For 60 hours on the 26-29 November, India experienced their deadliest terror attacks since 1993 which took the lives of 195 people.
The scale and unpredictability of the attacks which took place at different locations throughout Mumbai meant that professional journalists and traditional media were unable to document the terror at the exact time and location when it was happening.
Although the mainstream media did follow the attacks, the horrifying events were highlighted most through citizen journalists - ordinary members of the public on the ground witnessing the attacks unfold, who updated the global media leveraging social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia.
This recent example of citizen journalism mirrors the 2005 London bombings coverage by ordinary civilians on the ground that is one of the most referenced case studies of citizen journalism.
Below is a list of social media used by citizen journalists to document the Mumbai attacks, if you know of any more please comment on this post with your updates:
- Twitter - users @puneet, @whizzkidd and @krazyfrog tagged their updates ‘mumbai’, ‘bombay’ and ‘#mumbai’.
- Flickr - photo page by Vinukumar Ranganathan. Ranganathan also used Twitter micro-blogging updates to inform friends what was happening.
- YouTube - videos footage of the attack uploaded from camera phones.
- Google Map – custom map shows all of the attack sites.
- Bloggers - posted first hand accounts of the attacks Sonia Faleiro, Arun Shanbhag, Mumbai Heros.
- Wiki’s - Wikipedia and Mahalo, as well as the citizen media aggregators NowPublic and GroundReport.
A further list at journalism.co.uk also documents social media used to report on the attack.
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