Katyrodriguuez_'s List: Digital Citizenship

• On April 15, 2013, double bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three people and injured at least 264.

• Facts:<!-- --> 
  The bombs exploded 12 seconds apart near the marathon's finish line on Boylston Street.

   

  According to Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, the bombs contained BB-like pellets and nails.

   

  The bombs were contained in pressure cookers, hidden inside backpacks, according to the FBI.

   

  The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning in 2004 about pressure cooker bombs. Instructions for making this type of explosive are widely available on the Internet.

• Victims:<!-- --> 
  Martin Richard, 8, a student at Neighborhood House Charter School in Boston.

   

  Krystle Campbell, 29, of Medford, Massachusetts.

   

  Lingzi Lu, a graduate student at Boston University. She was originally from China.
• April 16, 2013 - President Obama, speaking at the White House at 11:30 a.m., describes the bombings as an act of terrorism.
• Frederic Wittman, chairman of the board of trustees of the Neighborhood House Charter School in Boston, confirms that one of the people killed is 8-year-old Martin Richard. Richard's sister and mother are hospitalized with serious injuries.
• April 17, 2013 - A federal law enforcement official tells CNN that the lid to a pressure cooker thought to have been used in the bombings has been found on a rooftop at the scene.
• April 18, 2013 - President Obama attends an interfaith memorial service inside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. About 2,000 people fill the cathedral
• April 19, 2013 - In the early morning hours, the suspected bombers allegedly hijack a car in Cambridge.
• Boston police identify the bombing suspects as 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, brothers from Cambridge, Massachusetts. They are of Chechen origin and legally immigrated to the U.S. at different times.
• April 20, 2013 - A Justice Department official tells CNN that federal terrorism charges against Boston Marathon bombings suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could be filed soon, even as he remains hospitalized. The 19-year-old could also face murder charges at the state level. There is no death penalty in Massachusetts, but Tsarnaev could face that punishment at the federal level.
• May 1, 2013 - Three 19-year-olds are arrested in connection with the bombings. The three men are accused of helping bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the bombing.
• Upcoming Events:<!-- --> 
  November 3, 2014 - Scheduled date of trial for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

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• BOSTON - Elizabeth and Peter Milligan's dream of running the Boston Marathon to honor their children turned into a nightmare last year when twin bombs exploded before the kids' eyes. But this year, nothing's stopping them.
• So this year, Elizabeth and Peter will be running again.
• "Running for Children's is the reason that we started," Peter said, "and it is the reason that we will finish."

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• Massachusetts State Trooper Sean Murphy documented the operation that finally captured Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

• For months, the pictures Murphy took of Tsarnaev's capture were kept out of the public light since they were the property of the state police.
• Then last July, Murphy saw the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, which he, like so many in Boston, thought depicted Tsarnaev as a rock star. He was astonished.

• "Oh, it was totally offensive. I think it was anyone who saw that cover knew it was offensive and knew it was wrong," Murphy said."I was upset that they did that. I knew it hurt a lot of people," he said.

  In response, Murphy decided to release the photos of Tsarnaev, though he didn't have the authority.
• Murphy was suspended
• He eventually worked out a deal where after 25 years, he retired from the state police with his pension
• Murphy said he would absolutely release the photos again even despite knowing it would end his career.
• This year, instead of working the marathon, Murphy will be running it in honor of 8-year-old Martin Richard, the youngest victim a year ago.
• So far, he's raised more than $11,000 for the Martin Richard Foundation, which invests in education, athletics and community.
• "Sometimes doing what's not right is the right thing to do," he said.

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• Over the course of the past week, we witnessed the power of real-time news reporting with a major story.
• We saw the good: helping investigators with tips to find the suspects and informing residents during a manhunt. We also saw the bad: the rapid spread of misinformation, innocent people being blamed and accusations involving racism.
• USTREAM saw more than 260,000 people listening to the Boston police scanner simultaneously at one point (more than half on mobile devices!)
• Twitter with its real-time updates
• There were chaotic moments, there were rumors, there was a lot of noise, but in the end, Twitter was able to tell this story in a real effective way, especially if you followed many different accounts.

