#mumbai – a web 2.0 news agency

It’s been written many articles about Twitter and the social web and how it spreads news during disasters and big events, for instance at NRKbeta. What I as a journalist consider very interesting is the possibilities to get first hand reports from people on the ground. One nobody on the ground is maybe not a trustworthy source compared to an official statement. But what about 200 people reporting through the social web?

During the terror attacks in Mumbai news and reports spread extremely fast helped by Twitter and the simple phrase #mumbai. By marking all postings about the developing crisis in the Indian city it was possible through Twitter search to get a news feed updated faster than any ordinary news agency.

But it isn’t the same as a news agency. The #mumbai-feed has a mix of citation/links to ordinary media, eyewitness reports from the area and the thoughts of the users, and there is no one editing the stream of information. So there might be a problem that it is filled with thoughts and postings with little new information. Though there is some self justice, as users posting too much without useful information will be bashed by others:

dfk1986 not happy about spam in #mumbai

But then again back to how it can be used by regular journalists. My opionion is that the postings should be divided into: citation from regular media, eyewitness reports and thoughts.
A pure eyewitness feed would have been very useful. Maybe something like #mumbai-eyewitness with self made rules saying what is posted has to be self experienced. Then the people in Mumbai could tell about cable black out, mobile jammers, silent streets etc. A feed like that would give the regular journalist info that can’t be retrieved anywhere else.

Of course the citation feed also can be very useful as thousands of users watching tv, reading websites and listening to radio is faster updating than any other regular news agency with a certain amount of employees. So we should also have the mixed feeds as #mumbai:

Tags: india, media, mumbai, social web, twitter, web 2.0

Mumbai

UPDATE: Added some links and a map.

The last 20 hours or so, my head has been filled with the attacks in Mumbai. I first noticed it on CNN last night at about 19:30 (Norwegian time), about midnight in Mumbai. While playing a game of Trivial Pursuit I followed CNN’s coverage in the background. I had to get to bed with reasonable timing as I had to get up early to work with the morning radio news.

So today I started out early going to work at 5:00, text messaging with Deepshikha on the way. At work I was assigned the task following the Norwegian side of it. What do we know of possible Norwegians involved? Could we get Norwegian voices from Mumbai? etc etc.
We ended up with the story of one businessman who had plans for a meeting today at one of the hotels attacked, Taj Mahal palace and tower. It worked as a starting point for a conversation with one of the officials at the Norwegian embassy in India about Norwegians in the Mumbai area.

Later on during my work hours the message of one Norwegian wounded came from Press Trust of India (PTI). We called the embassy, but they knew nothing. So then we had no confirmation from Norwegian officials. Later on we got confirmed that one Norwegian man travelling in India had gunshot injuries to face and hands. He was treated at a local hospital and his medical state was not life treathening.

It’s a bit strange trying to work only with the Norwegian side of such a story which is so small, and of course really not as serious as the big picture. So far the only known consequence of the attacks for Norwegian individuals  are one man injured. Total over 100 people are killed and aprox. 300 injured in the attacks.

My day was packed with calls to embassy and foreign ministry officials, Norwegian companies  working in India and a few individuals stationed in Mumbai at the moment.

Two years ago I visited Mumbai. I saw many of these places shown today in brutal TV images. In fact I have a photo from the hotel Taj Mahal palace and tower that also have this strange focus on the Norwegian side of it:

Daniel whom I traveled with took a photo of the Taj hotel from a different angle. Here you see the hotel on both sides of the Gateway of India (in front):

Gateway of India and Taj Mahal hotel (photo: Daniel Drageset)

Here you can see where we stayed in 2006, when visiting Mumbai. The blue markers are the attacks yesterday  and the red pin is the Regent hotel where we slept:

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Tags: india, media, mumbai