5.13. Análisis Situacional
5.13.2. Análisis de Matriz BCG
On 26 November 2008, a series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks took place in different locations of Mumbai which started shortly before 10:00 pm [12,
159]. The siege of different attack locations lasted for about 60 hours before the Indian security forces overpowered the attackers on 29 November, 2008 [11]. During the attacks, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 SMS to Twitter every 5 seconds i.e. about 1000 SMS messages per minute [24].
I have used 948 Twitter posts from six Twitter accounts in order to assess the degree to which conflicting reports exist that causes uncertainty. The reason for analysing information from six Twitter accounts only is that I have studied the Mumbai incident about a year after the incident took place. Therefore, it was neither possible for me to collect all Twitter posts relating to the incident due to the limitations of Twitter APIs mentioned earlier, nor was it possible to know which Twitter users were tweeting about the incident. However, different news media referred to some of the Twitter users includingDina, and Vinu, who twitted regarding the incident [52,10,144]. Some of the Twitter users were also ‘mentioned’ (referred to) by other Twitter users. Since, the purpose of this case study is to understand the nature and utility of the information that becomes available on the social networks in the wake of a crisis and emergency, I do not need to collect all the information from all users. I have collected information from among those Twitter users whose accounts remained active (when I attempted to retrieve the data), who appeared to be tweeting from Mumbai and the number of their tweets, made after 29 November 2008, was not more than 3,200 (which, otherwise, would have prevented the Twitter API to retrieve the tweets that were posted when the incident was happening i.e. between 26 and 29 November 2008).
2
3.3.1
Inconsistent and Contradictory Information
It has been found that Twitter users don’t always give information based on first- hand experience; in many cases they just relay the messages that they received from different sources (which may or may not be reliable) including the main stream media. With respect to the Mumbai incident, here are some examples of tweets that relay messages from other sources. The second and third tweets refer to CNN News and CNN-IBN and are in contradiction with each other as they differ on the number of deaths of terrorists and they are coming from the same (Twitter) account.
1. At 23:11:53 on 26/11/2008mumbaiattack, a Twitter user, relayed this mes- sage from an unspecified source: “#mumbai 78 reported dead >200 injured”. 2. At 03:03:42 on 27/11/2008 MumbaiAttacks, a Twitter user, relayed this message from CNN News: “87 are reported dead. 9 of the terrorists are reported dead by a CNN News report. #mumbai”
3. At 03:10:03 on 27/11/2008 MumbaiAttacks, a Twitter user, relayed this message from CNN-IBN: “5 terrorists now reported to be shot dead, while 9 are detained. #mumbai CNN-IBN”
Table 3.1 below shows some contradictions found in the tweets.
According to the official statement of the Indian Government, the total number of people injured was 308 [104].
3.3.2
Hoax and Rumour
We have seen in the previous section that people spread contradictory information on Twitter. However, the worse thing is that not only do the Twitter users sometimes give contradictory information but at times, they go beyond that and spread rumour or hoax (although possibly without malicious intent). A hoax, apparently created by a Twitter user mumbaiupdates3, was used in an effort to stop people from
reporting live about the military operations against the terrorists [27]. Table 3.2 contains some of the tweets of mumbaiupdates that came before and after he created (or at least propagated) the hoax.
3Note however thatmumbaiupdateshas contributed to the discussion on [27], denying that
Table 3.1: Contradictions Found in Tweets about Mumbai Incident
Time Tweet Screen name
26/11/2008 19:58:54
#mumbai - ndtv says 60 dead 200 injured. so far. dina 26/11/2008
20:08:11
#mumbai 55 dead 190 injured. hostages uk and americans taken
mumbaiattack 26/11/2008
21:15:01
#mumbai 78 dead 200 injured mumbaiattack
26/11/2008 21:37:48
#mumbai 15 policemen killed so far in intense fighting mumbaiattack 26/11/2008
23:11:53
#mumbai 78 reported dead >200 injured mumbaiattack
26/11/2008 23:12:21
#mumbai 11 members of Police force perish mumbaiattack
26/11/2008 23:38:04
#mumbai ndtv fm mantralaya. 76 dead 116 injured. 2 terrorists dead. 9 arrested. 2 topcops dead. Chief Minister evasive on who’s responsible.
