Tagged: Terrorist Attacks RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:16 pm on May 13, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Article on Digital Civil Society Initiatives in Indian Elections in Hindustan Times 

    Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!

    An article I had submitted sometime back appeared in Hindustan Times today. It’s a reflection on whether digital initiatives by civil society organizations have worked in the 2009 Indian elections.

    My Article on Indian Elections in Hindustan Times

    Here is the full text of the article –

    E-lection fever

    The successful online poll initiatives and blogs may help India 2014 do a US 2008

    Gaurav Mishra

    One of the ironies of Indian politics is that while the urban middle class complains about corrupt politicians, it neither steps out to contest elections or even cast its vote.

    Mumbaikars proved this right on April 30, when the city registered its lowest voter turnout since 1977 despite the hullabaloo the elite had created post-26/11. Since then, the content and the tone of conversations of the Indian online community have changed. Well to-do youngsters, who earlier shied away from political debates, now seem to thrive on it.

    For the first time in India, online voter-registration campaigns and initiatives have channelled the zeitgeist into constructive conversations and created an online space for civic engagement. It’s because of this groundswell that unlikely candidates like author Shashi Tharoor and danseuse Mallika Sarabhai have stepped out to contest the elections.Even political parties, which often speak to the lowest common denominator, upped the ante and reached out to millions of first time voters through blogs and social networking websites.

    The efforts might not have significantly increased voter turnout. But they have laid a foundation for engaging India’s middle-class youngsters with serious civic issues. It’s a cycle we have seen in the US. In 2004, online engagement didn’t get the nomination for Howard Dean or presidency for John Kerry. But in 2008, it set the foundation for the Netroots movement that Barack Obama tapped into.

    The 2009 Indian elections, perhaps, are similar to the the US elections in 2004.None of the political parties have a charismatic prime ministerial candidate leading from the front. Youngsters are disappointed with the sycophancy in the Congress, wary of communal extremism in the BJP and alarmed by fragmentation in Indian politics with regional parties gaining strength.

    We have seen discussions on section 49(O) and negative voting since 26/11. Perhaps, in 2014, we will see the emergence of a charismatic leader; someone who will capture the imagination of India’s youth with a forward-looking agenda. Maybe, in 2014, India’s 150 million internet users will reach the critical mass required for a real groundswell.

    Perhaps 2014 in India will be akin to 2008 of the US.

    Gaurav Mishra is the co-founder of a citizen-powered election-monitoring platform

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 1:58 pm on December 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Interview with Indian Weekly Tehelka on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attack 

    I was interviewed by Indian weekly Tehelka recently for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attack.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra Tehelka

    Here is the full text of the Tehelka story –

    ‘Twitter was the fastest and the most updated source of news’

    Gaurav Mishra has been tracking citizen journalism on the web as it has evolved over the course of the Mumbai attacks. Here, he answers PARVATI SHARMA’s queries about the role of new media in disseminating information and creating nuanced analyses.

    You are quoted in an interview as saying that citizen journalism “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.” Could you elaborate a bit on this? And what would you say was its most important contribution during the Mumbai attacks?

    New media differs from traditional media because it’s distributed, because it doesn’t have any gatekeepers or editors, because anyone can go online and write a tweet or a blog post, or upload pictures or videos. This results in extremely high volume of content, which is variable in quality. However, there are two mechanisms through which good content is highlighted in new media.

    The role of editors in traditional media is played by influential curators in new media, who collect the best content and highlight it. That’s the role I played during the Mumbai terror attack. The wisdom of the crowd is the second mechanism through which good content is highlighted. Posts that are Dugg or linked to by many people get more traffic, tweets that are retweeted by many people are highlighted. Even Google’s search algorithm works on the wisdom of crowds. I think that traditional media needs it own curators, influential netizens who are immersed in online communities, highlighting important content.

