Social Media & Newtown: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Bridget Gibbons is a social media strategist and a sought after speaker and educator. As CEO of Gibbons Digital Consultants, she and her team help companies across a wide variety of industries in the tri-state area leverage social as a business development tool by providing a full range of services from comprehensive, long-term strategy to daily presence management, as well as customized social media management training.
It’s no surprise in that in the days following the horror in Newtown CT, the media and Internet were completely saturated with coverage of the tragedy and the ongoing discussions of how and why it happened.
But to me, a professional who spends her days immersed in social media, there was something particularly noteworthy and different about how information was spread following this horrible incident, as compared with previous mass killings.
I saw six specific ways social media brought to light the positive and negative implications of online behavior, as well as new ways to grieve and take action.
1. Information (and misinformation) spread further and faster
While social media was useful to so many who were following the Newtown story, there were numerous instances of misinformation reported by the media who were rushing to report “breaking news” in the earliest hours following the shooting.
To illustrate, on the subsequent Saturday, December 15, 2012, Twitchy media published a roundup of tweets that calls to attention to the astonishing degree to which inaccurate information was reported by the media. These incorrect facts include the shooter’s identity, how he entered the school, the weapons used, where his mother worked, where she was killed, and more.
While the rate at which this misinformation was shared via social media only compounded the spread of false information, social media is also a tool used to hold news organizations accountable for getting their facts correct.
2. Fraud via online platforms complicated law enforcement efforts
Negative repercussions of open access to online platforms also surfaced in the early hours following the crime. Among other things, Connecticut State Police (CSP) had to contend with fraudulent impersonations of the shooter that appeared online.
Social media can complicate investigation efforts and even waste resources, causing frustration for law enforcement professionals. While it is already crime to assume someone else’s identify if it’s done with certain intentions, and the CSP did threaten prosecution, it may be useful to discuss how this specific problem can be address and avoided.
3. News is delivered visually, rather than verbally.
News media has often relied on punchy sound bites to illustrate the larger picture of what’s happening. Through social media, information is transformed from sound bites to pictures, tweets and comments that proliferate at an amazing speed. For example, Facebook pages that seek to engender sympathy for the surviving families of Newtown victims can garner 1.5 million viewers in a matter of hours. Prayers and pictures can be added to the wall by any viewer who “likes” the page. Then other people who “like” that picture or prayer or video can add their comments to the update, which sends that page into the news feed of their friends, making it more popular and reaching a greater audience.
As people spend more and more time connected to their smartphone, the ability to quickly see updates on a Facebook app or to view snippets of video, makes it possible for people to be focused on an issue for fractions of a minute throughout their day, rather than make the commitment to sit down and watch “the news.” This change has big implications for how news media can and should attempt to reach an increasingly social-media -savvy audience.
4. Petitions and other forms of social action proliferate
With the rise of social media, it’s easy to start a campaign to bring awareness or action to a specific issue. In the aftermath of Newtown, we see that using sites like Facebook or Twitter to do so is simple, effective and efficient
This photo represents an email that was passed around and was signed by almost a million people within 3 days of the tragedy.
This will become more and more common as a way to create support among people who are not normally active in political debates – especially as sites continue to develop applications to specifically serve those who use social media as a tool for advocacy,
5. Ability to analyze and project the direction of sentiment, almost instantaneously
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism analyzed thousands of articles and comments on social media, and served up the overall sentiment.
of the debate on gun control within 6 days of the shooting. The ability to state that 64% of comments on Twitter and 46% of blogs called for stricter gun control illustrates that we now have a superior grasp of public opinion regarding this polarizing issue, at least within the online community.
6. Social media changes the way we grieve
As a society, we are not just mesmerized by news of the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, we also yearn to show our support to those directly affected and seek comfort through sharing with others. Social media has enabled so many more people – geographically, chronologically and in many other measures – to do so.
Across the social media spectrum, many tributes have been established to honor the victims, give the worldwide community a place to offer condolences, and make suggestions about how we can show solidarity.
For example: A twelve year old girl has her Instagram page covered with pictures of support for the victims of Newtown. One image in the collage of pictures compelled its viewers to visibly show their support: “On Monday wear yellow and blue for Newtown, CT.”
Other calls for support included suggestions to leave a porch light on, or participate in a candlelight vigil, no matter where you are in the world.
Newtown illustrated both the best and worst of social media’s role in society. Love it or hate it, it’s changing the way we receive and share information, the role and challenges of law enforcement, how we cope as individuals and as a community, and even what we now consider “community.”
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.