Desipundit finally has a roundup post up on the Mumbai terrorist attacks and well-known Indian blogger Amit Varma has a narrow escape from the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 4:30 am India time): Arzan Sam Wadia at Mumbai Metblogs is doing a series of posts on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Xeni Zardin at Boing Boing and Noah Shachtman on Wired have done roundups of citizen journalism coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 4:45 am India time): Here are two graphs showing the spike in tweets about Mumbai and tweets tagged with #Mumbai in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

There are 100+ videos on YouTube now on the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but only recording of TV news clippings, no user generated videos.

@kcbsnews wants to speak to Twitter users in Mumbai –

Are you in Mumbai? We’d love to know what you’re hearing and seeing.

SepiaMutiny has a post up on the Mumbai terrorist attacks but points to the SAJA post for discussions. SAJA is hosting discussions on the Mumbai terrorist attacks on BlogTalkRadio

Update (Nov 27, 5:30 am India time): Looking at the front page of Technorati, you wouldn’t even suspect that Mumbai is wrecked apart by terrorist attacks!

Update (Nov 27, 6:30 am India time): Several technology blogs — including Techmeme, TechCrunch, 140 Chars and Amy Gahran — are writing posts on the role of Twitter in the reporting on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

CNN has even linked to the Twitter profiles of @gsik and @puneet and the Flickr set of @vinu in its story on online coverage of Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 8:30 am India time): Kamla Bhatt is live-blogging the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Dan Gillmor has written a nice post onthe role of Wikipedia as a news breaking source in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Homeland Security National Terror Alert tweets about the dangers of social media without explaining what dangers it is talking about –

#mumbai terror attack demonstrates the usefulness and also the dangers of social media.

Global Voices has a special coverage page for the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Fox News links to Vinu’s Flickr photos on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Finally, before I take my first break in almost 8 hours, I find myself in the unenviable situation of explaining to someone that this post is not a “power of social media” game for me, but a distraction from endlessly worrying/ praying about my friends back in Mumbai.

Update (Nov 27, 11:30 am India time): Back from a break, I’m shocked that the terrorist seize of Mumbai is still going on, after almost 12 hours! This is not a terrorist attack, this is war!

Several bloggers (Arzan Sam Wadia and Duncan Riley) are speculating if the government wants to shut off Twitter, fearing that the terrorists might be tracking it.

Mahalo has a separate page up for the coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks on Twitter.

Update (Nov 27, 11:45 am India time): Several bloggers are now discussing if Twitter has been a valid source of news during the Mumbai terrorist attacks — Mathew Ingram, Ewan McLeod, Jason Preston, Twitips, Tom, TechMacro, Riayn, Chris Maiorana, Laural Papworth, Stephen Collins, Amit Agarwal, Tim Malbon, Daily Twitter.

Ted McEnroe from NECN also has a story on the use of Twitter and Flickr in the Mumbai terrorist attack reporting.

Update (Nov 27, 1:15 pm India time): Dina Mehta, who has been tweeting about the situation all night has a post with useful helpline numbers (cross-posted at MumbaiHelp blog).

Indian blogger-writer Sonia Faleiro writes an evocative first person account of the Mumbai terrorist attack. Sonia and Amit Varma were probably together in the group of six stranded at the Gordon House Hotel in South Mumbai.

Indian blog aggregator BlogBharti finally has a roundup of blog posts on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 2:15 pm India time): As the #Mumbai volume on Twitter explodes I’m moving to the Twitter feed for links related to the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

After all this talk of the role of Twitter in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, @biz has posted a four sentence official post.

NDTV has a comprehensive roundup of online discussions about the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 2:30 pm India time): US Daily Star Telegram quotes me extensively on a story on the use of Twitter in the reporting on the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 3:45 pm India time): Suddenly, all the newspapers/ TV channels are interested in the story on the role of social media in the Mumbai terrorist attacks reporting.

The Age story on the role of Twitter in covering the Mumbai terrorist attacks (via Faine Greenwood).

Shefaly Yogendra has an interesting analysis of what happened on Twitter in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 4:15 pm India time): On a Skype video call with CNN for an interview on the role of social media in the Mumbai terrorist attack coverage. Waiting patiently for my turn while tweeting links.

Update (Nov 27, 4:30 pm India time): Just finished my live Skype interview with CNN on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The seize in Mumbai has been on for almost one full day now and no end is in sight. I feel angry and tired/ frustrated in turns.

Update (Nov 27, 5:30 pm India time): BBC blindly follows the news rumors on twitter –

Indian government asks for live Twitter updates from Mumbai to cease immediately. “ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations,” a tweet says.

Journalism.co.uk has a nice roundup of the online coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 27, 8:30 pm India time): Mayank Austen Sufi has compiled a collection of reactions to the Mumbai terrorist attacks from Delhi artist types.

Rezwan has written a post at GlobalVoices about the use of Twitter in discussing the Mumbai terror attacks.

ArunShanbag is live-blogging the Mumbai terrorist attacks and posting pictures from the affected South Mumbai areas.

