It was striking to see how social, local, and national media interacted in the immediate aftermath of D.C.’s tragic Metro crash yesterday. As news first started to break on blogs like DCist, it was quickly followed by activity in the Twittersphere. Local media rushed to get live shots, and CNN had sent a breaking e-mail only about 15 minutes after the first reports came in.
But even as Twitter links to local media’s video and photos came in droves, the more interesting part of the whole situation wasn’t how Twitter directed viewers to other coverage in mainstream media sites. Rather, the most remarkable part for me was the amount of public service tweeting going on. Has that term been coined yet? I’ll take credit for now.
Even the rarest D.C.-based tweeters in my list of followers were spreading the word: Stay away from the Metro. It seems to me that Twitter was being used to ensure that people knew what had happened, not just for their own knowledge, but to keep people out of the Metro system and make sure a bad situation didn’t get worse. I guess I can’t be certain what each person’s intentions were, but that’s what it looked like to me.
Have there been other notable instances of public service tweeting? I’m sure I missed one. Point it out if you know of any.
