Twitter used as fast news service after plane crash

Twitter was used as a news agency after the Amsterdam airport crash. The micro-blogging service spread information fast, but was flooded with hundreds of messages per minute about the accident.

Patrick de Laive (30) sat in a taxiing plane at 10:45 am Tuesday morning, waiting to take off from Schiphol to London. “There was an announcement that we had to turn our mobile phones off,” explained the internet entrepreneur later that day by telephone. “Then I saw a message coming in on Twitter: 'are you still at Schiphol? It seems a plane has crashed there'.”

Twitter, the so-called micro-blog service with which everyone with an internet connection can send a short message out into the world (maximum of 140 characters), fulfilled an interesting role in providing information in the first few hours after the Turkish Airlines plane crashed. Passengers in De Laive's plane heard details about the disaster by mobile phone sooner than the crew did.

“I approached a steward and said: 'I hear via Twitter that a plane has crashed',” said De Laive. “The captain had only stated that there was a small problem. The steward replied: 'this is all we know'.” Fifteen minutes later the captain reported that a ‘serious accident’ would lead to a delay in their flight. “But from the messages on Twitter everyone in the plane already knew much more about what was going on,” said De Laive. He texted on Twitter: “Schiphol airport is closed due to a problem with an inbound flight. I’m in the [on a] plane and via Twitter I see there is a crash!”

'Not entirely reliable'

Twitter has been around since 2006 and has an estimated 6 million users worldwide, while many more people do not twitter themselves but do follow messages. Anyone with a mobile telephone with an internet connection and a free account with Twitter can send out news within seconds from anywhere in the world. About what they had for breakfast or their mood at the moment, but also about an enormous accident happening right in front of their eyes. The main difference with other chat services is that everyone can see the messages (called tweets), not just ‘friends’ you gave permission to. News can thus spread like wildfire on Twitter. As the BBC defined it earlier: “Twitter is like an incredibly fast, but not entirely reliable news desk.”

After the plane crashed mainstream Dutch media started making use of this press agency function of Twitter on a large scale for the first time. “It is a mutually stimulating medium. If you contribute something, you quickly get a lot in return,” said presenter Lara Rense (36) of BNR Newsradio, who wrote at 10:37 am the first real tweet about the accident, 6 minutes after it occurred and 18 minutes before the news broke in all major editorial offices via press agency ANP. Rense twittered: “Listeners reported that a plane has crashed at Schiphol.” Two minutes later she asked in a tweet whether anyone had seen or heard anything. Then the number of tweets about Schiphol exploded.

Radio first

It is not true that the news first appeared on Twitter, as reported on many websites: the first eyewitnesses called BNR Newsradio. “We first reported it properly on the radio, then I put it on Twitter,” said Rense. “That move did not uncover other eyewitnesses, but did produce more news tips.”

The BBC programme Have Your Say searched for eyewitnesses via Twitter, and also the TV-programme NOVA and the Volkskrant newspaper tried their hand at it. On Twitpic, the website associated with Twitter, the first photos appeared rapidly.

Twitter's popularity has drawbacks, too. Forty-five minutes after the first messages, the number of tweets about the disaster had risen to a flood of over 100 per minute. Primarily references to newspaper and television sites, many repetitions and speculations about the number of victims. Lara Rense of BNR Newsradio is nevertheless convinced about the usefulness of Twitter: “You must always keep your wits about you. But a caller can also make up a tale.”