On the afternoon of Friday 22nd July, I along with journalists in newsrooms across the world watched as the mayhem in Norway unfolded. Following the blasts at government buildings, the Twittersphere exploded in response to the events. People tweeted about what they had seen and heard, re-tweeting others. There were news organsiations and journalists tweeting every few moments as well. I watched as my timeline update while the hashtags and trending topics changed to 'Norway', 'Oslo' and 'NRK', the largest Norwegian news broadcaster, whose footage was being shown by BBC News.
As BBC News showed the devastation, I noticed a new trending topic on Twitter: 'Utøya', clicking on it I found a flood of tweets mentioning a shooting taking place on the nearby island of Utøya, the shooter was a man dressed as a policeman. At that point many news organisations had yet to pick up on it and I felt if my duty to re-tweet something of the shooting however, when re-tweeting there is a question of reliability. Which sources could be trusted and which could not.
The journalists around me only took information that had been tweeted by two different organisations in order to ensure reliability. I followed their example, carefully looking out for trusted organisations and journalists' tweets about Utøya and then re-tweeting the information. Sometimes it is easy to become caught up in a news story and it is important to stay focused and try to make sure the facts are as accurate as possible. Verification of the facts is so important, get them wrong at your peril, which is why even re-tweets should be as reliable as they can be. If the facts are wrong, it reflects poorly upon the person who has re-tweeted them and reliability is part of the strong bond between the media and the people.
The news eventually appeared on the television but as is now always the case, Twitter got there first. The people tweeted and the news media responded. Individuals who knew teenagers on the island tweeted warnings about not contacting loved ones in case they were hiding. If Twitter had existed during the Columbine massacre I have no doubt it would have been the same: young people using social media to tweet to the world about what was going on.
I suppose with Twitter and the internet as a whole there will always be a question of reliability.
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