Media Project #1

Chapter 8 talks about some of the different global experiences. One of the main global experiences that I found most interesting is terrorism and the behind the scences of it. Obviously if there is any form of terrorism, crisis occurs and is usually very quick. Most of the time the public takes to social media right away but when there is a terrorist attack sometimes the networks reach capacity and mobile devices cannot share information right away. An example of this is during the Boston bombing that took place in 2013. Since there were so many people using their mobile devices in the south shore of Boston, the network shutdown for multiple hours. I know this from first hand experience because my parents were at the Boston Marathon that year and I was at my track meet in the 6th grade and I couldn’t get in contact with them.

Going back to social media, the FBI and Boston police department were able to identify the suspects quicker with the help of people through social media and video footage. Looking back at chapter #3 in the book, the chaos theory uses the Boston Marathin bombing as an example. In this theory, it contains four different elements including bifurcation, fractals, strange attractors and self organization. “Bifurcation reflects when the level of danger is high and understanding of the event is low resulting in the most significant impact of the event. Fractals are information or variables that need to be organized in some fashion as to allow the chaotic environment to make some sense. Strange attractors consider the factors that are involved when people unite with others in order to protect, defend or support one another. Lastly, self organization is the process of learning from previous unsuccessful outcomes in order to make better sense in a future crisis.”(Lachlan 31). Boston is a perfect example for chaos theory. For bifurcation, the danger was high but they were able to solve the crisis fairly quickly with the help of the public, social media, knowledgeable officers, and surveillance video. Fractals in this crisis included the Boston police officers that knew the city well, medical professionals, social media and surveillance evidence. Strange attractors in this crisis might include the runners/spectators who jumped in to help those who were injured, medical professionals and police officers. Finally, for self organization the city of Boston learned a lot from this crisis. Better security protocols have been made to the city of Boston in all sporting events. Since this terrorist attack there have been more and there always will be. I think when these unfortunate events take place people learn from these crises and try to implement better ideas from an unfortunate event.