Julia Simons's List: 3.6 Digital Citizenship

• The backlash over Rolling Stone's cover photo of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev led to the release of new photos of his capture Thursday, images a police photographer said show "the real Boston bomber."
• The pictures were taken by Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Sean Murphy and published online by Boston Magazine on Thursday afternoon.
• "This guy is evil," Murphy said. "This is the real Boston bomber. Not someone fluffed and buffed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine."
• He said Murphy was "conflicted on some level" about releasing the photos, but "genuinely worried" about how the Rolling Stone cover will affect the victims' families.
• A Massachusetts State Police spokesman said that the agency had not authorized the photos' release.
• But the cover photo has sparked fury on social media and prompted several retail chains to pull the issue from their racks.

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• The One Fund Boston, a nonprofit created to benefit the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings, has begun distributing nearly $61 million to 232 eligible claimants, the fund said in a news release Saturday.

• Payments will be made to claimants in each of the four classifications of claims (categories A through D), according to the release.

   

  Six people in Category A will each receive $2,195,000. This category includes loss of life and those who sustained double amputations of limbs or permanent brain damage.

   

  Fourteen people in Category B will each receive $1,195,000. This category includes those who sustained a single amputation of a limb.

   

  Sixty-nine people in Category C will each receive between $125,000 and $948,300. This category includes those who were physically injured and hospitalized for one or more nights and they will receive their payments determined by length of hospital stay.

   

  The final category, D, will give 143 people $8,000 each. This category includes those who were physically injured but released without an overnight hospital stay.
• "But (the tragedy) was made lighter by the unprecedented generosity of Bostonians, of Americans, and of people around the world."
• The One Fund Boston was established by Boston Mayor Tom Menino and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

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• "The aftermath of the deadly explosions that ripped through the Boston Marathon on Monday overwhelmed wireless networks, which struggled to complete calls and process messages. Contrary to initial reports from The Associated Press and elsewhere, law enforcement did not shut down the system to prevent another detonation by wireless device. The AP later retracted that claim. Still, congestion proved debilitating for many wireless users trying to contact loved ones. At one point, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency offered a plea over Twitter: "If you are trying to reach friends or family and can't get through via phone, try [texting] instead (less bandwidth)." An FCC spokeswoman said the agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security and top wireless carriers to address the difficulties. Some of the nation's largest wireless carriers acknowledged disruptions."
• "Technology services are becoming a digital helping hand to people affected by the Boston explosions. In response to the explosions at the Boston Marathon, Google's philanthropic arm activated "Person Finder," a digital message board and registry for people affected by natural disasters or other crises. As of 6 p.m. ET Monday, the Person Finder website said it was tracking about 1,800 records of people looking for someone they can't track down, or of people looking to pass on information they have about affected people in the Boston area.
• As is now commonplace in the wake of major events or crises, Twitter and Facebook have become digital timelines of eyewitness accounts, photos and video from the scenes of the Boston explosions. Topsy, a service that analyzes Twitter posts, showed a spike of more than 1.5 million tweets mentioning the term "Boston" just after 4:30 p.m. ET, about an hour and a half after the explosions happened and news of the incidents had gone viral.
• Boston.com, affiliated with the New York Times's Boston Globe newspaper, also has created online spreadsheets to connect people who need a place to stay in the Boston area with people who are willing to accommodate those who need it.

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• On April 16, Hill Holliday put up a website, Bank of America set up the back office, Goodman Proctor LLP handled the articles of incorporation and PayPal set up an account to take donations.

   

  That last part was key, as the money poured in. And poured in. And poured in.
• "I believe the bombs at the Boston Marathon were designed for two intended targets," she wrote in an email. "The first target was the spectators. The bombs were crafted to inflict considerable physical harm on crowds that had gathered near the finish line. The second target was the message of the marathon itself. A marathon is truly a model for how we should live -- it represents ideals of community and goodwill.
• "When the crowds were targeted, the spirit of the marathon was also targeted, and I take offense to that. I can't imagine a more powerful counter-argument to the bombings than a field of 47,000 runners taking over the streets of New York to show their solidarity with Boston."
• But with almost 200,000 donations from people in all 50 states and from countries around the world, Sheehan said he thinks The One Fund gave people who wanted to do something a way to help.