    New media played an important role in the Mumbai terror attack. Twitter was the first and fastest updated source of news related to the terror attack. Vinu’s photographs on Flickr were some of the first photographs from the scene. Then Global Voices, DesiPundit and I, amongst others, slept sleepless nights curating new media content related to the attack. Dina Mehta, Peter Griffin and others also stayed awake coordinating the work at the MumbaiHelp blog, directing and making sense of the conversation on Twitter.

    You have written in a recent post about the need to encourage and create nuanced analyses of the Mumbai attacks, and to actively discourage and delete comments that are fuelled with hatred or anger. Would you say that there is a difference in how ‘liberal’ bloggers and ‘liberal’ news media have dealt with this crisis?

    I would say that the general sentiment in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack, in both the traditional media and new media, is one of anger; anger against the government for not protecting us, and also anger against Muslims and Pakistan. I’m sure that it is only representative of the general sentiment on the ground.

    Both traditional media and new media news organizations are equally driven by compulsions of viewerships. Coverage of such angry sentiments are likely to push up viewerships and, therefore, they will continue to be highlighted with only token airtime being given to messages of calm and peace.

    The difference online is that there are no gatekeepers and each one of us can choose to curate our own news. So, those of us who are concerned about such divisive voices hijacking the post 11/26 discussions will work hard to highlight saner, more moderate voices. I have a feeling, however, that we will be heavily outnumbered, even online.

    There is also a lot of anger online against television news (Facebook even has a ‘Get rid of Barkha Dutt’ group). Would you say that conventional media is being discredited online, or that there is emerging a competition between the two?

    I’m sure that there is much anger in general against the coverage of the Mumbai terror attack by mainstream media both online and offline. However, mainstream media is unlikely to highlight such stories themselves and therefore, most of such conversations are primarily seen online.

    I would say that conventional media did a reasonable job in covering the crisis, in spite of its tendency to sensationalise the news and its inability to draw the line at showing news about the movement of the security forces. In general, more information is often better than less information during a crisis and the mainstream media did provide timely and detailed coverage of the event.

    There have been reports of sparring between the Indian and Pakistani press – the Pakistani press is upset by the Indian media’s supposed unwillingness to question the Indian state’s interpretation of events, its assignment of blame. Have you been tracking Pakistani blogs about the Mumbai attacks, and if yes, what kind of comments have you seen there?

    The sentiment in the Pakistani blogosphere is similar. Most Pakistani bloggers are upset at the fingers being pointed at Pakistan. Some of them have expressed sympathy and solidarity with India and said that we face the same enemies, whereas others have taken a more combative position in support of Pakistan. Similar mixed sentiments are also being expressed amongst the Kashmiri bloggers. Most of them have expressed shock and sadness at the event while some have pointed out that such events are normal in Kashmir.

    You’ve remarked in interviews that there is a paucity of first-hand accounts of the attacks by Mumbai bloggers; that “there’s value in reporting 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”. How do you see the role and voice of citizen journalism across social media changing in the near future? What can, or should, it become?

    I think that there are many roles that citizen journalism can play, some good, some bad.

    In a fast unfolding and distributed crisis situation (earthquakes/hurricanes/floods/war/terrorist attacks/riots), citizen journalists have faster and deeper reach to the affected areas and can become important sources of distributed first hand news in the form of photos/videos/tweets/blog posts/text messages (see Ushahidi). [A service that allows the dissemination of crisis information through text messages]. In the aftermath of such an event citizen journalists can give us insight into what people are thinking and feeling in general. We need to realise, of course, that citizen journalists are hardly representative of the general population, especially in a country like India, with low Internet penetration.

    I’m a little suspicious of citizen journalism when it moves into analysis mode. As someone who is teaching a graduate course on social media (and is a heavy user of social media himself) I’ll probably have some valid views on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terror attack, so you would do well to pay attention. However, if I start talking about my views on India-Pakistan diplomacy or anti-terrorism intelligence, I’ll be totally out of my depth and you would do well to not pay attention to me. The right way to analysis is to speak to the topic experts first-hand. For instance, I’m doing an interview tomorrow with South Asia expert Ambassador Howard Schaffer and I’ll probably follow it up with more interviews. I see very few citizen journalists going that far.

