Blogs were the first wave of news from VT

Journalists look to bloggers for Virginia Tech story

After the horrible and tragic shooting at Virginia Tech University, a LiveJournal account, icantread01 posted his story at 11:47AM of waking up on Monday morning from a phone call from the local hospital where his girlfriend was slightly wounded from a gunshot wound. Apparently, his blog was one the only forms of communication that reporters had to contact VT students. Within hours of his entry, CBS Newsworld and NPR requested a personal interview about his experience and updated information from the shut-down campus.

Similarly, VT friends turned to Facebook and AIM, instead of the phone, to contact fellow Hokies about their health, news, information and updates. With 24 hours of Monday’s incident, 3500 Facebook groups have been created to show support for the fallen students and teachers. The above black ribbon with VT logo was created to symbolize the tragic event on Facebook, Myspace, LiveJournal and other participatory websites. From Canadians, Muslims, to whole Universities set up blogs and discussions bulletins to help people mourn, discuss and psychologically cope with the horrific events.