Blogadda has a list of Indian bloggers live-blogging the #mumbai terrorist attacks.

Jessica Reed from The Guardian has a nice roundup of social media coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Update (Nov 28, 4:45 am India time): Here’s a regularly updated list of 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.

Update (Nov 28, 6:30 am India time): Three dramatically different first-hand accounts of the same #mumbai terror incident from Rahul, Amit and Sonia. It’s impossible to guess from the posts that they were stranded together at the Gordon House Hotel.

Suddenly, the tone of discourse on the Mumbai terrorist attacks has changed in the Indian blogosphere from sharing information and expressing pain to offering analysis and rhetoric. The change is obvious if you compare DesiPundit’s first roundup of posts about the Mumbai attacks with its second roundup. But, I expected this to happen, once the shock of the surprise seize wore off.

Update (Nov 28, 7:30 am India time): Several Indian bloggers have criticized the Indian television news channels for sensationalizing their coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks and, perhaps, helping the terrorists inadvertently: Neha Vishwanathan, Chetan Kunte, Prem Panicker, OffStumped, Falstaff.

Update (Nov 28, 8:30 am India time): Dipity has several useful visual displays for user-generated content, including a map view and a timeline view.

Update (Nov 28, 9:30 am India time): Here are videos of the CNN interviews with Dina (also on YouTube) and Vinu (also on YouTube) on the Mumbai terror attacks –

Amit Varma’s interview with BBC —

Update (Nov 28, 10:00 am India time): Indiblogger is also compiling a list of posts by Indian bloggers on the Mumbai terror attack.

Update (Nov 28, 8:15 pm India time): I can’t believe that the Mumbai terror attack is still going on, after almost 48 hours! I feel sad & angry & exhausted. This can’t be true.

Amit Varma points to some great news articles & blog posts on the #mumbai terror attacks.

Update (Nov 28, 11:15 pm India time): @zickzackly has started a Facebook event to show solidarity with the policemen and soldiers fighting the Mumbai attacks.

Update (Nov 28, 11:45 pm India time): Even as I continue to update this post with instances of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terror attacks, I’m trying to make sense of what happened in a work-in-progress case study on the role of social media in the Mumbai terror attacks. Also see my interviews on the role of citizen journalism in the terror attacks with CBS News, DNA, LiveMint, Journalism.co.uk and Star Telegram.

Update (Nov 29, 1:30 am India time): Vinukumar Ranganathan has more Flickr photos of navy activity in South Mumbai and life in Mumbai in the aftermath of the terror attacks.

Update (Nov 29, 3:00 am India time): CNN interview of blogger Harish Iyer, who has set up Mumbai Terror Helpline to track details on the injured/ dead in the Mumbai attack.

Here’s a Google Docs spreadsheet of the injured and dead in the Mumbai terror attack via MumbaiHelp.

Arun Shanbhag and Ashesh Shah are now uploading photos of the Mumbai terror attack to Flickr.

Update (Nov 29, 8:30 am India time): Aravind T Jose has made a video of the timeline of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terror attack, based on this post –

A Wordle representation of this post –

NECN on citizen journalism in Mumbai terror attacks –

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

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Ken Banks runs kiwanja.net, an organisation that helps grassroots non-profits around the world figure out how to use mobile technology in their social change work. Ken’s FrontlineSMS project has previously received grants from William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

Dina Mehta is a partner in Mosoci (research for web 2.0 strategy) and Explore Research & Consultancy (qualitative market research). Dina has contributed to building several communities on the internet, such as Worldchanging, Tsunami Help, KatrinaHelp, WorldwideHelp Group, SkypeJournal and Global Voices Online.

Both Ken and Dina are widely acknowledged as thought leaders in the mobile for development (Mobile4D) and social media space, write regularly on their blogs about these topics, and are frequently quoted in the media.

The MobiChange founding team now combines a rare set of skill and experiences: (1) expertise in the emerging markets in Asia and Africa, (2) understanding of the emerging mobile social networking space, and (3) experience in using mobile and social media applications to engage non-profits and grassroots communities.

Over the next few months, all three of us will devote a significant part of our time on MobiChange even as we continue to work on our individual projects. I believe that, between us, we have the skills and resources required to make MobiChange happen, but we will also count on the support of the mobile for development community to help us bring MobiChange to reality.

By the way, the MobiChange application to the second round of the Knight News Challenge is up. Do have a look at our application, vote on it, comment on it, and share your feedback with us.

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

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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.”

Mishra maintained his own blog from the United States while his one-time hometown was under siege.

“People are sharing quick, small pieces of information of what’s happening on the ground, helping others who are not linked to what is happening,” Mishra said.

Citizen journalists close to the scene were able to text what was happening, while it was happening through micro-blogging sites like Twitter, while the location of terrorist targets were mapped online by Google.

Emergency information was posted on various blogs to help residents and relatives find hospitals and places to donate blood.