    Gaurav Mishra is Yahoo! Fellow in Residence at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, at Georgetown University. He blogs at http://www.gauravonomics.com.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 5:34 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , International Correspondents, , , , Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Interview with CNN International Correspondents on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attack 

    I was interviewed on CNN International Correspondents earlier in the week for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attack.

    Last week’s Mumbai coverage was non-stop. From the moment the news broke that attackers had practically laid siege to the city, the airwaves were crackling and the internet hopping with eyewitness reports, seasoned journalists and just about anybody who had any kind of grasp as to what was going on there.

    Now that it’s over– the siege that is– not the long and painful aftermath, the re-examination of the coverage of Mumbai and its impact is well underway.

    Citizen journalism took a big leap forward for mankind during Mumbai with news networks sometimes getting their information first-hand from the online community.

    How far was traditional news media challenged during the siege by bloggers not bound by the rules and restrictions governing ‘established’ journalism? To what extent were hostages’ lives put in danger by the plethora of specific information in the public domain? And to what extent were the Indian authorities responsible for this by not putting cordons around the extreme perimeters of the hotels and other flashpoints?

    To discuss all this, we speak to three seasoned journalists and bloggers; in London, Vijay Dutt, bureau chief of the Hundustan Times joins me in studio. Media consultant Roy Wadia joins us via webcam from Mumbai and from Washington, blogger Gaurav Mishra examines the role of the citizen journalist in telling this story.

    CNN had also done a live Skype interview with me on November 27th. I’ll post the video clip for that interview once I find it.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:56 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Aseem Chhabra, , Brian Lehrer Live, , , , , , Sree Sreenivasan, Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Interview with Brian Lehrer Live on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attack 

    I was interviewed on CUNY TV’s Brian Lehrer Live earlier in the week for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The other guests were Sree Sreenivasan, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and the Co-founder of South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) and Aseem Chhabra from the Mumbai Mirror.

     

    • sonya 5:46 am on December 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      hi gaurav, i stumbled on your site and was very eager to watch this video. however, it took FOREVER to download. i could not watch it streaming because it was too staccato to follow, and i gave up trying to download and replay it after waiting for 40 minutes on a broadband (albeit in bangalore, india) connection and finding that not even half of it had downloaded. i’m disappointed that someone with a seemingly (not meant as a slur, but just to emphasise that i only just discovered your blog) deep interest in and understanding of social media did not think to compress the video to enable easier consumption. just fyi…

  • Gaurav Mishra 1:49 pm on December 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Interview with BBC on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra BBC

    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.

    Steve Herrmann on the BBC Editors blog also linked to my blog on a post on the role of Twitter in crisis reporting.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:26 pm on December 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Business Week, , , , Fox News, , , , , , Salon, , Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Blog Mentioned as a Source in a Associated Press Story on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

    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.

    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

     

    • Shantanu Goel 4:19 pm on December 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hey Gaurav, just thought of telling you that Associated Press has/had this policy that they allow only upto 4 words to be reproduced from any of their articles at any other place for free. For any longer than that they have a steep fees. Since you have posted the whole article, I guess it would cost around 100$ (don’t know how the economics would work out since they list you as a source in their article, but just thought of letting you know)

    • Gaurav Mishra 7:53 pm on December 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Shantanu: Thanks for pointing out AP’s policy. I wrote to them and they have very graciously waived off the reproduction fees.

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:06 pm on December 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Interview with Los Angeles Times on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra Los Angeles Times

    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

    The article also appeared in Hartford Courant.

