When the news of Osama bin Laden's death broke Sunday night, people found out about is from an array of different mediums.  According to an Associated Press report, one soldier overseas in Afghanistan heard the news via Facebook and a TV producer learned of the news from comedian Kathy Griffin's Twitter.  Others found out from newspaper email notifications or even on a smart phone away from home.  To contrast, when news of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks began to spread, it wasn't nearly as fast; these sources were not even options at the time.  As an individual who was on Twitter myself at the time that it was announced President Obama would be speaking on an "unannounced" topic (and then a National Security topic and then eventually speculation and confirmation that he would be announcing bin Laden's death) it was phenomenal to suddenly see all the meaningless, trivial tweets taken over by the whole Twitter community responding to this new issue.

The story broke on Twitter and was carried through Twitter and ultimately analyzed on Twitter.  Through Twitter does not actually have stories on its site - it instead links you to the full text - the 140-character cap is sufficient to break news.  Keith Urbahn, chief of staff to Defense Sec. Robert Gates, is responsible for posting the tweet that led to the speculations and ultimately (though unintentionally, broke the story).  The reactions via Twitter kept pouring in over night and throughout Monday and beyond.  Subscribers could read comments from politicians, comedians, celebrities, "regular" people, journalists, news sources, and more - even the "President" himself (well, his office).  The response on Facebook was very similar.  Experiencing this breaking news via these social sites was quite exciting and unlike anything I've been a part of before.

Information for this post also came from a report by The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly.  

Hot Damn Twitter

Last night the twitter-sphere was the perfect example of the constant news cycle, as this NYT media decoder blog post shows. Just after 11:30pm, Obama confirmed the death of al-Qaida’s chief, Osama bin Laden. Yet, at around 9:45 the White House communications director had announced on twitter that Obama was going to be making an special speech. Almost immediately, people began to speculate what the announcement would be about. Just before 10:30, the first “official” tweet with this information read “so I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.” With this, government officials started giving network news outlets anonymous information almost an hour before the President was able to make his own speech on the death.
In class we talked about how news organization was able to guess Kennedy’s plans naval plans in reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis but was able to quell reporters and make an official announcement himself. With social media cites, like Twitter, it becomes easier for the media to get in contact with government officials or be in touch with each other about possible clues. Of course, a lot of these tweets were coming from unofficial sources or were just speculation. It seems like this was one of the first times the media was actually steps ahead of the President. What does this mean for the future of special presidential announcements?

When trivial information meets hard news

Sohaib Athar’s followers were following Osama Bin Laden without even knowing it. This Pakistani computer specialist noticed helicopters flying over his city and thought the event was rare enough to be tweeted about. An hour later, he added that since Taliban do not have helicopters and that they were not Pakistani, something was definitely going on. And we all now know that a special operation was taking place in his town.

This story, reported by CNN among others, shows how citizens can really be effective in gathering information and broadcasting news in real time. But it already raises the question of the danger of this broadcasting. Some information should remain unknown until it is time to unveil them. It is the case I think for military or police operations. The traditional media are not always hushing up those stories because they are corrupted, it is also a matter of security.

Once again, it shows that the total freedom of the internet has it good and bad sides. And even if no one really has the power to control everything on the web, the issue of the internet governance should be discussed by all the world political, economical, and “moral” leaders.