Every day it seems like social media is becoming more and more important to spreading the word about world events. We saw the ways in which Twitter helped rescue operations in Haiti, and just a few short months later, yesterday’s Baja California earthquake was felt around the world thanks to the power of social media.
Within minutes of it happening, Twitter and YouTube were ablaze with posts, pictures and videos, sharing the news of the quake with the world. Reports suggested a ‘rolling’ style quake which seems to have emptied water out of pools and set lights and bottles moving and required an evacuation of Disneyland, but didn’t cause a huge amount of damage.
For many people around the world who simply don’t experience earthquakes like this in their country, social media can be an excellent way of helping them understand what goes on in these. Rather than earthquakes being the terrifying, apocalypse-bringers that they are portrayed to be in films, or simply after the event abstracts that we receive from the news, social media can help bring us closer to the event from raw, on-the-ground footage and un-coached testimony from the people who lived through it.
It’s in situations like this that social media can really help to show its power – it’s not just an excellent tool for businesses to reach their customers or potential customers, it’s a peerless way of bringing world events out to the rest of the planet.
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