• the investigation into these attacks is taking a very different shape than the investigation into the 9/11 attacks. One of the big reasons, naturally, is the explosion of smartphone use in recent years, providing a wealth of user-captured photo and video for investigators to pore over.
• 4chan community, which is not always known to be pro-social or classy, has organized an investigation of its own. Together, the 4chan members are combing through the images that have made their way onto social networking sites, annotating images with possible clues, mostly noting people wearing large black backpacks. It is a self-organized game of “Where’s Waldo?” and it shows that you can never underestimate the power of Linus’ Law: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
• investigators proactively taking charge of the kind of process 4chan is taking on themselves.
• But what about the vigilante/witch hunt problem? Well, if an organization like the FBI was taking charge of the platform, it could partner with media to caution the public against using possible leads on the crowdsourcing site to act out in vigilante justice. It is no guarantee that people would not act out in this way, but, I would argue, it is better to have some leads, quickly question these leads (get to the people of interest before the crowd does), and caution the public from reacting than it is to have a complete absence of leads and have people’s ignorance and fear take over and start treating, say, all dark-skinned Arabic-speaking people as suspects or circulating other conspiracy theories and misinformation.

  • Not quite sure what could possibly curb a vigilante/witch hunt mindset after an attack such as this (terrorist or otherwise) on US soil. You

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• Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY  9:07 p.m. EDT April 25, 2013
• "The last eighteen hours have generated tremendous and painful attention -- on social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, as well as from television media inquiries -- linking Sunil to the video stills released by the FBI yesterday afternoon," said Akhil Tripathi, Sunil's father, in a family statement last week, WPVI-TV reported.

• Reddit general manager Erik Martin apologized for the "dangerous speculation" that "spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties."

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• Alexis C. Madrigal Apr 19 2013, 3:53 PM ET
• This is the story, as best as I can puzzle it out, about how such bad information about this case became widely shared and accepted within the space of a couple of hours before NBC's Pete Williams' sources began telling the real story about the alleged bombers' identities.
• One person who went to high school with him thought she recognized him in the surveillance photographs.

  • HOW IT ALL BEGAN!!
• A single tweet references Mulugeta at the time his name was said on the scanner. A Twitter user named Carcel Mousineau simply said, "Just read the name Mike Mulugeta on the scanner." It was retweeted exactly once.
• Greg Hughes, who had been following the Tripathi speculation, tweeted, "This is the Internet's test of 'be right, not first' with the reporting of this story.

  • What lack of digital etiquette will get you. 
• Multiple groups of people have been crowdsourcing logs of the police scanner chatter and none of them have found a reference to Tripathi, either. It's just not there.
• Within a few hours, however, NBC's Williams had confirmed with his sources that two Chechnyan brothers were the primary suspects in the case. Their names and stories came out quickly. This horrible deed of misidentification ended mercifully quickly. Apologies were made.
• Where had that authority come from? How had so many people bought in so fast? 

  • No question to authority or credibility
• A few things are for sure: the scanner chatter never mentioned the two false suspects together. The scanner chatter never mentioned them as suspects, either. The scanner chatter recordings contain no record of any mention. And no one has been able to produce any recording of the scanner mentioning Tripathi.

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• Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear?
• y  JAY CASPIAN KANG
• Published: July 25, 2013
• how the false identification of their son derailed their ongoing search for him and further traumatized their lives.
• a user on Reddit,

