Twitter and Hurricane Sandy

During the two days I had off from classes being canceled in preparation for Hurricane Sandy, I used my media literacy skills to sift through twitter and gather current factual information about this natural disaster. Yes, I watched the weather channel, mostly CNN to keep updated, but I found it much faster to information gather by checking twitter. Of course, one must be aware of the dangers in information gathering on this social networking site. Many tweets contained photo-shopped pictures and false information. These are the steps I took to find information and verify it. 1) I searched the #sandy to bring up all recent tweets that included this hash-tag. 2) I checked the profile that tweeted to see if it was a respected figure, a news organization, or a government organization. 3) If it was not one these and the tweet was re-tweeted, I checked to see who the person re-tweeted from. If I could not follow the tweet back to a reliable source, I did not consider the information or picture to be true or real. Twitter proved to be a good source to find pictures of New York City and New Jersey even before I saw them on television.  However, Twitter also required more effort on my part to make sure the information was true, whereas CNN Live did not require me to participate in verifying the facts. The media, television and twitter, both achieved the goal of keeping me informed and creating the feeling that I was right there by the Hudson. I respect the reporters that put themselves in danger to give us live coverage of this natural disaster.