Twitter Announces the Death of Osama Bin Laden

The announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden had an exceptional medium: the Internet. In particular, before the announcement of the terrorist Bin Laden‘s death arrived from the “White House,” the news had already begun its usual ripple effect on Twitter. Among the most important news items, in fact, those found on the right side of the microblogging platform, the entry “Bin Laden” had appeared. Tweets thus began to multiply, and with them, word of mouth.

It all began with a tweet from an eyewitness who noticed a helicopter flying over Abbottabad, the city where Osama Bin Laden was hiding and where he was killed. The unsuspecting eyewitness, known on Twitter as “ReallyVirtual,” did not think at the time that a raid was underway that would lead to the capture of the world’s most wanted man. The first tweet was followed by others that spoke of oddities due not only to the helicopters flying over the area but also to successive explosions and road blockades. The capture of Osama Bin Laden, the man who terrorized America and the entire world, had just begun.

Although the official announcement of the operation, which arrived about an hour later, was missing, Twitter demonstrated in such a particular circumstance its speed, reach, and, as happened in this case, its reliability as a social media platform. However, one must always pay attention to the latter point, as “hoaxes” spread rapidly on the web just like verified and truthful news. Speaking of “hoaxes” and therefore falsehoods, there is no shortage of sites on the web that express doubts about the veracity of the photo released by the American administration. Some speak of a falsified, dated photo; others believe the photo was skillfully doctored by some skilled user of photo editing.

However, it should be emphasized how social media, and particularly Twitter, which was soon joined by Facebook, proved to be an important tool for spreading news, even within such a significant event in human history. In just a few minutes and well ahead of the official announcement, the news made its way around the world.