     

    • fadithoughtpick 1:46 am on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      I am doing a research about how social media helped in mobilizing people in different contexts. I found this article very useful. Thank you so much :)

  • Gaurav Mishra 4:00 pm on November 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Bomb Blasts, , , Colaba, , , GroundReport, , , MumbaiHelp, , , Shootouts, Terrorist Attacks, ,   

    Real Time Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

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

    Even as I continue to track instances of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terror attack on this post, I’m trying to make sense of what happened in a work-in-progress case study and a Flickr set of screenshot on the role of social media in the Mumbai terror attack. I’m also compiling reactions on Indian news media’s coverage of the terror attack.

    For more, see my interviews on the role of citizen journalism in the terror attack with Los Angeles Times, CBS News, BBC, DNA, LiveMint, Associated Press, Journalism.co.uk, Tehelka, NPR, CNN, CUNY TV and Star Telegram.

    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.

    One such initiative is Voices Against Terror, an open group blog/ online petition that hopes to help build international consensus, including consensus in Pakistan, against terrorism and terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawah.)

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Twitter

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Mahalo

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Flickr

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks MumbaiHelp

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Twitter Help

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks NowPublic

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks YouTube

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Wikipedia

    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!

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Technorati

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Techmeme

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra Star Telegram

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra Dipity

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Flickr
    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Flickr

    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.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Flickr
    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 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 –

     

    • Jarrett 4:41 pm on November 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Please also see crowd-powered news site NowPublic’s featured coverage of the Mumbai attacks:
      http://nowpublic.com/tag/mumbai — as well as live updates from across the microblogosphere at http://nowpublic.com/tag/mumbai/scan

      Thanks,
      Jarrett

      –
      Jarrett Martineau
      Editor, NowPublic.com

    • Nikhil 4:42 pm on November 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Terrorists roaming the streets in police vans, killing ATS personnel, Setting hotels on fire with Grenade Attacks.This is war, not an attack

    • Kunal 4:43 pm on November 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    • lilious 7:32 pm on November 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Check out this graph showing the increasing volume of twitts about Mumbai: http://www.twitscoop.com/twits/search?q=mumbai

    • tweetip 8:46 pm on November 26, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      #Mumbai ~ 1st Tweets Timeline & Chart … http://tweetip.us/lkphd

    • Ramon 7:25 am on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hello.

      I like your blog.

      http://www.soitu.es/soitu/2008/11/27/vistoenlared/1227780401_219682.html

      Greetings from Spain.

    • AC 9:51 am on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      If you don’t want to (or can’t because there are to many of them) read every message on twitter, use tweetag.com instead of search.twitter.com

      search.twitter is good when you are looking for something specific.
      Tweetag gives a big picture of the current trends; without the need to enter a specific keyword

    • Anand 8:00 pm on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Awesome amount of info…
      But about awfully horrible event…
      Actually, horrible is an understatement….

    • Reena 12:55 am on November 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hey Gaurav, IndiBlogger.in too kickstarted their speak out efforts yesterday. You might want to add them as well.

    • Ryan 6:03 am on November 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      I believe the information filtering to the people via the media is totalyl responsible for the numerous rumours coming up. After being with the city through all the previous situation, (blasts etc), it is troubling to know that all the main media companies send uneducated brash personnel to the sites to cover and analyse the situations. How can the big television networks propogate information without having hard evidence via their sources at the venue (e.g.CST) in such a important situation as this. Furthermore, all the media interviews with the Police/NSG etc, clearly show the undeucated appproach in questioning the authorities to gleen accurate information. Brash, abrasive, repetitive questions do not assist this situation.

    • Aravind Jose T. 3:52 pm on November 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Mr. Gaurav,
      I’ve been following you at Twitter for quite a some time now. (@AravindJose)

      As my contribution, I’ve created a “Documentary on Citizen Journalism in Mumbai War”.
      It’ll be soon uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo and MetaCafe.

