African government has a history of avoiding media attention as media reduces their power to control over the people. In 1982 entire African continent built radio communication. It was first media communication in African. Since the establishment of radio communication African governments has been constantly censoring and checking programming that would put them in bad situation. In Kenya broadcast Centre there are two main media groups have power. Nation Media Group and Standard Group are the two most dominant in Kenya, they activate in both English and Swahili. These two groups are accredited for their efforts, skills of record for subjecting government and other authorities.

History of Ushahidi came from election of Kenya. December 27, 2007 was day of election occurred and people want Raila Odinga from the orange democratic movement party to be elected. First day of election Raila Odinga was leading over 1 million votes but was slowly merged into a small margin of victory for Mwai Kibaki. On December 30, 2007 Result of Kenya election commission declared Kibaki the winner and people start having complain about result. When people’s anger spread quickly Ministry of Security suspended all live broadcasts and the country erupted into violence. Violence filled entire country for several days and casualties from the violence was 1000 people dead and 500 were injured. Since the mainstream media was suspended and the country was in state of violence, one of the residents of Kenya Ory Okolloh suggested to make a site that would utilize civilians to track events going on throughout the county and this is how Ushahidi came out.

Ushahidi is origin from Swahili, which means testimony and witness. There are reasons why it become famous and took important role, because it is easy to use, accessible to anyone at anytime and deployable worldwide. Ushahidi was used in the democratic of Republic of Congo to avoid Kenya government interference. One of the great ability of Ushahidi is anyone can send information either through any devices with digital date connection like SMS, pictures and videos. Information uploaded every single minute and posted almost instantly on to an interactive map that can be viewed both on a computer and a smart phone. One of the advantages of Ushahidi is that it is open source that anyone can download, improve and filter the service or modify it.

I think Ushahidi wasn’t very effective to people in Kenya because Kibaki is still the president of Kenya. I think it provide enough valuable source of information as it was able to gather more data than any other mainstream media sources. Also I believe that it is really quick way to report event around the world because people upload their information anytime. At last it provides really quick response of big events that mainstream media may not be able to over in time due to the limited amounts of journalists they had.

On April 16^th, 2007 between 7:15 am and 9:50am, a massacre took place on the campus of “Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States”. First shooting occurred at West Amber Johnston hall, which killed 2 students. Between attacks, Seung Hui Cho sent a video package to NBC News. Approximately two hours later, a 2^nd attack occurred at the Norris hall. This took lives of 30 people, and 25 were wounded. After the shooting, Seung Hui Cho committed suicide. Virginia Tech massacre became one of the worst tragedies of murder on college students. We are not sure about his motivation but the police found a note in his room. It said, “You caused me to do this”. During the investigation, the police discovered few more information about Seung Hui Cho. They found out that he previously had mental health treatments. Also, “fellow students described Cho as a quiet person who would not respond if someone greeted him.” He had no socializing skills in his life.

New media played an important role in spreading this murder tragedy. When the massacre took place between 7:15 am to 9:50am, new media such as Twitter and Wikipedia were kept updated from students of Virginia Tech University. Students used their cell phones to take videos and photographs and shared to the public about what was going on in the campus. In Twitter, people posted statuses such as, “Gun shots reported coliseum parking lot stay inside” and “Secure doors emergency personnel responding call 911 for help”. People updated their twitters every minute with new pictures and reports.  In Wikipedia, pages were also created for each victims and the shooter in order to keep an Encyclopedia layout. There were 2075 editors who took on roles as editors or spell checkers without anyone supervising or organizing it. During first two days after the incident, there were 750000 visits on Wikipedia, which equals to 4 visits per second. This shows the power of new media. However, this can have a negative effect on family members of the victims who would not want to know how their child got killed.

South Koreans were shocked and shameful when the citizenship of the shooter was identified as South Korea. President of South Korea Roh Moo-Hyun expressed his deepest sympathy.  Even though Seung Hui Cho came to the US as a 10 years old boy and also a permanent resident of the US, a lot of South Koreans felt guilty, sorrowful, and apologetic to the world because they considered him as South Korean by blood.  South Korean living in the US feared that there might be another reprisal attack.

What I think of Virginia tech massacre is that it should not happen again at any place around the world. Also, we should take care of people who might have similar personality of Seung Hui Cho. We need to approach to them first and handle them with care and friendliness. We should also talk with them about their difficulties in their lives and find out ways to help them.