Virginia Tech shooting of 2007 also known as the Virginia Tech Massacre, was not only a tragedy that caught the world’s attention but also marked the power of civilian journalism. The incident that resulted in the death of 32 students was broadcasted by almost all major international news agencies and echoed throughout the internet.

Police Officer at Virginia Tech

What made this incident so unique within the journalism industry was that mainstream media companies relied on Collegiate Times – Virginia Tech’s university newspaper – Flickr, Wikipedia and Twitter as primary sources of information; all of which can be considered civilian sources. Within minutes of the incident, the student run newspaper was bombarded with phone calls from news agencies from all around the country seeking for interviews, information and rights to pictures of the killer they have posted on their Flickr account. Both news agencies and concerned individuals were tuned in to Collegiate’s post which was being updated live as the incident unfolded.

Furthermore, civilians and journalists alike started a Wikipedia page highlighting the incident as they gather sources from verified Twitter feeds, broadcast news and first hand experiences. Within the hour of the incident, the page was edited over 8000 times by 2047 different editors. While countless authors were adding and removing inaccurate or bias information, regardless, validity of the information on the page soon became of question. Eventually, a Wikipedia administrator restricted the page to only allow editors with good credentials to edit the page so that the viewers would not be given false information.

Timelaps of Wikipedia Virginia Tech Massacre page

The tremendous amount of information provide from the civilian journalist population ended up being the driving force behind the whole story to the extent where the majority of information being broadcasted on mainstream media was extracted from civilian sources. Pictures from Collegiate’s Flickr account were shown on news broadcasts while anchors quoted Twitter feeds and  parts of Collegiate’s article.

The high reliance of news agencies on civilian journalists for the Virginia Tech Massacre incident proved civilian journalism to be a powerful source of information. Not only are civilian journalist able to report in locations where professional journalists are present. The sheer amount of civilian journalists allows for more information to be extracted with multiple points of views and first hand experiences. Although civilian journalism are often criticized in terms of their validity, Wikipedia’s counter measures to secure validity in the Virginia Tech incident proves that civilian journalism does have – to some extent – a way of fact checking and censoring invalid material.

This incident proved the power of civilian journalism and that although professional journalists seems to be the norm of where people retrieve their information, civilian journalist can also contribute a fare amount of information to our world where information is considered a valuable resource.

-Jimmy Feng