The news of Osama bin Laden's death this morning has been met by jubilation by some, dejection by others and has been a reminder of the poor state of the world by most. However, for me, it was the news of one of the only Twitter users in the village of Abbottabad, Pakistan, that tweeted the events live that interested me most.
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| Shohaib Athar's Titter feed as the news of Osama's death comes through.... |
Shohaib Athar began to tweet about the noise coming from outside his home, "Helicopter hovering over Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)", and proceeded to mention a "window shattering bang" and reckoned it was a "complicated situation" as one of the two helicopters was downed. Of course now his lowly, Pakistani Twitter feed is the subject of international news and the number of his followers has risen to almost 25, 000 overnight.
It goes to show the advent of citizen journalism in today's age, that by accident, the internet captures live a world event through the day-to-day activities of a villager in Pakistan. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter et al. is adding to the social media revolution, the biggest change in society since the industrial revolution in the early twentieth century.
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