I’m Locked-in!

Last night I was taking a break from my final’s work- it’s amazing how many professor’s value quantity over quality –cough-Professor Lucas-cough- and watching The Dark Crystal. Towards the climax of the film I took a cell phone call about some breaking news. Osama Bin Laden had been shot in the face. The world knew instantly, minutes after it broke the NYT server wouldn’t load the story.  Apparently the entire web experienced some lag as global traffic surged. I’ve got some text mgs to punch out, so here’s what someone working for NPR found out about what happened:

If you want to know what Americans think of Osama bin Laden's death, don't bother turning on a television. Log on, instead, to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or a news blog.

*Wince* hopefully that’s a bit of irony given the next paragraphs:

There you will see that reactions are evolving at seemingly the same rate that these digital outlets are pushing out news of the U.S. military operation that finally took out the al-Qaida leader.

More than anything else, the first reaction seemed to be shock, then celebration and then temperance. For instance, the first post on NPR's Facebook page, by Candace Hill Sunday night, was simply "omg." The next, by Stephen Somogyi: "'bout time." As more news was reported, people expanded their opinions.

Omg, bout time for some real deep thinking before posting an opinion… so what were people saying when they had time to write expanded opinions? :

In response to celebrations in the streets of New York and Washington on Sunday night, Ryan Rooney on Monday cited a quote that he attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.: "I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." NPR could find no record of King having written or made such a statement.

Hmm, nice, but on par with Steven Colbert writing fake Wikipedia pages…so what happened here other than an echo chamber and instant gratification?  In terms of digital media… 

Twitter says bin Laden's death generated the highest sustained rate of tweets ever. From 10:45 p.m. Sunday to 2:20 a.m. Monday, users pecked out an average of 3,000 tweets per second, according to Twitter. The traffic peaked at 11 p.m. Sunday, minutes before the president's televised briefing, with 5,106 tweets per second.

Perhaps just as notable is that millions of Americans received the historic news not from Obama's televised news briefing Sunday night, but by text message, email and alerts from Twitter and Facebook, in many instances before the details had been reported by the cable television networks.

In the 20 or so hours since, social media have driven America's discourse about bin Laden's death, reinforcing the emergence of digital outlets as preferred sources of news for a rapidly increasing number of people.

As the movie wound down I asked one of my friends if I could use her computer to look up what Obama had said. She laughed at me. “bin Laden’s still dead.” Another friend chimed in, well aware of my somewhat obsessive relationship with newspapers, “he’s gotta know what’s happening, has to get his fix!” yup. Exasperated, I told them, “I’m locked into digital networks, and it’s like an addiction.” Funny, as they both already knew what Obama said thanks to their smart phones.

Yikes, maybe I ought to take another brake from blogging about this stuff.