TechKnow Bytes » crowdsource http://blogs.denverpost.com/techknowbytes Insight on all things tech and telecom, with an emphasis on developments that matter most to Colorado and the West. Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:37:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2 Theater shooting: crowdsourced tools provide real-time victim accounts of “Dark Knight” rampage http://blogs.denverpost.com/techknowbytes/2012/07/20/theater-shooting-crowdsourced-tools-provide-realtime-victim-accounts-dark-knight-rampage/5537/ http://blogs.denverpost.com/techknowbytes/2012/07/20/theater-shooting-crowdsourced-tools-provide-realtime-victim-accounts-dark-knight-rampage/5537/#comments Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:48:50 +0000 Andy Vuong http://blogs.denverpost.com/techknowbytes/?p=5537 [media-credit name="(Karl Gehring, The Denver Post)" align="alignright" width="270"][/media-credit]

Brittany Diemer showed the ticket stub for the Dark Knight Rises Friday morning. She was in the theater when a gunman opened fire on moviegoers.

When I awoke at 6:30 this morning, I noticed a Facebook alert from a friend who said he was “sickened” by what had happened at the movies. Confused, I opened the post and found out about the Aurora theater shooting that killed 12 people and injured 59 others.

While mainstream news outlets have provided constant updates with relevant information, the rise of user-generated content sites and social networks such as Reddit and Twitter have given readers access to riveting, heartbreaking and supposedly first-hand details of the tragedy in real time. Before these tools were available, it would take days, if not weeks, for this type of information to be released for public consumption, if at all.

Here are some links to crowdsourced photos and posts that have gone viral:

  • Someone posting under the handle “themuderator” who described himself as a shooting victim uploaded photos of his wound and bloodied shirt. (Warning: one of the images is graphic).
  • Another Reddit user, who was apparently in the theater at the time of the shooting, posted 11 hours ago that the shots “began during a gunfight scene in the movie, and at first, we thought it was special effects when smoke rose up. When shots happened again and people began to run, we thought something was up. A guy ran in and shouted there was a gunman in the building, and the alarms to emergency evacuate started to go off.”
  • Jordan Ghawi, the brother of Jessica Ghawi, who was killed in the massacre, provided a horrifying account of how he learned of his sister’s death and the exact details of what happened. The details of the shooting were relayed to Jordan by a mutual friend, Brent, who attended the movie with his sister. Jordan wrote that Jessica and Brent were seated in the middle of the theater when a “device was thrown into the theatre that produced a ‘hissing’ sound.” The post continues: “Brent then heard Jessica scream and noticed that she was struck by a round in the leg. Brent, began holding pressure on the wound and attempted to calm Jessica. It was at this time that Brent took a round to his lower extremities. While still administering first aid, Brent noticed that Jessica was no longer screaming.”

The tech blog Gigaom calls this the “crowdsourced future of news.” While there’s always concerns about the validity of the information provided by users on sites like Reddit, who are often anonymous, I think this is just as much the news of today as reports provided by mainstream outlets.

When I discussed the shooting at lunch today, I found myself relying on accounts from user-generated sites just as much as actual news stories.

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