I don't just post ramblings as a guest on others' sites, or fix electronics, or rescue cats - sometimes, I read outside social impact articles, geek 'zines, and other materials - it's good to exercise the brain cells sometimes.
A while back, I wrote about Evolution of the Cell Phone - My Journey and today I started reflecting on that as I read an entirely different article - which I'd like to see a discussion on.
This article is ripped entirely from someone else's work - not a Xangan - but Vol. 10, #25 - Jun 29, 2010 - Issue #435 of WinXP News, a column from the Editor's Corner.
I'll be clicking the link on the original article, but I'm still curious on others' take on it. Cheers.
How Technology Plays into our Response to Tragedy Today
A tragedy occurred in my neighborhood a little over a week ago. On Father's Day, several houses down from ours, a man murdered his wife and then killed himself. It's an all-too-common scenario these days but it really hits you hard when it happens so close to home. The wife was a municipal judge and I had met her in the course of my civic involvement. I didn't know the husband, although I had seen him in the yard from time to time. As in so many of these domestic violence cases that end in death, the triggering factor will probably never be known. http://www.wxpnews.com/RE4UJU/100629-Murder-Suicide
Aside from the obvious personal reactions of shock and grief, I was struck by the part that technology played in the wake of this sad event. Authorities first became aware of what was going on when the couple's son, a doctor in another city over 200 miles away, received a text message from his father that said "I just killed your mother." Long-time readers might recall a piece I wrote a few years ago about whether it's appropriate to use electronic communications to deliver bad news. At the time, I didn't even consider the possibility of texting news that was this horrible. I can't even imagine being the recipient of such a communication.
The son, of course, called the local police here in our city and they responded to the address and tried to contact the father inside. They were unable to establish communications with him, and they followed standard procedure in this type of barricaded person case by setting up a perimeter and calling in specialists (SWAT team, negotiators). Meanwhile, many of my neighbors gathered as close to the house as they could, trying to see what was going on - and in the process, putting themselves at risk if he had decided to come out shooting.
Others of us retreated to our own homes and it's likely most did the same thing I did: started searching the web for more information about what was taking place down the street. It was several hours before the official news sites and TV stations reported the story, but I was able to find out some of the details more quickly from neighbors who posted to their Facebook pages or Twitter. It was the old tried-and-true "neighborhood grapevine" in action, but with an electronic bent.
The way the social networks beat the "real news" outlets on this demonstrated to me firsthand just how useful the Internet can be in a crisis situation. One reason there was so little news on our particular crisis for such a long time was that at the same time, a bigger news story was unfolding in a town southwest of us, where the Dallas police chief's son killed a stranger, killed the responding police officer, and then was himself shot to death by other officers. All the DFW journalists were focused on that more high-profile incident. But in my neighborhood, we were more interested in what was happening here. It made me think that maybe our city and police department could use the social networking tools to their advantage when things like this occur in the future. For instance, they had several roads closed off in our neighborhood. It would have been good if the city could have disseminated that information online, rather than people having to wait for neighbors to do it. They could also have updated us on the incident and explained why neighbors should not trek down to the scene and add to the chaos and tension. Of course, the police had their hands full at that time but it seems like a good job for a designated information officer.
The police did make use of some high tech tools to ensure the safest entry when they finally decided to go into the residence. They first sent in a robot with a camera, borrowed from a neighboring suburb, so they were able to assess the situation rather than rushing blindly into what could have been an ambush situation.
During the incident, while we had little information other than the address, I used Google and Bing maps to pinpoint exactly which house it was and switched over to the county tax appraisal web site to confirm who the owners were. I searched the web for any other info about them and learned that the wife had been very involved with youth programs in the community. After it was all over, the Internet was my chief source of follow-up info. The "Comments" sections on many of the news sites contained both wild speculation and real first-hand information from people who knew the family.
Our community came together in the wake of this tragedy in a way that might not have been possible without the 'Net. The city's Facebook page was used to guide FB users to press releases and to let us all know about a memorial vigil that was organized to honor the judge. The Mayor and Councilmembers used the social networks to communicate with their constituents and residents exchanged information and talked about their feelings regarding the tragedy in the online forums.
I couldn't help but compare this process to the way we used to respond to a neighborhood tragedy - such as the kidnapping and murder of a young neighborhood boy that happened when I was a teenager - before we had the Internet. Those of us who weren't close to the family didn't even know about it until the newspaper came out the next day. The whole experience left me impressed with just how important the Internet has become as a way of spreading news quickly and efficiently when something out of the ordinary happens. Some of the online comments I saw also brought home how the free forum that is the Internet can not only spread information, but misinformation and rumor as well. Of course, the national response to the September 11, 2001 tragedy is a case in point.
Tell us what you think. Has the Internet changed the way we respond to tragedies? Is the ability to get more information, faster, a good thing or not? Is the greater invasion of the family's privacy worth it? Overall, does the Internet have a positive or a negative impact on the people involved - both intimately and peripherally - with tragic incidents? We invite you to discuss this topic in our forum at http://www.wxpnews.com/RE4UJU/100629-Forum-Discussion
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