dina
27/11/2008 00:05:56
#mumbai 87 reported dead 200 injured. mumbaiattack
27/11/2008 01:45:22
87 are reported dead with 185 wounded. #mumbai
CNN.com
MumbaiAttacks 27/11/2008
02:08:44
Injured reports rise from 185 to 187 now. #mumbai CNN.com
MumbaiAttacks 27/11/2008
02:59:54
Reports say Mumbai Government has control of situation. 84 dead, 200 wounded, 2 terrorists dead, 9 in custody. #mumbai CNN.com
MumbaiAttacks
27/11/2008 03:03:42
87 are reported dead. 9 of the terrorists are reported dead by a CNN News report. #mumbai CNN News
MumbaiAttacks 27/11/2008
03:10:03
5 terrorists now reported to be shot dead, while 9 are detained. #mumbai CNN-IBN
MumbaiAttacks 27/11/2008
06:31:08
5 terrorists dead, 1 terrorist arrested, and at least 6 still present in the two luxury hotels; Taj and Oberoi. #mumbai CNN-IBN
MumbaiAttacks
27/11/2008 16:01:09
125 reported dead, 327 wounded in the Mumbai attacks. #mumbai CNN.com
MumbaiAttacks 27/11/2008
19:09:02
RT @BreakingNewsOn The death toll from the Mumbai terrorist attacks has risen to at least 131 with 330+ reported injured
mumbaiupdates
27/11/2008 20:19:36
8 terrorists in total have been killed in shootouts so far. #mumbai CNN-IBN on CNN.com Live
MumbaiAttacks 29/11/2008
00:50:48
Table 3.2: mumbaiupdates’ Tweets Before and After the Creation of the Hoax
Time Tweet Screen name
27/11/2008 03:52:00
Due to military action happening very soon, @mumbaiup- dates may have little information to report to protect the rescue operations
mumbaiupdates
27/11/2008 03:54:27
I am not updating on any details about #mumbai operations until further notice to protect the operation
mumbaiupdates 27/11/2008
04:02:59 Indian government is asking that the twitter search
page #mumbai be shut down
mumbaiupdates
27/11/2008 04:07:51
or possible clarification: to just stop live updating about the situation pertaining to #mumbai
mumbaiupdates 27/11/2008
04:10:35
ALL LIVE UPDATERS - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations.
mumbaiupdates
This hoax was so convincing that even the BBC was fooled to report Indian government asks for live Twitter updates from Mumbai to cease immediatelywith a reference to the tweet made bymumbaiupdateson 27/11/2008 at 04:10:35 [52,27]. However, another Twitter user, dina, challenged the authenticity of the message and asked for a proof. When dina asked another Twitter user cool technocrat
about the source of the information and told him to stop spreading the rumour,
cool technocrat responded with the following message with a reference to the BBC website:
@dina read from bbc website http://tinyurl.com/5al54e [TweetID: 1026242175, created at: 27/11/2008 11:53:27]
dina again tried to convince them, saying:
@Kimota please read it carefully - BBC says they got it from a tweet. These rumours have been tweeted all day. BBC is NOT god!!! #mumbai [TweetID: 1026241807, created at: 27/11/2008 11:53:04]
Yet some Twitter users were still not convinced, as one of them,MumbaiAttacks, tweeted:
CNN-IBN is, unfortunately, yet again reporting specifics as to tactics. They must stop to protect final operations on this assault. #mumbai [TweetID: 1026241807, created at: 27/11/2008 11:53:04]
This particular case of rumour highlights an inconsistent behaviour of a trusted and reliable source (BBC) and shows how misleading it can be. However, the rumour about Indian government’s request for not broadcasting certain information was a hoax, only because the government did not make such request. Otherwise, the message was not malicious. In fact, the conversation between the terrorists (quoted in Section 2.2.2) proves that some information possibly should not have been broadcast live, as the terrorists were following the media information.
3.4
Tool Support: Finding Popular Users by Analysing Retweets
and Mentions
Figure 3.2: Mapping Popularity based on Retweets and Mentions
By observing the incident related tweets (Mumbai Incident), I have found that some Twitter users are relatively ‘popular’ or important in some way, as others frequently mention their names and re-tweet their messages more often. I refer to these Twitter users as ‘popular users’. I have created a support tool (application) to analyse the tweets (that are already saved in my database) in order to find out how many times a Twitter user has been mentioned by other users, so that we can identify those popular users. My application also helps us to visually present
this information using a third party service4. We can see from the output of my application, as shown in Figure 3.2, that ‘dina’, the Twitter user who contributed to dispel the rumour discussed in Section 3.3.2, has been mentioned by others the most. From this, it will not be unreasonable to think that most of the times, these popular users may be the main or major sources of information and sometimes, possibly the original source of some information as well. In the context of crisis and emergency, this application is particularly important to all parties including the main stream media for collecting and/or verifying information with the help of these ‘popular’ users after identifying them. Also, in any case, if the Twitter Search tool does not return any/many tweets from those important users, we can collect their tweets from their user-timeline by identifying them with the help of this application. Hence, even though this application tool does not give a direct insight into the uncertainty of the situation, as it only reports on the number of re-tweeting without performing a critical analysis, the output of this application tool is likely to be useful in dispelling/reducing uncertainty in many cases.