Social Media fights crime after the Boston Bombings

Social Media is helping to shape our world in all aspects, from online collaborations for projects and assignments to providing support during and after natural disasters and emergencies. The many different ways Social Media can be used during an emergency is still vastly unexplored but steps are already being taken to resolve this issue. An example of this can be seen during the aftermath of the Boston Bombings on April 15th, 2013. Two bombs went off during the Boston Marathon, during which 3 people died and up to 260 more people were injured. Authorities had come to the conclusion that when a large scale emergency such as this occurred, people retreated to social media to find out what was happening. Taking advantage of this, authorities used Twitter to instruct the general public in what they should do next.

This is the first example of how a Social Technology could be used in an emergency situation. After I completed research on some case studies, news reports, papers and articles on this topic, I began to have a better semblance of how the authorities handled the Boston Bombings using Social Media. Due to the speed of information that was being spread through twitter, it became the go to place for updates on occurrences in Boston during this troubled period of time. Through the use of social technology, information was distributed to the public much faster then any normal news outlet and people could easily be updated on what was happening without having to spend too much time searching for the information they required.

A coverage photo taken of the Boston Bombing incident.
Photo provided by vjeran_pavic, found here
Available through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Twitter was the main platform that was updated after the bombings occurred due to the initiative by a police commissioner who gave the order to use all forms of social media to communicate with the public, and this was a mere 10 minutes after the initial bombing had occurred. Information that was tweeted to followers provided updates on stages of investigation, casualty reports, road closures and more. Twitters followers rose to 300000 followers during this period of time.

Officials at the scene of the Boston Bombing incident.
Photo provided by vjeran_pavic, found here
Available through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Social Media was also utilised in another way to gain more information and evidence for the Boston Bombing incident. Images and video that had been gathered by two online groups were then shared with the FBI to further their investigation into the incident. I found this paper highly useful when writing this blog post because it revealed to me how crowdsourcing was used to help with the investigation, by utilising the 'virtual bystanders' that had been at the event. I thought this particular use of social technology was rather cool, as it took something as simple as taking a photo and sharing it, and transformed it into a means for the police to receive more information and footage of the event to help pinpoint the individuals who had planted the bombs in the first place. 

Bystanders and officials helping the wounded at the Boston Bombing incident.
Photo provided by smi23le, found here
Available through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Is this the first instance Social Media has helped?

This isn't the first time that investigators have used this method either. In 2011, investigators used up to 5,000 hours of video from the public to find suspects during a riot in Vancouver, though this time they used the information they found differently. They proceeded to post the news clips they had taken, and made them available in kiosks around Vancouver, urging ordinary citizens to look at them and see if they recognised anyone within the videos. They also posted similar images on Facebook, and allowed citizens to post videos, images and more of the event to their page to further their investigation. The use of this method allowed them to successfully capture the suspects and most of the data they had been looking for had simply come to them, instead of them looking for it as usual. 

In my Opinion:

I believe that these methods should be utilised all around the world during large scale emergency situations, to allow for better collaboration between the public and the authorities. Information would flow a lot more easily, officials would receive information more efficiently that could be relevant to the emergency/capture of culprits, and the world would be able to handle large scale events like this more effectively as a whole. Steps are already being taken by social media platforms to allow members of their platforms to check if loved ones are safe during a disaster. Facebook has utilised a tool that does just that. It works by letting people who are in a disaster area alert other friends to the fact that they are safe. Meanwhile sites like Crowdmap and Ushahidi update people on events that are happening and show you real-time mapping of these events.

In Conclusion:

Social Technologies are growing and becoming more integrated into our everyday lives, and what you have seen in this blog post is just one of the up and coming ways it can be utilised to better society. I believe it would be wasteful to not make use of social technologies when they're most needed. What do you think?

Once again, this is Brian.

Signing out.

Assignment 1: Critical Reflection

Presentation of oneself on Social Media. That's a big one for me. I've noticed on several occasions how I've evolved in my interactions with others on social media platforms through the years. It's only after enrolling into this unit did I truly understand the steps behind this process and the need for User Research. Without it, social technology would be severely underused and ill fitted to the modern day blogger/browsing social media individual. I came to this conclusion through research and hours upon hours spent discovering and constructing my own online identity, which I will explore and analyse here.

My use of Social Technologies

My use of Social Technologies was limited from an early age. I never saw the point of having more then one or two platforms to socialise with friends on. The idea that it could be used professionally never actually occurred to me till I arrived at uni. The main Social Media tools that I surrounded my online self with were Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat and Instagram. Snapchat and Instagram are still new additions to my social technology inventory. Google + was also added a bit earlier then Snapchat and Instagram, but because of its minimal use, it only just barely scrapes its way in as a social technology that I utilise in my daily life.