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• With social networks like Facebook and Twitter, news flows faster than ever. And the news is no longer centrally controlled, making it potentially less trustworthy. Reporters have more access to information through social media, but it’s no longer just journalists delivering that information. The power of information-sharing now rests in the hands of everyday people
• In a Harvard Nieman Report, Mark Little, founder and CEO of social news agency Storyful, wrote:

• We’ve been watching this play out all week, following the Boston Marathon bombings. For instance, reports from trusted news sources to individual Twitter users inaccurately stated authorities held a suspect in custody.

   
• We saw Friday how Boston residents and reporters shared information on social networks about the manhunt for the bombing suspects. On social media, they shared real-time photos, videos and information about the circumstances they witnessed.
• Unverified information heard over the scanner could turn into a tweet, which could get picked up by a media outlet and, thus, become a (potentially inaccurate) news report.
• Inaccuracies Spread
• The more immediate the nature of their publishing medium (blogs, then newspapers, then magazines), the more heavily a journalist will depend on sketchy online sources, like social media, for research," he writes.
• When a trusted site or Twitter user publishes something, we assume they did their due diligence by confirming the veracity and authenticity of a claim, and therefore, the news is safe to repeat as fact.

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• Of course I found out from Twitter; everybody did, it seemed. After reading the news in my feed, my wife and I turned on the TV to see what was going on, but after a few minutes of watching television reporters spout empty speculation and unverified information, we turned it off again.

   
• Though there is plenty to praise — the excellent work of some eyewitnesses who truly became amateur reporters, the absolute immediacy of information — there’s also much to worry about: the emotion-fueled speculation, the misinformation, the vigilante journalism.

• The Boston Globe temporarily converting its homepage to a live blog that pulled in Tweets from Boston authorities, news outlets, and ordinary citizens.
• Terrorism experts said that social media helped people in Boston and beyond determine their next steps after hearing about the explosions.
• That way of instantly spreading information far beyond the affected area also builds an online community around such events that can cross state and national borders. On Monday afternoon, #BostonMarathon quickly became a trending hashtag on Twitter.
• "I get a greater sense of unity—the we is a much bigger we,"
• Terrorism experts said the proliferation of photos and video on the Web through social media might also help authorities identify the perpetrators of the attack.

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• Hold that RT: Much misinformation tweeted after 2013 Boston Marathon bombing
• If that information is incorrect, especially in a crisis, it’s hard for the social media community to gain control and push out accurate information
• University of Washington researchers have found that misinformation spread widely on Twitter after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing despite efforts by users to correct rumors that were inaccurate.
• “We could see very clearly the negative impacts of misinformation in this event,” said Kate Starbird, a UW assistant professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. “Every crisis event is very different in so many ways, but I imagine some of the dynamics we’re seeing around misinformation and organization of information apply to many different contexts. A crisis like this allows us a chance to see it all happen very quickly, with heightened emotions.”
• They then found that about 90,700 of these tweets were spreading misinformation, while only about 2,000 were corrections.

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• Boston Police mastered social media after marathon bombings

• “We tried to put out as much information as we possibly could without jeopardizing the investigation,” said Cheryl Fiandaca, bureau chief for public information at the Boston Police Department. Fiandaca was previously a freelance reporter for WCVB-TV in Boston.

   

  Besides posting updates, the Boston Police Department also corrected false claims that were spreading across social networks, and warned news media not to compromise safety or police tactics by broadcasting live video of officers approaching search locations

• What Twitter Got Wrong During the Week Following Last Year’s Boston Marathon
• The heartbreaking story of a young girl killed while running the Marathon in honor of her fallen friends went viral early. Before Martin Richard was identified as one of the victims, Twitter circulated with the death of an 8-year-old girl who was supposedly given the opportunity to run in the marathon. Some posts claimed this girl went to Sandy Hook Elementary School but was unharmed in the shooting that killed 20 children in Newtown, Conn. four months before the Boston Marathon.