      I wanted to thank you, as this post served as a “script” for the documentary. Proper attribution have been given at the end of the documentary.

      I’ll send the link as soon as it is uploaded.

    • Mumbaikar 3:07 am on November 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hey do include a link to The Big Picture, they have high-res photos on mumbai attacks.
      http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html

    • Rahul Gurung 9:27 am on November 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Now that the siege is over, it’s time to look what went wrong and what can be done to avoid any such attacks in future. I hope that from this time on, our goverment should wrok to further strenthen our boundaries and intellegence sources as well. It’s good to see people coming together and unite, but why should people unite only when there is a disaster, why can’t we always stay united??? This will for sure bring a change to our country.

    • Tim Malbon 1:15 am on December 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hi – thanks for your link to my blog post about Twitter’s Mumbai coverage. I’ve now followed up that post with another in which I propose some ways of making Twitter more useful for the specific circumstances around ‘live’, developing events like the Mumbai terror assault. What a tragic and hideous even it has been – our hearts go out to all those who have lost friends, relatives and loved ones.

      The link to the new post “Bring on the #moron filter” is http://www.madebymany.co.uk/bring-on-the-moron-filter-00351

      Please let me know what you think,

      Thanks,

      Tim

    • IDLI 2:34 am on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      As pointed by another user that, as now siege is over, it is necessary to take a look at what went wrong. Myself being a technologist , came with technological ideas to fight terrorism, my views on technology a means to fight terrorism are posted
      http://inboticslab.blogspot.com/2008/12/technological-revolution-against.html

      I would appreciate if one can pass around the word of a technological organisation to fight terrorism.

      JAI HIND

  • Gaurav Mishra 9:30 am on November 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks, The Early Show,   

    My Interview with CBS News on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

    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 –

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra CBS News

    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 –

     

    • Jeev 12:46 pm on November 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      How can a citizen journalist be so much aware of a situation by just being a net crawler?
      Information you provided is what you get from live TV and from people in Mumbai posting blogs and snaps.
      I am not able to understand how a situation can be analyzed by just doing a Google and indexing the information and formatting them in savvy words to present to the world . How can one get a in-sight of what happening in Mumbai by sitting somewhere in the world and not actually realizing actually happening with Mumbaikars.
      But I liked you sprit on a positive manner and though not able to understand this concept ..

  • Gaurav Mishra 6:30 pm on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks, ,   

    My Interview with Indian Daily DNA on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra DNA

    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.”

    Vinu did not need to reach the railway station. Almost as soon as he stepped out of his house, he could see debris lying on the road. “Then I realised that the noise I heard were explosions next to the Nariman House,” he says. Vinu quickly snapped away, returned home and uploaded all 112 pictures on to the photosharing website, flickr.com. “I have been using Flickr for four years now, and I get about 10 views per photo,” he says.

    This time, it was different. “By 3am, the first photo I uploaded had already been viewed 40,000 times,” he says. By afternoon, his photographs, which were being linked to by mainstream news websites as well, had received 220,000 page views.

    Vinu’s photographs are not the only evidence of the Internet coming into its own as a news medium. Around 12 hours after the attack, the mass messaging service, Twitter.com, was seeing around 1,500 user-generated updates on the terror-strike every minute, from its users. In other words, 25 users were pasting their opinion, information, or other links, about the attack, every second.

    “All the first information about these events in recent times has been through Twitter,” says Vinu, “Whether it was the Bangalore blasts, or the Nobel Prize.”

    Three-year-old Twitter, projected as a ‘micro blogging’ site by the tiny firm that runs it, has around six million users. The service works like an instant messenger, but with a ‘broadcast’ option that allows you to send the same message to all your contacts. As a result, depending on the number of people you have in your contact list, you can end up getting quite a few number of updates every minute.