Myspace may have been the first social network I was a part of but what really gave me a proper greeting in the social technology world was Facebook. I became a member in 2009/2010, and after looking through my timeline, I realise that I was the sort of person that blurted out whatever was on my mind at the time. You can see how I've evolved overtime, from posting unnecessary posts about everyday occurrences to developing a personal filter for the content I posted. I currently see myself as the Lurker/Socialite on Facebook. I follow the updates on the people that have come through my life at some point mainly through Facebook, while posting and commenting on mainly my close friends walls. In the past Facebook was used for Student purposes which didn't work out to well, due to attempting to use several different social media platforms instead of one central one. Recently, my Facebook activity has been minimised due to Facebook's constant spamming of unneeded content and attention seeking articles from other sites. Yet whenever I'm bored, I will still find myself scrolling through it. This contributes to the vast amount of time spent on Facebook, which can be seen within my Persona Poster. Facebook for me is a mix of Personal and Student, as seen in my Identity Map.

Meanwhile, when I use YouTube, I've completely become the Lurker. While YouTube is used quite often by nearly all of my friends, the channel I have is mainly used by myself to watch random videos found through the internet and to keep up to date with vloggers and other subscription channels that are hosted on YouTube that I've found over the years. I've used YouTube as a Student on occasion as well, but my main goals for my YouTube channel will eventually allow me to evolve and use it as a Professional vlogger. Therefore, YouTube is kept for Student and Professional purposes.

Google+ is used mainly for Professional and Student exploits. It only occasionally gets updated because of how rarely I use it, so it is the most behind on information about myself, yet still the best place to find my professional self on any Social Media Platform. The Student side of my profile is another topic entirely. My circles have not been organised properly, communities weren't used efficiently (created a community for a university assignment, then never proceeded to use it due to finding a better suited platform), and overall profile not kept up to date as mentioned before, has led me to conclude my Student social media endeavours need to be better organised overall. Google+ is also seen as Professional and Student.

Instagram and Snapchat are once again more of a mixture between Lurker/Socialite. I use both of these often, Snapchat being the more popular of the two for myself. I often send snaps to friends throughout the day, but rarely post a story or Instagram photo upload. Instagram is the latest discovery for me, and it is probably one of the more interesting ones that I use. The fact that you can only upload an image or an image and text adds a new twist that other social technologies can't capture. The possibilities with Instagram are endless, and I'm extremely excited to get deeper into it. I see these two as a more personal platform for myself and keep it strictly close friends, but I have been known to add people who follow me on Instagram depending on if I know them in the real world. I see both of these platforms as solely as Personal.

My overall persona can easily be summed up as the Disorganised Socialiser, as seen in my Persona Poster. I'm a very social person with close friends, and even other friends that I have on Facebook and other platforms, but when we have a look at my Student side, things get rather unorganised. I believe I'm disorganised in my Student side of Social Technologies due to how new it is to me. I recently started using these platforms for more then just personal reasons, and theres a lot to get used to in terms of how I present myself to others in a Professional manner and as a student.

The Importance of User Research

The study of understanding how people use Social Technologies is called User Research. Or as James R. Lewis and Jeff Sauro explains in their book, Quantify The User Experience, 

'User research is the systematic study of the goals, needs, and capabilities of users so as to specify design, construction, or improvement of tools to benefit how users work and live.'

The research of User's who use Social Networks is useful when trying to understand how to improve a Social Technology to keep up with the people's needs. If a Social Technology becomes obsolete it's usually due to the Social Technology no longer meeting the needs of the user. The user will leave to find a better Social Network that fulfils their requirements of what they want in a Social Technology.

A great example of a Social Technology that couldn't keep up with the needs of its users and thereby eventually lost them all to another competitor is Myspace. Myspace was beaten when Facebook was finally released. In a month's time Myspace lost over 10 million users, and gave up all hope of staying a social network platform. The chief executive of Myspace even said, 

'Myspace is not a social network anymore. It is now a social entertainment destination.'

If Social Technologies don't conduct User Research and constantly update their product, they could go the way of Myspace. I think Facebook needs to pay attention to this, in my opinion they've started to let themselves go as a competing Social Technology.

What was learnt?

Through learning about how others interact with Social Technologies that I'm active in, I've learnt that there are more ways to utilise these technologies to better engage people. I've currently been using them as a personal connector with people close to me. I also learned the importance of User Research and how it's helped to shape Social Technologies into platforms that can be fully utilised by a user. Before this subject, I didn't even know User Research existed (but when you stop to think about it, I suppose it was obvious that this sort of thing existed). I believe if a platform doesn't grow with its users, the users will slowly grow tired of the platform and make the move to another platform, as seen with Myspace. 

I was a little shocked at how long I spent on Facebook per day, which then led me to reevaluate how I use Social Technology and what I could be doing instead. I have also begun to use some more of my devices after realising that I've technically wasted money on a few of them, namely my Tablet (I barely use it at all) and iMac.

I believe I accurately mapped my Persona within my Persona Poster as well as the Identity Map, but they probably could have been done a bit better (I was never happy with the design of the Persona Poster, but I was wasting too much time). If I had wanted to improve the designs of these two, I should have allocated time more efficiently and started a bit earlier. I didn't get the Disorganised Socialiser title for nothing.

Overall I have learnt about Personas, how to distinguish them and how people present themselves to others with these Personas online. It was a very interesting study and I look forward to the next step in my learning within the unit.

Assignment 1: Identity Map

Assignment 1: Persona Poster

Persona Poster Draft

I'm very much not happy with this just yet, but it'll be good to get feedback on what I've done so far for now to improve it. Any feedback will be great!