#9// The Boston Marathon Bombings

The Boston Bombing Marathons: the first time social media is really used as a medium for news. When the Boston Marathon Bombings occurred, I was living in Zhongshan, China. For this reason… all my information came from facebook, twitter and instagram. Every morning my roommate and I would joke, “gotta read the morning newspaper!” as we scrolled through our feeds. Often times we were given bad information via social media, and were gullible enough to believe it. Did we ever once consider going to an actual news site to get the facts? Absolutely not. We just searched through hundreds of randomly posted articles or blogs or pictures.  Because of this… we were misinformed the majority of the time.

But I blame those problems on the user… on myself. Because I was silly enough to trust everything I read. I actually believe social media is a huge benefit in crisis situations. It spreads news faster than anything… but not just news… also relief efforts and missing peoples and ways to help.

This article is about social media helping the aid effort after typhoon Haiyan:

 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24565-social-media-helps-aid-efforts-after-typhoon-haiyan.html#.UoKOK_lJOSo

This article is about how social media helped GM resolve complaints and keep customers happy:

http://www.autonews.com/article/20131021/OEM06/310219873/gms-social-media-team-helps-resolve-complaints-keep-customers#axzz2kSu0LwBm

See!! Although there are occasional misleading facts and untrusting scams, the active viewer can use social media to not only help others, but also reap the benefits when needed. As social media partakers, we must have an open and educated mind when receiving news via twitter and facebook. Otherwise, the benefits will slip through the cracks between falsely written and posted articles.