On 15 January 2009, a US Airways plane crashed into the Hudson River in New York. Janis Krums, who was on the rescue boat, tweeted the message ‘There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy’ and took a photo which he uploaded to Twitter, via TwitPic, a photo-sharing app, as at that time Twitter was not able to automatically add images.

The image went viral and from this time journalists realised that Twitter had become the place for breaking news.

Questions

• Which social media channel do you use for news?
• Look back at your Twitter or other social network and describe a time when you ‘heard it first’
via social media.
• What did you do when you heard the news?
• Discuss in pairs and present findings to the group.