(sometimes simply by pointing their cameras over their shoulders as they ran), and to get their footage onto the Internet hours, if not days, before professional reporters were even able to get to the strike zone. Thus the first images the rest of the world saw—and therefore, to a great extent, the first the outside world really knew of what had happened—came from citizen journalists whose images were appropriated by the professional media, for the simple enough reason that they lacked any others. This process is described most eloquently in an essay posted—no surprise—on a web blog, one of the constantly growing number of websites maintained by individuals or groups where thoughts or opinions are posted to the web, and therefore to the entire world.
The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 illustrates how a physical event breaks into the worldwide public information system. On December 26, 2004, after a huge earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra was detected, some seismologists realized it could generate a tsunami that could ravage vast coastal areas. But this suspicion remained in an informational limbo. The Sumatran earthquake released more energy than hundreds of nuclear bombs, but this physical fact would not register on the world's consciousness until it could be reported as a story.
The author continues:
7