    “Twitter is more live than live TV, the pace of the updates can be quite scary,” says blogger, ethnographer, and social media expert, Dina Mehta. Dina, like many in the ’social media’ community, believes that Twitter is coming up as the medium of choice when it comes to news dissemination on the Internet, a role that was earlier confined to blogging. “I am finding it a difficult to keep up on the blog. Blog is now for analysis and things to do with specific issues, while the
    interactive conversations have moved to Twitter,” she points out.

    Vinu, a die-hard blogger, who has regularly updated his site for the last three years, agrees: “I am an impulsive blogger. I don’t plan what I am going to write. However, these days, Twitter helps me release it faster and easier.” He confesses that from 20 blog posts a month, he currently posts only three or four. In contrast, his Twitter page had 50 updates in the
    first 18 hours after the shooting.

    Another blogger and ‘tweeter’, Prem Kumar, an IT consultant from Bangalore, points out that Twitter has altered his consumption of news radically. “In India, people are watching TV and putting whatever they see into their Twitter updates. So, even while I am watching one channel, I am also seeing what is there on the others, thanks to Twitter,” he points out.
    Since Twitter can also be used as an instant messenger (IM), he says, it also adds a level of interactivity to news. “If I want to know more about something, I can simply message the person who posted it back immediately,” he says.

    It is perhaps little wonder that while photo- and video-sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube continue to see frequent updates from netizens, the blogosphere has been largely confined to long, first-person accounts, that do not fit the Twitter format.

    Gaurav Mishra, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, who studies online social media in developing countries, says such services combine the best of three worlds – broadcast media, blogging and person-to-person instant messaging. “In two to three years, such services will gain a lot of traction in the market,” says the professor, who organised India’s first ‘twitter meet’, a year ago. “Though they may not replace mainstream media, they will increasingly become the source of your first information,” he says.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 4:00 pm on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Journalism.co.uk, , , , , Terrorist Attacks, ,   

    My Interview with Journalism.co.uk on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

    Earlier today, UK-based Journalism.co.uk interviewed me for a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra Journalism.co.uk

    Here is the full text of the Journalism.co.uk story –

    ‘I am surprised by the lack of user-generated content’, says Mumbai attack live-blogger
    Posted: 27/11/08 By: Judith Townend

    The mainstream media may be paying attention to blogs, microblogs and social media sites to report on the terrorism attacks in Mumbai, but there has been a surprisingly low level of user-generated content said Gaurav Mishra, who has been live-blogging events for 21 hours (at time of writing) from Washington.

    This is not the first time the world is witnessing a huge event through user-generated content, Mishra, the Yahoo! Fellow in Residence for the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, told Journalism.co.uk.

    Take the Asian Tsunami coverage as an example, Mishra said. “At that time there was no Twitter but people were text messaging from the ground.

    Over the last 24 hours, ‘in terms of original content there’s extremely little’, he added.

    “The only meaningful example of first hand citizen journalism in the entire episode,” Mishra said, “were the 100 plus photos from Vinukumar Ranganathan, or ‘Vinu’, uploaded on Flickr, early in the seize.

    “I would have expected at least a few others to venture out and shoot photos or videos. That’s only beginning to happen as the day comes to an end,” he said.

    “I kept going through Flickr and YouTube all of last night, and there was nothing. Television recordings. Not a single user-generated video.”

    “Even in terms of blogs. A lot of Tweets about it, but very few people have tried to put together a narrative on their blogs. The only first person narrative is by Amit Varma and Sonia Faleiro – both of whom are writers and bloggers. They’ve written about it in a meaningful way.”

    It’s not so much a story about user-generated citizen journalism, but one about people sharing information, such as helplines, he added.

    There’s a ‘nice interplay’ between Twitter and mainstream media, he said. “Both of them are listening to each other and there’s an interesting interplay there. It’s the first time this has happened in India.”

    Popularity of Twitter
    “Lots of people are Tweeting, who would have blogged otherwise. It’s a mix of many things. It’s a question of access,” he said.

