Twitter Lists Gather Latest Info on Fort Hood Tragedy

Last week’s shooting rampage at a military installation in Fort Hood, Texas quickly became the top news story across the country, and several major news organizations used Twitter Lists to aggregate information coming from local news outlets after the shooting, including the New York Times, CNN, and the Austin-American Statesmen. The Times prominently displayed their Lists on the homepage, just below the latest news stories on the tragedy.  We posted earlier today a few reasons why you should care about Twitter Lists, needless to say this is another one.

We’ve already seen Twitter become the space to get details on breaking news events, often before they hit the major networks or papers, and with the news Lists feature, media organizations were able to quickly pull together a variety of sources. In the old days of Twitter, users would have had to search using the #forthood hashtag, or the name Fort Hood, and risk ending up with a stream of potentially unrelated or irrelevant posts. The Lists feature helped capture real time information from local and national sources providing information specific to the tragedy, its aftermath–a godsend for those searching for reliable information on how to contact family and friends in the area.

The lists contain Twitter accounts that are mostly local to the area around Fort Hood, like the Killeen Daily Herald, a local newspaper, and News 8 Austin, a local 24 hour news network, in addition to CNN and other national networks.

Fort Hood, the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services, has obviously been devastated by the tragedy, as is the rest of the military, and the nation has responded with an outpouring of support. Twitter was flooded with messages of support for those killed or wounded, their family and friends, and overnight several new Facebook groups titled “Prayers for Fort Hood” sprang up–the largest already has almost 30,000 members.

This Lists feature got another breaking news workout today when another mass shooting was reported in Orlando, and again the New York Times pulled together a list to help track the latest news there. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by both of these tragedies.