How the Aurora massacre spread on social media
Good morning!
The horrific mass shooting a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado is once again showing how small the world has become with the advent of mobile social tools.
Almost immediately, people jumped on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and YouTube to post something about the shootings.
A collection of tweets compiled on Storify shows how events transpired on Twitter just prior to the shooting up until this very moment. The full list of tweets is located at the bottom of this post.
As word spread of the shootings, reaction followed on Twitter from all corners under the hashtag #theatershooting.
David Karp (Tumblr founder) @DavidKrap
So #theatershooting is about a person who kill people while watching a movie. This will never get out of my head whenever im in theaters.
Seán O'Sullivan @OSullivanMUFC
How many people will it take to die for America realise the absolute stupidity of its love affair with guns? #theatershooting
It's a sad day when you have to worry about going to the movies. Let's keep the victims and there families in our prayers#theatershooting
Now I'm sure this will raise high concern of security, next time we go the theatres. I just stunned at this whole #TheaterShooting.#NoWords
Sometimes, this world can truly be a horrifying place. They just wanted to see a movie. #TheaterShooting
I won't get any work done today, I can't rationally figure out#theatershooting, my heart hurts for everyone there.
One of the theatergoers uploaded a video taken with a smartphone showing the chaos that followed the shooting. We would not be surprised to see more videos as the day unfolds.
We also are using social media to get a glimpse into the lives of those who have been killed or wounded in Colorado.
A man posted on Reddit.com that he was among the wounded. "I am one of the 50 wounded in the Aurora theater shooting," he wrote. "Here are a few photos of my very lucky but nonetheless terrifying brush with death." Warning: the pictures are graphic. This is the link: http://www.reddit.com/tb/wvbbk
And aspiring sportscaster Jessica Ghawi (Redfield), who tweeted just prior to the shooting and then lost her life to the gunman, recently blogged about getting caught up in another shooting in Toronto last month.
“I can’t get this odd feeling out of my chest. This empty, almost sickening feeling won’t go away. I noticed this feeling when I was in the Eaton Center in Toronto just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court. An odd feeling which led me to go outside and unknowingly out of harm‘s way," she wrote. "It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how a weird feeling saved me from being in the middle of a deadly shooting.'
Jesse Spector, who writes for The Sporting News and knew Jessica, tweeted: "Words are useless. Guns more so. If you ever had any interaction with @JessicaRedfield, you know the world is much worse off without her."
And finally, people have taken to Tumblr to express their thoughts. This post from Tumblr user http://thelyricaldiaries.tumblr.com/.
"What terrifies me the most about this shooting is how eerily similar it is to the Dark Knight Trilogy. Innocent civilians, masked men, mass killings. This is chaos. America seems to be becoming Gotham. It scares me that we live in a world where the villains outweigh the heroes."
You can find more at http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/aurora
That's the trend.
Have a good weekend,
Bob
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