Pearl Shah lives near Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel, which was in flames and held by gunmen for two days. She spoke to CBS News through a Webcam about the moments immediately following the attacks.

“The internet was absolutely brilliant for information, especially because I couldn’t watch television,” Shah said.

Like many of Mumbai’s residents Shah relied on the Web to search and share information — information first reported by the citizen journalists using the valuable tools of new media.

“What citizen journalism does is widen the scope of what it means to be a journalist,” Mishra said. “It has given new voices to mainstream media and gives new options of how to collect news, how to create news and how to disseminate news.”

This is the second time citizen journalists proved invaluable to India’s residents. Four years ago new media reports kept people informed after a tsunami devastated parts of the country.

Studio Briefing TV commented on my interview with CBS News –

WEB SCOOPS TV ON MUMBAI SIEGE
While veteran journalists have long complained that what passes for news on the Internet is actually the commentary of people sitting in bathrobes at home and not actually covering what is happening, early TV coverage of the siege in Mumbai showed a different facet of online reporting. Much of the coverage was dominated Thursday by images that originally were posted on the Web sometimes hour earlier. CBS Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith said that before TV camera crews could be mobilized and sent to the scene, “citizen journalists” were already providing images of the horror by loading photos from their cell phones and camcorders online. “One of the first real photographs of the scene was posted by somebody on Flickr,” social networking expert Gaurav Mishra observed on today’s (Friday) program. “People are sharing quick, small pieces of information of what’s happening on the ground, helping others who are not linked to what is happening.” CBS interviewed one woman close to the Taj Mahal hotel, the site of some of the fiercest attacks, via her webcam. “What citizen journalism does is widen the scope of what it means to be a journalist,” Mishra said on the program. “It has given new voices to mainstream media and gives new options of how to collect news, how to create news and how to disseminate news.” Meanwhile, today’s Hollywood Reporter reported that the violence in Mumbai has shut down the Bollywood film industry which is based there.

Here’s another clip from my CBS News interview –

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.

The only exception to that broad statement is 20-something Vinukumar Ranganathan (or Vinu) who stepped out into the night with his Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT camera and uploaded some of the first photographs of the Mumbai terror attack (112 of them!) to photo-sharing website Flickr, before proceeding to tweet about them.

Vinu’s photos have been picked up by all the major news organizations, including CNN, and his Flickr photo set has received more than 78,000 pageviews already.

Apart from Vinu, the only original first-hand accounts of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attacks came from the writer-blogger trio of Amit Varma, Sonia Faleiro and Rahul Bhatia, who were stranded along with their partners in the Gordon House Hotel, a stone’s throw away from the Taj Mahal Hotel, the center of the terror attack. The three well-written posts are surreal, when read together, because it’s almost impossible to imagine that they were written by three people who shared the same experience. Amit, whose first novel is coming out in a few months, later appeared on the Larry King Live show and BBC, amongst others –

Finally, early on the 11/27 morning, South Mumbai youngster Arun Shanbag woke up oblivious of the previous night’s mayhem, then stepped out with his camera and started live-blogging the Mumbai terrorist attacks with original pictures.

Apart from these three exceptions, I haven’t seen any examples of serious “journalistic” user generated content in the context of the Mumbai terror attacks.

As I said in my interview with Journalism.co.uk, I am a little surprised that there’s is so little journalistic user generated content around the terror attack. In fact, I spent the entire night on 11/27 going through Flickr and YouTube, but there were few original photos on Flickr and only television recordings on YouTube, not a single user-generated video. I would have expected at least a few others to venture out and shoot photos or videos. That’s only beginning to happen as we move into 11/28.

In fact, very few Indian bloggers were blogging about the terror attacks on 11/26, apart from Manish Viz at Ultrabrown, Arzan Sam Wadia at Mumbai Metblogs, Neha Vishwanathan at Global Voices and Peter Griffin at MumbaiHelp. Only in the early hours of 11/27, the other live-bloggers showed up and Indian link-blogging websites like DesiPundit and BlogBharti were strangely silent on the Mumbai terrorist attacks till early morning.

Even now, when many Indian bloggers are live-blogging the Mumbai terror attacks — and DesiPundit and Global Voices are working hard to highlight good posts — I have seen few first-hand accounts or photographs, and no user generated videos. Most live-bloggers are merely posting news and (often premature) opinion based on the mainstream media news coverage.

There’s value in reposting news, and there’s a good time to offer opinion, but I think that the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack was a time for first-hand original reporting, and the Indian blogosphere didn’t quite rise to the task.

On the other hand, micro-blogging service Twitter quickly became the best source for real time (citizen) news on the Mumbai terror attack, and the hashtag #Mumbai quickly rose up in Twitter trending topics. But the search volume for #Mumbai quickly became too high to handle, so some people first shifted to geo-tagged tweets from people living close to Mumbai, and then to such tweets containing links.

As the Twitscoop graphs below (screenshot taken at 12:18 pm India time 11/28) show, the volume of tweets related to the Mumbai suddenly jumped to as high as 1000 per hour.