Twitter’s Destruction Is Your Problem
Let’s say you are traveling outside your country and a massive news story is reported back in your home town. Maybe it’s a huge protest, a riot, fire, or God forbid a terrorist attack — how would you know whether the reports were real? If you’re lucky enough to come from a part of the world with reliable internet, cell service, and power, you can always call those you know and trust back home to see if they are witnesses who can give you more information. You would likely recognize the streets and landmarks in your home town, and you would speak the local language, so you would be able to provide important context to videos or pictures you might see on the internet. You would know, for instance, whether the video claiming to show your town hall was really filmed in your city. Maybe you know that the previous town hall was demolished and replaced with a new one, for instance, and a video that reports to show a bombing of the structure is really just the demolition video from years prior. In other words, you are an expert on your home town, even if you’re not currently there, both because of your lived experiences and through your network of contacts. Those who know you and live outside your home town may not be experts like you are, but they know you, and so they can amplify your voice. Journalists and other interested parties like governments, non-government organizations (NGOs), and others may also benefit from your testimony, and they can piece together your observations with others just like yours to begin to form a more perfect picture of what’s happening — or not happening — even before they have arrived on the scene.
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