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• With all eyes already on the National Security Agency comes another example of what exactly it does: The Washington Post reports that the government routinely hacks Al Qaeda's online propaganda, including the most recent issue of the DIY terrorist rag Inspire. Following the news that the Boston Marathon bombers may have learned bomb-building techniques from the publication, Inspire's spring issue was uploaded online last month as a corrupted .PDF file with "garbled" text and twenty blank pages thanks to U.S. intelligence. It worked, briefly: The issue was pulled, but two weeks later a new one, this time flaunting the Boston bombing, appeared.
• "The decision to disrupt the magazine last month was part of a debate within the Obama administration over the response to online publications that promote radicalization," according to the Post. "Each time an issue is about to hit the Internet, officials from the NSA, CIA, Pentagon, State Department and Justice Department debate whether to sabotage it." As for disregarding First Amendment protections, the government cites the title's mission as "an incitement to imminent lawless action."

• When the events occurred, many Globe staff members were actually running in the marathon or covering it, and they immediately snapped into action, live-tweeting the action around them as a way to report from on the ground.
• These Tweets were fed into the paper’s live blog of the event, which was the most-visited page on their website after the bombing and during the manhunt. Even when the homepage went down temporarily, staff said they used Twitter as a vital way to share information with readers. But it was a two-way process, with Globe staff harvesting Tweets for nuggets of news they could verify and report too.
• The Globe used Twitter as a news distribution channel tweeting a lot — and retained and enhanced its credibility.
• Meanwhile news organizations provided a way for the police in Boston to investigate the case further.
• With Hong Qu (@hqu), a fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Mnookin has written one of most comprehensive accounts available of how Twitter was put to use as Boston was locked down and law enforcement agencies combed the city for the suspects, focusing on Watertown. As he notes there, “Twitter coverage of the manhunt in Watertown is a remarkable milestone for journalism.”
• Twitter changed the way Mnookin and many others worked that night. As he observes in the Nieman story, “I had a small reporter’s notebook with me but early on realized that tweeting would be a more effective way to take notes.”
• Thanks to Geofeedia, we can show some of the geolocated Tweets around the area as the manhunt was going on.
• Said Mnookin about his experience on Twitter: “The Watertown manhunt illustrated the fact there are times when a traditional journalist can do his job more efficiently and effectively on Twitter than any other medium… for those three or four hours when a gunman was on the loose and a neighborhood was under siege, Twitter was the most efficient way to get information out to the public.”

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• The authors found that rumors and fake content comprised 29% of the content that went viral on Twitter, while 51% of the content constituted generic opinions and comments. The remaining 20% relayed true information.
• The authors also found that many users with high social reputation and verified accounts were responsible for spreading the bulk of the fake content posted to Twitter. Indeed, the study shows that fake content did not travel rapidly during the first hour after the bombing. Rumors and fake information only goes viral after Twitter users with large numbers of followers start propagating the fake content. To this end, “determining whether some information is true or fake, based on only factors based on high number of followers and verified accounts is not possible in the initial hours.”
• Closed Community: Users that retweet and mention each other, forming a closed community as indicated by the high closeness centrality values produced by the social network analysis. “All these nodes have similar usernames too, all usernames have the same prefix and only numbers in the suffixes are different. This indicates that either these profiles were created by same or similar minded people for posting common propaganda posts.” Gupta et al. analyzed the content posted by these users and found that all were “tweeting the same propaganda and hate filled tweet.”
• Star Typology: Easily mistakable for the authentic “BostonMarathon” Twitter account, the fake account ”BostonMarathons” created plenty of confusion. Many users propagated the fake content posted by the BostonMarathons account. As the authors note, “Impersonation or creating fake profiles is a crime that results in identity theft and is punishable by law in many countries.”
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• Grant Fredericks is a forensic video analyst and instructor at the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association (LEVA) in Indianapolis. LEVA is the only digital multimedia evidence processing lab in the world designed to train video investigators and analyze massive amounts of forensic video evidence, Fredericks says.
• The analysis is not magic, Fredericks says. Three shifts of video forensics experts distributed the raw video evidence to analysts, who then put the evidence into a single interoperable format, and uploaded it into a central management system.

• From there, it was watched and coded — meaning that anyone perceived to commit a criminal act was profiled and then attached to a special code that would identify, for example, whether they were wearing a backpack or a hoodie, whether they were carrying anything with them, and any other physical attributes that could be identified. (CNN describes the first potential suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing as "seen with a black backpack and sweatshirt" and "trying to get into a restricted area about five minutes before the first explosion.")

   

  The purpose of this is to tag people so they can be identified later — to say, "hey, this is the same person" identified in previous videos, he says.
• According to the ACLU of Massachusetts, "Stored video can be easily shared with other [police departments] over standard web browsers using a system protected by a basic username and password."

• In an email to The Verge, Larry Compton, a video analyst with Forensic Video Solutions in Washington D.C., sees where improvements might be made in the future to make the process easier.

