New media for disaster news.

From Jordan Lawson -

Though the recent storm for me wasn't technically a disaster, I lost power around 8 p.m. and was able to keep track of the storm with my 3G accessible smartphone and by accessing Twitter and Facebook. I also could access weather and news websites, but I found myself mostly attracted to Twitter. It gave me quick updates about whtat was happening from friends and news sources about what was happening during the storm. These tweets gave me a better picture and I understood how devastating the storm was. If I just watched the news and didn't have personal accounts from other people, it might not have mattered as much, but I was interested and kept up to date by people's tweets. The storm wasn't as bad in my area and I wouldn't have had such an understanding of what happened. I didn't turn on a radio, I went to Twitter, and I think that is really telling of this age of social media. People didn't call in to a radio station to report what was going on (well I'm sure they did, but I didn't hear them) they tweeted and put #KnoxStorm to compile the tweets.