  • Not a credible source, who posted his own suspicions about who the bomber was. 
• osted side-by-side pictures comparing Sunil’s facial features with the face that would later be identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
• accompanied by speculation about the circumstances surrounding Sunil’s disappearance and the F.B.I.’s involvement in his search.
• Seven minutes later, Kevin Galliford, a journalist for a TV station in Hartford, relayed the same information to his own followers; Galliford’s tweet was retweeted more than 1,000 times in a matter of minutes. The next multiplier came from Andrew Kaczynski, a journalist at BuzzFeed, who sent out the police-scanner misinformation to his 81,000 followers and quickly followed up with: “Wow Reddit was right about the missing Brown student per the police scanner. Suspect identified as Sunil Tripathi.”
• erez Hilton, who sent Sunil Tripathi’s name out to more than six million followers. At that point, in many heavily trafficked corners of the Internet, it was accepted that Sunil Tripathi was Suspect No. 2, and Reddit had got there first.
• people who run the site define “Reddit” as both a noun (an online community) and as a reflexive verb (to take part in that community) — even though the community is no single entity, but instead made up of thousands of disparate online tribes, many of whom perceive Reddit as a haven from the propaganda of the mainstream media and as the world’s most important vehicle for democratized, crowd-sourced journalism.
• According to the online-traffic tracker Alexa, Reddit generates more traffic than The New York Times, Fox News and Skype, with approximately 70 million unique visitors a month and around five billion page views
• At 5:16 a.m., Pete Williams of NBC announced that Sunil Tripathi was not a suspect, but speculation on Twitter continued. Around 6:45 a.m., after the Tripathis had received hundreds of threatening and anti-Islamic messages (though they are not Muslim) and after Suspect No. 1 was announced dead from injuries sustained at the shootout in Watertown, Mass., The Associated Press revealed the full name of Suspect No. 2: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
• “Almost every news outlet that came to us said the same three things,” Sangeeta added. “The first was, ‘How was that night?’ The second was, ‘Is Sunny still missing?’ And the third was, ‘This is a silver lining because now you’re getting his name out.’ It was interesting to see how formulaically they processed that arc. The costs to somebody who is in a fragile state are immense and not undone by a casual apology,” she said. “This is precedent-setting for what will happen for other individuals.”

  • The affect misinformation, non-credible sources and the negative aspects of digital tools and technologies have on real people

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• Felix Salmon
• By Felix Salmon

   

  April 21, 2013

  • Felix Salmon is a financial journalist, formerly of Portfolio Magazine and Euromoney, and the finance blogger for Reuters. He was also author of a Wired cover story on the Gaussian copula.[1] In his blog, which is hosted by Reuters, he analyzes economic and occasionally social issues in addition to financial commentary.
• But while Williams was the most visible of the people who got it right, there were many others, mostly unsung, working at places like the NYT. The paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, rightly praises its editors for “staying away from unconfirmed reports” and treating with suspicion anything coming from “unnamed law enforcement sources”.
• ullivan concludes that the NYT’s “reporting from Boston all week was fast, deep and accurate”. Which is the truth, but it’s not the whole truth: I’m quite sure that a very large part of the credit should go to the editors in New York, rather than the reporters in Boston. In a story this sprawling, no one reporter, and no one law-enforcement source, can possibly see anything approaching the big picture; it falls to the editors to take the various streams of information coming into the newsroom, many of which outright contradicted each other, and to weave them into a coherent and accurate whole

  • Example of researching and verifying credible sources and filtering through a mass amount of information prior to release/announcement to public
• Bayesian analysis: as the news streams in from multiple sources over the course of the day and night, every new piece of information has to be analyzed in light of everything else that’s already known, or thought to be known.
• not even the reporting of your own employees, who can easily make good-faith errors during such an extended and chaotic story. Sleep deprivation alone can account for that.

  • Example of Digital Health & Wellness:  lack of sleep can account for misinformation in a story
• There’s an art to working out where to find fast and reliable information, and to judging new information in light of old information, and to judging old information in light of new information. And there’s an art to synthesizing everything you know, from hundreds of different sources, into a single coherent narrative. It’s not easy, it’s not a skill that most people have, and it’s precisely where news organizations add value.
• News is something true and important and relevant; it is not, and should never be, misinformation.

  • Misinformation quote
• Given the amount of information pouring onto the internet every minute, it’s statistically inevitable that a substantial amount of that information is going to be erroneous

  • Quote re: information on the internet

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• "I have been following my friend's Facebook [account] who is near the scene and she is updating everyone before it even gets to the news," Bozorg said by e-mail on Monday night.

  Indeed, as word spread of the blasts on Monday afternoon, social media seemed shaped by every aspect of the response, from runners giving their accounts of the race-turned-nightmare on Facebook, to authorities using Twitter to give instant updates

  • Example of Digital Communication
• Authorities have recognized that one the first places people go in events like this is to social media, to see what the crowd is saying about what to do next," said Bill Braniff, Executive Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism. "And today authorities went to Twitter and directed them to traditional media environments where authorities can present a clear calm picture of what to do next."

