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| via National Geographic |
About a week ago, Japan marked the 1st anniversary of one of the nation's most awful natural disaster, and indeed, one of world's most deadliest earthquakes. In memoriam, the nation stood in a moment of silence to not only remember the earthquake victims, but in an evil 1-2-3 punch, it also recalled the massive tsunami and the ever menacing nuclear disaster in the Fukishima plant that happened as well. The aftermath was horrible. The images were astonishing. Yet, it wasnt the reporters that told and recorded the incident as it happen. It was the civilians, whom, with a quick instinct, captured the tsunami and earthquake as it occurred. And with a touch of a button, they instantly uploaded their images to social medias.
I guess my point is, social media is taking over the regular reporter's work. Just as fashion houses are heavily depending on fashion bloggers to attend their runways, it seems to me that the news media are heavily depending on eye witnessing civilians to upload their images to social media in order to make the news spread quicker. From the Arab unrest of last year, to the London riots, the regular joes are indeed the ones reporting the news to the world. Looks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,etc. users are making ABC, CNN, FOX and other reporting networks make a run for their money.
For instance, Mexico just experienced a 7.4 earthquake near Acapulco today. But it wasn't the news media that broke the news to me. It was through Facebook, where my friend updated his status saying "7.6 earthquake hits between Acapulco and Mexico City, thats actually a pretty big quake".
Below is a link that discusses the Japan earthquake, as well as the images that many witnesses captured.
...and God Bless the people of Japan.
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