    Whereas specific types of phones, or computers are needed for updating blogs, Twitter allows quicker dissemination of information, he said.

    “By Tweeting, they can tap into [an existing] momentum on Twitter and get out what they’re saying much faster,” Mishra said.

    The mainstream media has quoted Twitter as a source, he said. “That’s a big thing, for India. Many people hadn’t even heard of Twitter before.”

    A lot of people discussed how Twitter isn’t a reliable source of information, he said, adding that “of course it’s not a reliable source of information!” There is a huge and diverse mix of people using Twitter to spread information, he explained.

    He had deleted religious extremist comments from his own blog, he added.

    Not much ‘new’ news
    The interesting thing, he said, was that there wasn’t much new information to report over the first 18 hours.

    “Of course, there are some developments,” he said, “but everything is still speculation.”

    “You can speculate about it, or you can report facts, which too many people are doing. You try to look for [other] voices.”

    After the event
    “When all this has happened, people will write post after post on this, and analyse it,” he said.

    “At some point in time, I’d like to go back and make some sense of this,” he said.

    Mishra said his own motivation was not to report events at the scene, but to look at how it was being covered by social media: “I started tracking it to stop myself worrying about it. All my friends were in Bombay; I was in Bombay myself three months back. This was all extremely personal to me,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

    “I have tried not to keep linking to the media stories because a lot of other people were doing that,” he said.

    “Also, I’m not in Bombay. I don’t see what’s happening there. So, I wanted to put together a narrative of what people are talking about there from Bombay and otherwise, tracking discussions on how people are using social media.”

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:45 pm on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Terrorist Attacks, ,   

    My Interview with Indian Daily LiveMint on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

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

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra LiveMint

    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.

    Gaurav Mishra, a research fellow at Georgetown University studying social media, tracked the unfolding events in Mumbai by linking to other blogs, twitter posts and online articles on his Gauravonomics Blog.
    He says Twitter had become a “de facto source for mainstream media”, and that the few citizen journalists on-site in Bombay had become in-demand pundits overnight.

    One such instant celebrity journalist, Mumbai-based Vinukumar Ranganathan, took around 300 photos around Nariman House shortly after the attacks began Wednesday night. An hour later, Ranganathan uploaded the photos onto his Flickr account and the news spread across Twitter that photos had been taken at the scene. The photographs have since been viewed over 50,000 times on Flickr and major international news outlets, such as Fox News and CNN, broadcast his photographs on air.
    Writer Amit Varma posted a live account on his blog from Colaba’s Gordon House Hotel after narrowly escaping a shooting. He spoke on Larry King Live the next day to discuss the shooting.

    Dina Mehta, who twittered and blogged about the attacks from her Mumbai home, said this sort of social media reportage had been used during the 2004 tsunami, and again during Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gustav. But technology has advanced to include programmes such as Twitter that allow far more people, especially less tech-saavy people, to participate: “You have a space where anyone can actually contribute to it,” she says.

    The freedom of the Web, though, can also lead to rapid-fire rumours. At one point, Twitter users thought the terrorists were finding out about army movements from the website, and Mishra said he had to delete a series of Hindu fundamental propaganda posts from his site. However, he says the propaganda and misinformation is a small percentage of the postings and other users are quick to point out the mistakes.

    Mehta agrees, “It’s a self-regulating kind of space.”

    When Mehta first heard of the attacks through a friend’s phone call, she turned on her television and her Twitter almost simultaneously. She said the two mediums complement each other and that she updated her Twitter account with news items taken from the local television to help inform people living abroad who didn’t have access to the Indian news channels.
    Marc Florez, a financial adviser in New Mexico, wrote in an email that he became frustrated with the lack of news reports in the US media which “were reporting this as just a minor story among many.”