  • Digital access
• On Monday, information about the blasts spread more quickly on social media than through traditional news outlets. "I was first notified to the event by my daughter, who was on Twitter, and that was before it came out on CNN," said Anthony C. Roman, president of a security consulting firm in New York called Roman and Associates.

  • Digital communication & digital access
• "All the media provides a tremendous asset for the forensic evaluation of the explosion event," said Roman. "Authorities can start examining the pictures and tapes looking for individuals near the receptacles where the bombs were found and individuals not fitting the profile of the general spectator can be identified."

  • How digital access & technology aided the authorities.

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• Video from surveillance cameras and people’s cell phones are increasingly valuable resources in helping investigators collect and analyze data from crime scenes, such as the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

  • Digital access
• But how do investigators weed through terabytes of video in different formats, whether 30-second snippets from cell phones or hours of footage from a surveillance camera at a nearby store? Going through all that footage is still largely a labor-intensive task, but video analytics and digital forensics tools can help investigators compress video, pinpoint areas of interest, look for anomalies and find relevant details, according to government and industry experts.

  • While the amount of information can be massive in an occurrence such as this, there are tools and processes put in place by video analytics & digital forensics to aid in the investigation and look for anomalies, relevant and irrelevant details to help put together a case.
• Many video surveillance systems come packaged with analytics that can detect anomalies, such as a package left behind or a person entering a restricted area, said Maj. David Mulholland, commander of technical services with the United States Park Police. 

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• focus turns to identifying those responsible. And that's no easy task. The massive number of cell phones and closed circuit cameras on the street provide an incredible wealth of video and photo.
• This is probably one of the most well photographed areas in the country," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.
• The crime scene around the bombing covers 12 city blocks.

  • Crime scene spanned a very large area.
• "We are processing all the digital photographic evidence we can," says Richard DesLauriers, the special agent leading the FBI's Boston Division. He asks that "the public continue submitting whatever they have to police." There's a huge amount of video evidence to process, he says, creating a logistics issue.

  • Some much digital evidence can be somewhat of a hinderance in regard to time spent having to go through everything.
• 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.
• Fredericks says there's no standard in law enforcement to acquire video from the public

  • Good / bad or indifferent?
• rom 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.

  • example of "profiled" suspects that bore similarities to what eye-witnesses stated. i.e.: backpack or hoodie
• n a post Tuesday, Popular Mechanics quoted the study, inferring: "If the bomber(s) took public transportation, there's a good chance those steps can be retraced through video footage."
• "The thing about profiling is that you're not profiling an individual, you're profiling a type," Fredericks says. In Boston, authorities are now combing video evidence for "anyone with a backpack." In other words, it's not the video analyst's role to worry about whether people are wrongly accused of involvement in the Boston marathon bombings; it'll be up to law enforcement to get evidence before they start arresting people.

  • Potential issues w/ profiling a "type" is that sometimes incorrect assumptions can be made yet it still steers clear of racial and gender profiling. Some things can never be 100%, but doing the best one can do to eliminate extraneous and irrelevant details is sometimes all we can hope for.
• n 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.

   

  "This would provide a quick bigger picture," Compton writes.

  • Improvements which could be made to enhance the system of submitting digital evidence to authorities.
• "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."

  • Huge benefit of technology but at the same time there must be some kind of method/way/process/procedure/mandate of some kind of broader base "digital security" when it comes to accusing/identifying suspects before the authorities announce it.

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• The Boston Marathon bombing posed a series of challenges for journalists covering the scene: interviewing trauma victims with tact, reporting on the suspects, verifying information and more.

  • Digital Etiquette is so important during a time of loss and tragedy.

• ournalists 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.

  • The news media did a great thing when they suspended their paywalls to give time to allow substantiated information to begin spreading. But yet, those sources could disallow websites such as Twitter and Reddit, to do the same.
    
    Even some people had the audacity to attempt to benefit monetarily from this tragedy or even post pictures from another event to gain "acclaim" via internet users.
• he funnel effect of Twitter is a reminder that, in times of tragedy, sometimes it's better to say nothing. "What’s worse than the misinformation...was the short form instant punditry. Blowhards didn’t wait to weigh in with theories and blame and predictions," Mat Honan wrote in this Wired piece "Whether it’s a rush to assign blame, a speculation regarding motive, or an I-told-you-so matters little. That kind of stuff can play badly enough in a next day op-ed, but in an unedited 140-character tweet issued shortly after some terrible thing has just gone down, it’s pure poison."

