With Japan experiencing its worst earthquake in years, the entire world has tuned into social media feeds like Twitter for updates and information about people affected by the quake.
Twitter has allowed the world to not only stay up to date with the crisis, but it has also been used to show maps to hospitals and shelters and even serving as a form of direct communication between journalists on the ground and people across the world wanting to ask questions.
With Japan participating in rolling blackouts and sluggish Internet speeds, Twitter has one of the fastest forms of communication from nearly any device imaginable. Even the simplest cell phone can send a tweet utilizing SMS technology.
"It really pays to stay up to date. I can't follow the news 24/7, but technology has made it much easier to do so," junior photojournalism student Jonathan Swindle said.
People can stay up to date by simply following Japanese news sources, which sometimes tweet updates seconds after an event occurs. Most of the sources are in English and for those only in Japanese, they are often translated by English speakers.
The sources are often more accurate as well because they're able to get information directly from an official source, rather than having to wait for the news to travel through different channels before finally being published.
"I generally use different social media apps like news sources to follow on my phone," Cal Meyer, president of Club Japan, said. "There [has] been a difference from the calm and conservative Japanese media and the slightly alarmist American media."
There was a moment of confusion when news sources such as The Associated Press and Yahoo! News claimed the 50 workers who remained at the damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant were evacuated, and their operations to save the nuclear fuel pool were abandoned. Nearly seconds after it entered the twittersphere, Japanese citizens and foreigners living in Japan began tweeting that the information was wrong.
A few minutes later, Time Out Tokyo, a Japanese news source, confirmed the workers didn't leave the plant, and were only ordered not to step outside due to the risk of contamination.
Another, slightly more humorous example, was with Fox News and its reports on the different nuclear reactors located in Japan. A look at its map revealed the different locations, one called "Shibuyaeggman." Twitter news sources and slightly bemused followers were quick to point out that "Shibuyaeggman" was not a nuclear power plant, but a nightclub. Once again, a large, and embarrassing, mistake was corrected for those who followed the tweets.
Besides being able to supply a fast and reliable source of information, Twitter has been a host to a variety of human interest stories that have received little coverage. There were tweets about a husband whose wife was swept away by the tsunami before his very eyes, and another about a mother who is desperately searching for her children who were last seen at a school before the tsunami hit.
"I tried to run away, but I was just swallowed up by the tsunami. I kept saying save me, save me," read another tweet from a woman who was saved from the tsunami.
Links through Twitter were also available for people to connect to Japan's news service NHK where viewers from all over the world were able to use Ustream to witness the stories from people who were actually part of the tsunami: images of shelters filled to capacity, pleads from staff members for supplies and food and children shivering in the freezing night temperatures.
Photos of usually bright and colorful cities pitch black as part of Japan's plan to save energy along with images empty supermarket shelves with signs claiming that they have no more food were available on Flickr from an amateur photographer under the name "peskymiller."
A tweet from "jgtokyo," a correspondent for Screen International, a multimedia film magazine mentioned "half-stale convenience store sandwich on that crappy, tasteless white bread they use. Lucky as hell..."
Twitter has also been useful in delivering stories of hope and inspiration.
A Japanese blog on Twitter called "Surviving Tokyo" was the first one to break a story about a baby being born safely and healthy amidst the chaos. Stories of high school girls grabbing all the candy they could to hand out to younger children and images and videos of markets making "survival bags" of food and water to hand out to survivors were accompanied with tweets and retweets from reports that not a single act of theft or robbery had been reported.
There were messages from people that they were OK and wanting their family and friends to know they were OK too.
"I thought you were dead," a tweet from a mother from Iwate who had finally met up with her teenage son and husband said.
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