   

  "What needs to be developed is a solution for governments to accept public video and images for such situations, as there were likely several Zapruders who captured evidence," he writes, referencing the famous film of the Kennedy assassination. "It needs to be far more comprehensive and useful than just random submissions to the 911 centers."

   

  He suggests that such a system should accept wireless, web, and email submissions when activated. Each submission should include basic contact information, camera info, as well as a time sync reference.
• "The message is this: the most prolific source of evidence available to law enforcement comes from video evidence, comes from video sources," he says. "These kinds of cases really underscore that the general public is collecting video evidence every moment of every day. So when you have a major incident in a major area like this where you have a huge gathering of the public, everyone there with a cell phone now has an evidence collection device that can be used by law enforcement."

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• Twitter, with its staccato posts, raw videos, and unedited photographs, channeled a growing stream of reaction and shock. Facebook became a home for messages of solidarity and comfort
• Within a few hours, he saw a Boston Globe link to a shared Google document where local residents able to host runners could post their names, emails and phone numbers.
• Social media now offers a way to immediately, and publicly, manifest those feelings.
   "In a disaster, and in a revolution, social media provides a sense of connection," said Betsy Page Sigman, a professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business who studies online media.
   “Facebook, for example, serves as a meeting spot for people to express themselves, to express concern for other, to find out about others, to inspire others, to pray."
• Today, tools like Google’s People Finder allow those who escaped harm following a tragic event to announce that they’re safe.

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• As cell phone service was rumored to have shut down, journalists and spectators alike took to social media and online tools to report the scene.
• The Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times all suspended their websites' paywalls to allow more accurate information to be spread, but that didn't prevent a dose of bad Twitter intel. The New York Post's unverified report that law enforcement had a Saudi national in custody received a lot of traction online. One Boston Marathon parody account promised to donate $1 for each retweet, receiving about 65,000 retweets before Twitter deleted it. Another now-suspended account, @HopeforBoston, posted images of children while claiming they were running for victims of the Newtown school shooting; the fake images received more than 100,000 retweets.
• A Vine video of the explosions has gone viral. 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, and YouTube set up a dedicated channel compiling all videos related to the events, including President Obama's press statement.
• 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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• Within 55 minutes of being posted, Doug Lorman’s video of the Boston marathon explosion, recorded from a television news report and shared to Twitter, had been tweeted more than 15,700 times, and seen by over 35,000 people. Those without Twitter texted the link to friends.
• Other Vine videos were shared in the aftermath of the explosion, some showing Twitter streams rapidly updating with news, others documenting the scene on the streets, still others recording news reports through TV screens. Few, so far, have had the reach and instant impact of Lorman's, but the decision to use Vine prompted speculation that a turning point has come for the young platform.
• Yet more than photos posted to social media sites and more than the videos uploaded to YouTube -- both widely shared in the aftermath of Monday's explosion -- Lorman's Vine video was a chilling, unrelenting vision of the moment of the bomb's impact. It zeroed in precisely on the instant when everything changed, and played that instant on endless repeat.

• It's worth bearing in mind that Lorman's Vine wasn't even taken at the scene, but was filmed through his television screen.

    

  "I taped the Boston NBC feed," Lorman, 29, wrote in a tweet. "I was hoping one of my cat vines was popular, not this tragedy." Lorman, or @Doug_Lorman on Twitter, lives in Nashua, N.H., about 45 miles north of Boston, and identifies himself in his Twitter bio as a "geek, hockey fan, atheist, and married to the greatest woman alive, Jess : )."

    

  "I decided to Vine the video because at the time, no major news station had even begun covering the story," Lorman wrote in an email. "My real goal was to let people see what anyone not in the Boston area would see. I am sad it was that popular, I wish my Vine account didn't get this attention this way."
• Photos captured a moment in time, videos and news networks captured multiple moments in time and Vine captured the moment in time

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• By the afternoon of April 16, information about some 5,400 people had been entered into the database so that people could search for loved ones to make sure they were safe after the explosions. Users can enter their own names or the names of someone else, along with other pertinent information, so that others can learn of their status, according to the site.
• The Person Finder database uses common file formats that are interchangeable with other registries so that information on survivors and victims can easily be accessed and transferred.
• All data entered is public and anyone can view it, according to Google.
• The Website had other important information for survivors near the bombings, including phone numbers for the Boston Mayor's Hotline for families of victims, 617-635-4500, and for a Boston Police line for witnesses who may have information about the incidents, 800-494-8477.
• The American Red Cross offers a similar tool, called Safe and Well, to help people reconnect in the midst of disasters, whether they are caused by storms, floods, crimes or other issues, according to Melanie Pipkin, a spokeswoman for the group.
• These kinds of tools can really help people find out about loved ones and friends when other means of communication, including landline and mobile phone networks, are overloaded or not operating

  • Supposedly, cell service was down, so this is important
• The Red Cross also offers a series of free mobile apps that will help users by linking to various social media networks and automatically giving their status messages, she said. There's even an "I'm safe" button that can be clicked so that your friends and family get a quick update on a person's status.

