The use of Twitter in the 3.11 Earthquake Tsunami Disaster
On the evening of 3/11/2011, an unpredicted disaster hit the Tohoku region of Japan. Weights and dumbbells clashed in the St. Mary’s Weights Room, and the quake was big enough to shake the grounds of Tokyo. It was big enough to change the Earth’s rotation. Almost all of the transportation from the Tohoku down to the Kanto region stopped; trains were unavailable, buses were not running as planned, taxis were already occupied with people. Some people were not able to go back home for the night, due to the unbearable panic everyone got. The cellphone servers were too busy due to everybody calling each other, and got to the point that it was almost impossible to call or text. However, even though the phone networks were dead, the Internet was alive, and Facebook, Twitter, etc. were available. This helped all the users in Japan get contact, as I was able to get contact on Facebook with my father who was in the middle of his work when the earthquake hit. However, more over, I decided to look at the use of Twitter. Luckily, most of my friends had a Twitter account, and I was able to contact one of them through Twitter. I was at the station, hoping that I will be able to go home. However, due to the quake, the train had stopped, and I could not go home. I could not call my parents, and so I could not ask them to pick me up. However, my friend fortunately was living nearby, and so I contacted him saying, “@username hey, can I stay over at your house? I’m stuck at Futako right now…” Then surprisingly, 3 minutes later, he replied, “@kevinschulze Yeah sure come on over.”
