Danielle Cannova's List: Boston Bombing

• IT WAS an unprecedented display of vigilantism. After the bombings at the Boston marathon last week, thousands of would-be sleuths flocked to the internet. They scoured pictures and video and posted images of suspicious characters with backpacks, who seemed to fit official descriptions of the most wanted.
• But they failed badly: members of the social media site Reddit falsely accused a missing college student, Sunil Tripathi, of the crimes. Law enforcement agencies got the real suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in a very old-fashioned way. An all-out manhunt ended on 19 April when a resident in Watertown, Massachusetts, discovered Tsarnaev hiding in a boat.
• Several new tools are being tested that comb through the din of the masses to separate valuable tips from false leads. And in a recent simulated manhunt spanning the globe, the software, combined with loose groups of online participants, got its man.
• A big problem with theories floated on social media is that information can go viral simply because it is popular, whether or not it is true

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• Earlier on Friday, the authorities thanked news media outlets for spreading the word that Bostonians should take shelter — and cautioned them against repeating secondhand or thinly sourced information.
• The tension of the day also played out on Twitter, where seemingly every utterance from the local police scanners was repeated, often without any context. Twitter users urged one another not to share what they were hearing on the scanners, and by midday the audio feeds on at least two scanner Web sites had been taken offline temporarily. On Friday night, as word spread that the second suspect had been spotted, more than 250,000 people were simultaneously tuned to a Ustream rebroadcast of a scanner.
• on social news sites like Reddit, where a number of people used guesswork to try to identify the suspects
• There was at least one prominent case of mistaken identity late Thursday and early Friday: some users of Twitter, Reddit and other sites homed in on the visual similarities between a Brown University student reported missing in March and one of the suspects identified by the F.B.I. For a time, the student’s name was trending nationwide on Twitter. But reporters, relying on law enforcement sources, shot down the suggestion that the student was a suspect.
• From their front stoops and through their windows, they posted videos of an early-morning shootout and photographs of a vehicle said to be involved in a police chase. The material was quickly scooped up by local television stations and Twitter users.
• On NBC’s “Today” show, Savannah Guthrie was able to interview two Watertown residents sheltering at home, thanks to a Skype video connection. The residents showed images of bullet holes in their walls, presumably from the shootout.

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• We, as Americans, rose together in a time of tragedy. And social media accelerated our camaraderie faster than ever. It can sustain it further still.
• The brief emergence of the "therapeutic community" is a well-documented social phenomenon in the aftermath of disasters. In 1961, sociologist Charles E. Fritz observed the ability of disasters to bring people together: People "become more friendly, sympathetic, and helpful than in normal times…in this sense, disasters may be a physical hell, but they result, however temporarily, in what may be regarded as a kind of social utopia."
• On the day of the bombings, posts streamed across Facebook offering prayers, resources, and places to stay. Boston-area friends and marathon runners posted reassuring messages of "I am okay, thank you" on their Facebook walls. One tech entrepreneur purchased BostonMarathonConspiracy.com to prevent a conspiracy theorist from owning it.
• With the same resolve as we disseminated information and expressed solidarity last week, we can use the power of technology to stay connected and take a few more steps forward together.
• This has already begun. Private citizens set up the Richard Family Fund to help the family of Martin Richard heal. Fans of the Boston Marathon are sharing their stories and memories of the race's "awesomeness" on the eponymous 26 Miles of Awesomeness Tumblr feed. Runners everywhere now Run for Boston
• When we connect around our shared circumstances - the events, moments, and experiences that bring us together - we retain context and foster deeper bonds with others. We stop collecting friends and "liking" vacation photos and start engaging each other again as a community. We bridge online and offline.
• This does not mean that all is warm and fuzzy on social media. In a volatile, closely-watched situation like a manhunt, emotions are enflamed, false information is rampant, and speculation runs high. We can quickly become complicit in the "total noise" of today's media environment, which lurches toward louder clings, more astonishing clacks, and timely suspect identifications, even if they are wron
• Social networking will be reordered around the context or cause by which we have connected and away from defining relationships directly - for instance, by having thousands of Facebook friends. And the therapeutic community that we entered into last week will be better sustained by harnessing the power of mobile social media to restore real-life context to our online ties, foster deeper bonds with others, and share new opportunities to interact and collaborate, based on what we've been through together.
• The power of social media to help us come together is enormous, and was on display last week. Moving forward, may we continue to use the cyber world to go beyond just these few weeks and grow ever closer to living e-pluribus unum.