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• As government investigators in Boston and around the country have been working to follow the winding stream of forensic data and digital imagery toward the terrorist behind the Boston Marathon bombing, a parallel investigation has been happening, completely in the open, on the Internet.
• At the head of this decentralized, distributed investigation are the sprawling yet insular communities of Reddit, the self-proclaimed “front page of the internet” and 4chan, a prominent Internet subculture imageboard. (Reddit is owned by Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast, which is the publisher of The New Yorker.) Gathering at “subreddits” like “findbostonbombers,” a horde of amateur digital forensic analysts have been poring over every pixel of some of the same raw material as investigators—publicly available high-resolution photos and video of the race, bombing, and aftermath, which has been scattered across the Web and broadcast by news media—hoping to see something that official investigators have not. It’s a human-powered parallel-processing machine, one with overwhelming scale that is constantly churning as it aggregates known information with new data, synthesizing the two to produce highly idiosyncratic analyses. The machine is marked by its intensity, heterogeneous composition, and its odd syntax, in which annotations are made with crude graphics, and arguments are made in the raw language of Internet forums.
• These open excavations are operating at the center of a deep tension between notions of public and private, particularly on Reddit, which, for starters, prohibits posting personal information, like real names or addresses. There is also a self-awareness about the potentially tragic consequences of identifying the wrong man—for a time, the top post on Reddit’s /r/findbostonbombers recalled the story of Richard Jewell, the security guard accused, then cleared, of committing the Olympics bombing in Atlanta, in 1996.
• They think that they should be able to talk about suspects freely inside this private space, without worrying about their chatter affecting real people in the real world (until they decide it should, of course).
• Those contradictions seem mindboggling—insisting on insularity in a forum watched by thousands, attempting to identify a target without actually making that person a target. But this friction is a useful form of doublethink, providing these Internet communities with the best of all possible worlds: If their allegations are incorrect, they can declare that they never intended to mark a man, that it was the media’s doing; if Blue Robe Man or White Hat Guy prove to be behind the bombing, an arrest will be hailed as a triumph of the power of the Internet and crowdsourcing, which would be touted as rivaling or outstripping traditional forensic investigation.
• Thanks to the ubiquity of inexpensive, powerful digital-imaging devices creating unimaginable amounts of data, and the emergence of highly populated, highly distributed Internet communities like Reddit and 4chan, it will happen this way every single time. It will happen in full view of the Internet; it will be insanely fast; it will be messy. That process might not always produce the answers we want—the right ones, for instance—but it’s increasingly hard to disbelieve that one day it will.

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• Breaking news is broken. That’s the clearest lesson you can draw about the media from the last week, when both old- and new-media outlets fell down on the job. By now you’ve likely heard the lowlights. CNN and the AP incorrectly reported on Wednesday that a Boston Marathon suspect had been arrested. People on Reddit and editors at the New York Post wrongly fingered innocent kids as bombing suspects. Redditors also pushed the theory that a Brown University student who has been missing for more than a month was one of the bombers—a story that gained steam on Twitter Thursday when people listening to police scanners heard the cops repeat the student’s name.
• Then, a day later, people on Twitter made exactly the same mistakes. Besides the mistaken identification of the Brown student, Thursday night’s tweeters—including many local reporters covering the manhunt—couldn’t get straight whether one or two suspects had been arrested, whether the suspects were dead or alive, and whether they were light- or dark-skinned. Even more weirdly, many on Twitter were now making fun of CNN for being behind—for not following the news in the same slipshod manner as Twitter. By staying behind, though, CNN avoided the Web’s embarrassment. For all its mistakes, the network at least didn’t falsely identify anyone.
• The useful distinction here isn’t by medium. It’s silly to say that Twitter is a better way to follow breaking news than CNN, or vice versa. The real problem is that both Twitter and CNN now depend on technologies that make it possible to follow breaking news too closely.
• Real life moves much slower than these technologies. There’s a gap between facts and comprehension, between finding some pictures online and making sense of how they fit into a story. What ends up filling that gap is speculation. On both Twitter and cable, people are mostly just collecting little factoids and thinking aloud about various possibilities. They’re just shooting the shit, and the excrement ends up flying everywhere and hitting innocent targets.

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