  • Classic case of how misinformation can have a snowball effect on people being falsely accused or passing on of information with false motives/predictions etc..
• Google launched its Person Finder, offering a place for people to seek and post information about missing people.

  • Digital tool used for the good.
• JNet Editorial Assistant Margaret Looney writes about the latest media trends, reporting tools and journalism resources.

  • Journalists cred's

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• As soon as the Boston bombing suspects were identified, social media quickly began praising themselves for their newly acquired powers of intervention and potential protection.

  • False sense of power and influence possibly? Sometimes good deeds should just be done and not necessarily for praise or accolades.
• A

  s the FBI called on the public to participate, a surge of vigilante activity overwhelmed public conversations.

  • The negative mindset that can overtake a person or group of people with a false sense of power or influence sitting behind a computer screen -
• Most infamously, crowdsourcing groups on Reddit mistakenly reported missing Brown student Sunil Tripathi as a potential suspect. After an onslaught of media attention, Reddit had to apologize and tragically, the Tripathi family learned on April 25, 2013, that Sunil’s body had been discovered and identified.

  • Lack of Digital Etiquette*
• In 2013, the Boston Marathon bombings illustrate how quickly rational public conversation can devolve under the massive pressure of highly instantaneous and impulsive exchanges of social media.

  • example of how digital access can have a negative effect on digital communication which turns into lack of digital etiquette on a very large and uncontrollable scale.
• That is, social media present a monumental challenge for statistical analysis as the flood of new information from multiple sources continually reshapes knowledge of the event.
• n 2011 Clay Shirky extrapolates the democratic potential of social media against the government; in 2013 the Boston Marathon bombings offer a reverse case: a well-equipped, well-connected populace informing the government.

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• After Boston bombings, an outpouring of digital empathy

   

    By John Santore -- Medill News Service   |     April 18, 2013

• 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, such as a widely circulated portrait of Mr. Rogers reminding children to “look for the helpers” during times of crisis.

  • Digital Communication - internet/social media enables people to share their sympathy/support on a global level. 
• Why we seek that “sense of connection”

  • Regardless of the platform and society's decreasing lack of personal interaction, we still seek to be connected, or to "be a part of".
• "The empathy that you witness is a real phenomenon, and actually it's very predictable in this kind of situation,” said Michele Gelfand, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland who studies group responses to crises.

  • Digital Health and Wellness/Digital Communication = how humans respond to crisis and how the use of digital tools can increase empathy even among those who have not had a similar experience.
• public’s response to the bombings was motivated in part by simple emotion - thoughts of, “What if this were me?” Also at play was a visceral desire for unity when faced with a perceived common threat.

  • Society, digital or otherwise, at the time of an event such as this, will unite under a common threat, especially that of terrorism against "the people" or "innocents".
• 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.
• Before the internet, those witnessing a tragedy unfold “were kind of helpless,” said Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia University’s chief digital officer and a digital media professor at the Columbia Journalism School.

  • Perfect beginning quote!
• In the future, “almost nothing of consequence will go unrecorded when it happens,” Sreenivasan said.

  • Also in beginning quote.

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• While Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, believes that the digital world made significant contributions in the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, he cautions that we need to be careful. The Internet doesn't always get things right on the first try, he explained
• There is a rush to judgement online, but overall, we get to the right answer pretty quickly," Schmidt said. "Be careful. The first thing you hear may not be correct, but over time, the online world gets it right."

  • Just as in "real-life" we can't always believe what is told to us without "seeing with our own eyes or hearing it with our own ears", and even then, "CONSIDER THE SOURCE". 

• Jared Cohen, Google's director of ideas, remarked that "this is, of course, the story of technology." He and Schmidt co-authored "The New Digital Age," a book to be released on Tuesday, which focuses on the future, in which everyone is connected by technology — for better or worse.
• It empowers people both for good and for ill," Cohen said. "But what we see is the number of people who want to see less violence in the world significantly outnumbers that of perpetrators. And they all have the ability to capture content and press rewind. More witnesses, more content, makes it harder for anybody willing to perpetrate an act to actually get away with it in the future."

  • Technology empowers people both for good and for ill..... 

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