An interesting article?in Bright talked?about the popularity of Vine?during?the first reports during the Boston marathon bombings. Many people saw those images of the attack because at first it wasn’t on any?TV channel, but only available in an ultrashort Vine video.
As with many disasters and other types of breaking news Twitter also played a key role in the real-time information gathering process. The explosions killed at least 3 people, including an 8-year-old boy, and another 17 people were fighting for their lives a day later. Twitter and Instagram flocked full of bloody pictures. But it was strange to experience that?the news?used imagery of?the popular Twitter video app Vine.
With Vine you make videotweets of just six seconds in duration. It displays clips that will repeat, endlessly A Twitterer made ??such Vine-clip?from images of the explosion on the local TV station, well before the attack had become world news. Through a spaghetti?of retweets the news spread within minutes. The clip?shows how the bomb goes off near the finish line while runners pass by, some with their arms in the air. An older runner falls down on the asphalt, and people are in panic moving in all directions.
The Vine-clip?is retweeted 41 thousand times and became?the iconic image of the disaster. It also shows the power of this type of ultra-short videos: it’s just like a catchy picture, it is imprinted in your mind. Six seconds of horror repeated over and over. The longer you look at it, the more questions it raises, said The Huffington Post.
But it also received?criticism from people who feel that something inappropriate like that is viewed in a loop, by massive numbers of people.?That is exactly?what terrorists want: constantly repeating images of terror that stir up fear. That also happened after 9-11.
The American authorities call on citizens to report such videos to the police .?The forensic video analysis of all these images is very time consuming task and is done with special software.
