Social Media saves lives.

University of Texas Tower

By now we all know what took place last week on the University of Texas’s Austin campus. In fact, thanks to the power of social media, we knew what had happened in a matter of seconds. The event was a worst nightmare situation for millions of students and teachers across the world, a shooter on campus. The grim reality that someone could enter a school campus armed with the intent to kill is something all schools are prepared to deal with. 

Social media played a ground breaking roll in the crises. The key in a situation like shooter on campus is getting information to those who need it fast. The shootings started at approximately 8:15 a.m.  The Austin Statesman, the local Austin newspaper, has a twitter account and broke the news at 8:30.

Just in: We are getting reports of an "active shooter" on the UT campus. More to come. 8:30 AM Sep 28th via TweetDeck.

The UT emergency system actually broke Word first at 8:23. Major news networks did not start breaking news till around 9:30.

So, if you were a UT student where do you turn to get vital information in a crisis situation? The internet. Social Media got the first scoop on the story. The #utshooting went viral in a matter of minutes. Six minutes after the Statesman reported the shooting on their twitter, the Daily Texan, UT’s school newspaper, tweeted:

Just in: We are getting reports of an "active shooter" on the UT campus. More to come. 

The Statesman tweeted eight times in a matter of 43 minutes. By 9:13 they had asked for pictures and information and let everyone know the shooter had in fact killed himself on the sixth floor of the library and that UT was still on lock down.

                By this time, CNN and FOX had not picked up full coverage. Here is CNN’s first tweet on the incident at 9:29:

                Shooting reported at University of #Texas at Austin. http://on.cnn.com/dviadh 9:29 AM Sep 28th via web

                At 10:21 CNN had broke the story on their website.

T.V news used to be the only way to get breaking news as it happens, but as of September 28, 2010 I would say the best place to get late breaking news is twitter or facebook, weird sounding, but true. T.V. crews cannot compete with the thousands of students with phones that are sending texts and updating statuses.

If you twitter #utshootings, the common tweet right now is:

RT @besafetexas: If you have pertinent information about yesterday's incident and have not been interviewed, please call 512-232-9614. #utshooting #utaustinIf you have pertinent information about yesterday's incident and have not been interviewed, please call 512-232-9614. #utshooting #utaustin      

Twitter is a great place to harvest information. #utshooting is full of eye witnesses giving their accounts and people reporting from within the situation.

People all over twitter were passing the information on the shooting around last week. People used twitter to scoop the story before major T.V news crew could start their up to the second coverage. The power of social media to pass messages is incredible. Students quickly started live blogs on the situation and twitters harsh feature allows people to type #utshooting and watch tweet after live tweet to stay informed.

Thousands of students, journalism majors of not, took up citizen journalism last week. The power of social media has become a very fast, influential source that people can trust.

PR implications are relevant to the speed information can spread. Good or bad. If any organization has a social media presence, you help encourage the spread and dissemination of messages. As well as, dispute rumors and personally address people. Two-way communication is absolutely the reason behind the popularity and success of social media. So take advantage of it.