The shootings in NIU have left us all with a feeling of sadness and shock. I was watching the news yesterday and I heard how this girl was crying and saying how she was in the classroom where the shootings took place and had to crawl to the floor and she was just thinking that she was going to die. This really got to me, I felt fear and this is something that can happen in any university, at any time, and nobody can do something about it.
Students at NIU and around the country created a support group on Facebook where people can give the victims and their families their condolences. The group already has over 31,000 members from all over the world who are uniting to pray and support all of the victims of this sad tragedy. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have proven to be not only a place to upload pictures from your fun weekends, but also a way in which people come together for a cause. This is a source of communication that not only connects a country, but the whole world and keeps people updated and inform of current events.
Additionally, I want to comment that Virginia Tech was a tragedy, but on a more positive note this tragedy was like a wakeup call for police enforcements and how media handles this types of problems. I think the NIU faculty and staff responded very well to this sad incident, police arrived rapidly, and the conferences given where organized and with detail information to the public.
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I think that the NIU shooting and VT shooting have all allowed the use of facebook to share people's feelings, show condolences, and bring people together, but i also think it can tend to get a little to stalkerish at times. I feel like we are letting people in that we don't necessarily want to be let in and that can lead to bad things in the future. What if there is someone else planning a shooting on campus? They can just get on facebook and pretty much figure out who the people they want to target, where they live, who they talk to, who they hang out with etc... Thats why when using tools like facebook and myspace for social networking, it should be used for the sole purposes of networking and communication then the worst.
One thing I love about Facebook is that you can support others with their hardships and losses. I don't think before Facebook NIU or Virginia Tech students would have received as much support and it's great to see that people care and will do what little they can to make something like these shootings better. I've seen how this very thing has taken effect in my life. A girl I hs graduated with recently lost her mother. I haven't spoken to the girl since graduation but have her as a friend on Facebook. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have offered my condolences had it not been for Facebook but I felt that it gave me a good way to send my apologies and prayers to her. I know this was the case for a lot of people, having looked at her wall posts. Also, she was able to write a note to everyone expressing her thanks and plans for the funeral and the following months. I don't like that Facebook is open to everyone (especially hsers) but when I see campaigns for breast cancer and Darfur raising money, it makes me more positive than negative about it.
This brings up a good topic that we learned in both of our textbooks about how social media can be a venue for both positive and negative citizen marketers. This particular one isn't marketing anything but it shows people getting together for a positive cause. This type of medium is also a good way for people to offer their regrets/sentiments who normally would not have done so. People get weird about loses like that an often times don't know how to approach the families of the victims to let them know how they feel. This is a good way to do it.
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