Hyderabad Blasts and the Social Media Ethics!

Hi Guys,

Yesterday was an unfortunate night for Hyderabad with two bomb blasts killing at least m

ore than 10 people. It was a very sad incident, that too after coming to know about the earlier alerts from Intelligence agencies in India and US.

I first came to know about the news around 7. 30 pm. The first thing I did was to keep track of the search results of ‘Hyderabad’ in Twitter. I thought I would come to know more about the blasts and the aftermath of the blasts.  What happened was really annoying and it raised a lot of questions in me. Here are my Observations from yesterday’s event.

• The main purpose of Media is to bring the truth and help the people. But what happened was completely disgusting. One channel was tweeting that there were just 7 deaths. Another was saying there were five serial blasts. Yet another channel claimed that more than 20 people have died. Some went on to say that there are two blasts and there is a possibility of a third blast. If you guys are not aware of what is happening, why publish it and create fear amongst people?

• There were few geniuses out there, who thought they would increase their TRP ratings by publishing photos and videos from the site. But, the fear that another TV channel might go out and capture it before them was high. So, they called out publicly for photographs. NDTV and Zee News were two channels (there might be more) which publicly tweeted that viewers are welcome to contribute photos. At least our People are not in that level. I guess the only response these people got for the tweets were angry responses. One Person went on to say that ‘What happened is a bomb blast, not a few friends blasting to send the pictures’

• As people were suffering out there, there was another set of extremists in Twitter. Their main debate was on whether the blast was created by Saffron Terrorism or Green Terrorism. There were few national leaders too who made use of this opportunity to make sure their name was all around the place. Each one came out with their own analysis and logic of the blast. Whoever did it, it was Terrorism and it has to be stopped. What difference does it make finding out the religion behind it?

• There was a big group of people, who retweeted anything that came across their eye. They never bothered to think about it. They never thought the rumours would create a panic among people. If you had been searching Hyderabad in twitter yesterday, you would have found out at least 10 different stories hovering all around.

Among all this the good thing was there were a set of good people (and a few good media too). They were suggesting people to be calm and help those in need. A few people said they were in Hyderabad with a particular Blood Group and would be ready to help if needed. A few people circulated the Hotline numbers and asked people to use the phones only if needed so as to help reduce congestion in Phone lines. They advised people not to come out with their own analysis and the Government will take care of it. It was glad to see that a few people were responsible.

It is high time our people start using Social Media responsibly. Tweeter has the power of making news hot in a few minutes. But, it is the users who must tweet sensibly.

Hope the situation improves!