    He logged on to Twitter and searched for “Mumbai” and instantly he “had a live feed of local twitterers who were the equivalent of an army of media reporters throughout the city of Mumbai… Real Mumbai citizens were communicating and in direct dialog with me”. Sharon Lovell also followed the events via Twitter from her home in California. She said, in an interview conducted over Twitter, that news broke on the website 20 minutes before the mainstream media picked it up.

    Other websites also quickly filled up with information: Wikipedia had a page up on the attacks by early Thursday morning. By afternoon, it had been updated at least 500 times. A Google map was created just hours after the explosions to mark the locations that had been hit. By Thursday, it had been viewed at least 13,638 times. The South Asian Journalists Association, based in New York City, aired live webcasts discussing the event.

    The Web also offered people a quick way to respond to large numbers of concerned friends, as users reassured one another via Facebook and Gmail status messages that they were alright: “Thank God our friends are safe this morning. Prayers for those still in the two hotels.” And “Suzanne is safe from the massacre in Mumbai. Will try to stay away from landmarks in Delhi. Thanks”.

    Mumbai Help, a blog about “Surviving Mumbai—Information for emergencies in the Bombay area” offered to locate people in Bombay for friends outside the city and posts on Twitter implored people to donate blood.

    Rahul Chandran contributed to this story

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:43 am on November 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , Star Telegram, Terrorist Attacks,   

    My Interview with US Daily Star Telegram on the Role of Citizen Journalism in the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 

    Earlier today, US Daily Star Telegram quoted me extensively on a story on the role of citizen journalism in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

    Citizen Journalism in Mumbai Terrorist Attacks Gaurav Mishra Star Telegram

    Here is the full text of the Star Telegram story –

    Users flock to social networking sites to share details of attacks
    BY ANDREW CHAVEZ achavez@star-telegram.com
    Thu, Nov. 27, 2008

    While many people were glued to cable news channels looking for information about the terrorist attacks in Bombay, India, others, such as Gaurav Mishra, were glued to their laptops, taking in a flood of firsthand accounts posted on the Internet.

    Mishra, a visiting professor at Georgetown University who studies online social media in developing countries, said many social networking sites provided information faster than major news organizations.

    Researchers first saw the phenomenon during the massive tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004 and saw it again in the U.S. during Hurricane Katrina, he said.

    Mishra said the attack in the city also known as Mumbai was no exception. Internet use in India is low compared with countries such as the U.S. and China, but it has grown about 1,100 percent since 2000, with about 60 million users now, according to data compiled by Internet World Stats.

    Within hours of the attacks, thousands of posts were on Twitter.

    Users described what they were seeing and hearing as Bombay came under attack. Some posted images of the terrorists or asked fellow users to donate blood. Others offered to relay messages from those trying to locate relatives in Bombay.

    On Flickr, “Vinu” had posted more than 100 photos within hours. By evening, some had been viewed more than 50,000 times.

    The photos showed twisted metal, charred vehicles and law enforcement officials with guns. Mainstream news organizations such as CNN posted links to the photos.

    “I’m sitting in Washington, D.C., and the fastest source of news is the Twitter feed,” said Mishra, the Georgetown professor. “Some of the earliest photographs were posted by somebody on Flickr. It’s amazing how engaged people are.”

    And for those who didn’t have access to television news, some in India posted recording of news broadcasts on sites such as YouTube.

    Wikipedia, a user-edited online encyclopedia, had an article on the attacks within a few hours, and it had been edited more than 100 times by users from around the world.

    Mishra said users are driven to these sites because they can interact with the news, not just consume it. And he said that while he might have television news on in the background, he’ll mostly be glued to his laptop as the events continue to unfold.

    “This just adds a new dimension to not only what’s being said but how it’s being said,” he said. “Even if you’re not creating news, you’re engaging with the news as it unfolds in very different ways — especially in situations like this when the situation is still unfolding very fast.”

     

    • David James 12:34 pm on November 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Citizen generated news is often the cutting edge for crises. I’m glad you got to share your knowledge and experience here.

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