As the tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale pounded the shores of northern Japan late Thursday night, the internet exploded with live tweets, eyewitness reports, images, and real-time footage of devastation in Tokyo, Ofunato and other coastal areas of the country. Twitter users were the first to react to the news with hashtags of ‘#prayforjapan’, ‘#tsunami’, and ‘#SendaiAirport’ flooding the micro-blogging space.
Mashable, which tracks digital and social media sites states, ?The reaction on Twitter, quickly becoming the go-to service in emergencies, was immediate and intense. Less than an hour after the quake, with the country?s phone system knocked out, the number of tweets coming from Tokyo were topping 1,200 per minute, according to Tweet-o-Meter.?
An anonymous photojournalist in Tokyo (@tokyoreporter) tweeted extensive details and visuals about the activities undertaken by disaster management teams employed in the quake-hit areas and the evacuation process that was underway. Google?s official feed posted a link to the Japanese version of its People Finder, to search for family members of the separated ones.
This is another instance of Twitter and new media generating immediate impact in comparison to traditional media. Earlier examples include the Egyptian revolution, the Mumbai terror strike, the Haiti earthquake ? that made its first appearance via social media before others caught up.
While BBC?s Twitter stream (@BBCWorld) provided minute-by-minute updates of the situation on the ground, YouTube and news sites like Al-Jazeera, CNN and Japan’s NHK World offered real-time video feeds of the calamity.