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• The hotel became a major focus of concern for the hospitality community during and subsequent to that day's tragic event. Due to an exceptional staff, proper training and social media, the hotel helped make many people safe, participated in the community responses and eased concerns.
• I initially was caught up with the hotel's response to the bombings as I followed its notices on social media. From the messages I knew the hotel's team had a lot on its plate and was acting with determined strength. As the weeks passed, I wanted to get in touch with the hotel's management to get a better picture of how the events of that day unfolded and what kind of security plans were put into action. I had the opportunity to speak with Paul Tormey, the hotel's regional VP and GM. Fortunately, Tormey is not a newbie to this type of situation. He is also responsible for hotels in New York City and had to act after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

• Last week in Boston, when mobile networks became overloaded following the bombings, the social-media-savvy Boston Police Department turned to Twitter, using the platform as a makeshift newsroom to alert media and concerned citizens to breaking news.
• Law-enforcement agencies around the world will note how social media played a prominent role both in telling the story and writing its eventual conclusion. Some key lessons have emerged.
• One is that misinformation—always the bane of law enforcement during emergencies—now spreads instantaneously.
• The story appeared at 1:46 p.m. ET on CNN's blog and was tweeted minutes later
• Tens of thousands of social-media posts quickly shared the news of the arrest, and word was spread further through cable-news broadcasts. This was one of many inaccurate reports that spread across the Internet.
• Within the hour, the Boston Police Department Twitter handle (@Boston_Police) posted a tweet correcting the media's claims. The tweet generated more than 10,500 shares on Twitter, ensuring that the mistaken arrest report lost steam.
• Boston police didn't just use social media to correct errors. The department recognized that the news media were starved for information as the investigation continued. The traditional periodic law-enforcement news conference isn't enough to feed the news cycle—which is not so much 24/7 as 1,440, the number of minutes in a day.
• Media outlets hunger for news updates, videos and short 140-character quotes to fuel their own social and digital channels.
• One of the most remarkable aspects of the bombing investigation was the way that law enforcement employed social media to actually aid the investigation, not merely to manage the news and inform the public
• Moments after photos and video of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were posted to FBI.gov, the government's website nearly crashed from the crush of visitors. BPD posted all of the official photos and video to social media to compensate for the lagging website and to encourage their online distribution. Many people shared these posts online—with some posts re-tweeted 16,000 to 17,000 times.
• That knowledge is likely what prompted the Tsarnaev brothers to bolt from hiding
• Police departments across the country are by now well aware that criminals use social media too, whether bragging about crimes on Twitter or even posting YouTube videos that ultimately prove helpful to prosecutors.
• As the search continued, people also posted photos and videos marking the location of law enforcement. These folks might have thought their posts were harmless or even somehow helpful, but they could have provided suspects with information they needed to evade law enforcement. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, after all, was on Twitter in the days following the bombing.
• Boston police went on social-media outlets to post requests that the public "not compromise officer safety/tactics by broadcasting live video of officers while approaching search locations." Almost instantly, major media outlets from MSNBC to Fox News began admonishing their on-air guests to avoid mentioning specific details of the hunt.
• Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and his department set a social-media standard for security emergencies that will benefit law-enforcement agencies everywhere, and the people they serve.

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• The Boston Globe offered ways for stranded runners to find a place to stay for the night; a separate form allowed area residents to sign up. The paper's @GlobeMarathon feed tweeted a link that showed dozens of offers had poured in.
• Boston's police department is announcing updates on its Twitter feed, including instructions to the public and warnings of police activity. People can also call the police to ask about victims, at 617-635-4500.
• The Boston Marathon's site allowed users to track runners by their bib number, as is normal during a race. But it became a way for those far from the scene to see when their loved ones finished the race, or what checkpoint they had reached when it was halted.
• Google's "person finder" tool provided a way for people to enter information about someone, or to search for friends or family members.
• The Red Cross offers a similar service with its Safe and Well tool, but the website appeared to be suffering from traffic overloads Monday afternoon.

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• A Vine video of the explosions has gone vira
• A Boston Marathon volunteer hosted a Reddit AMA on site
• Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, who ran the marathon, live-tweeted events from the scene
• YouTube set up a dedicated channel compiling all videos related to the events, including President Obama's press statemen
• Google launched its Person Finder, offering a place for people to seek and post information about missing people.
• Boston.com created a Google Docs spreadsheet to connect people who needed a place to stay with people who could host stranded runners.
• The Guardian used Tableau to show how the offers of accommodation changed over time. The Guardian also created an interactive map to show the explosion locations from a birds-eye view.

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