I was running a bit late to my French class at the University of Virginia, hurrying through the rapidly emptying halls when a classmate grabbed my arm. "Something's happening," she said urgently. "A plane hit the World Trade Center. There are others still in the air." I didn't know what she was talking about but I could tell from her tone that this was really big. We rushed to find a small TV set broadcasting coverage of the attacks. It was the only way we could think of to quickly get information about what was going on. One of the emotions that stuck with me most from those first few hours was the fear and confusion of trying to figure out exactly what was happening. In the less than 10 years that have passed since that terrible day, it's incredible how much the spread of information has changed, and it's incredible how much more interconnected we have all become.
But I remember feeling the experience of September 11 defined by watching events on TV rather than following them online. There is something gained here and something lost in this experience. On the one hand, the news of 9/11, like President Kennedy's assassination, was a moment seared into the consciousness of everyone who lived through that time. On the other hand, our experience of it was very centrally directed. We saw 9/11, many of us, through the lens of CNN. CNN provided the images, the narrative, the context and the analysis that helped shape the event in our collective memory.
On September 11th, 2001, I didn't have a cell phone to call anyone for details, let alone a smart phone with 3G internet access. There was no Twitter to get breaking news and heart-wrenching personal reactions at lightning speed from every corner of the world. There was no Facebook to post messages of support and condolences or to post reaction to the events. I didn't even have my own computer at home to check the news websites and I certainly didn't have broadband. For the next several days, we were all glued to the TV -- mostly to CNN, who at the time were the undisputed cable news leader -- to watch the coverage and to feel connected with our fellow Americans across the country.
The events of September 11th marked a watershed shift away from network news and towards cable news. In 2001 alone, CNN's share of gross ratings points increased from 45.3% to 59.9%. In 2011, we are experiencing another paradigm shift in breaking news. The announcement of Bin Laden's death wasn't broken by a news outlet, but by Keith Urbahn, former chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld. In a tweet at 10:25 pm, a full 20 minutes before the official news media confirmed the news, Urbahn wrote: "So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn." What followed was a record-breaking night for Twitter with 3,000 new Tweets posted per second from 10:45 pm to 2:20 am. In fact, in one poll a majority of respondents reported having received the news through social networks. Of the participants, 33% learned the news from Twitter and 20% from Facebook.
Much has been written about the 20-something crowd that came out to celebrate bin Laden's death. Osama bin Laden has been cast as the evil villain for most of their lives, so of course young people came out to celebrate his defeat. We learned on Sunday night just how fast parties can start when excited people have access to Twitter.
We no longer have our experiences shaped as much by what we watch and listen to on TV. We expect to be a part of the experience. We expect to comment on it, to read what other people are saying in real time, and to derive our experience from many-to-many instead of one-to-many. There is no Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings of our time. We are, for better and for worse, no longer subject to a common way of experiencing these defining news events. This has been true for a long time. What's different about this experience is that it is so diffuse and yet so directly tied to an event, 9/11, that we experienced the old way. The old way of experiencing news as an observer in a national commons defined by television and the new way of experiencing news as a dynamic act of interactive social media, have never stood in such sharp contrast as they did over the past few days.
I'm sure that there are people who wax nostalgic for the old way. There is something charming about the idea of us each carrying the words and the pictures of one authoritative newscast burned into our minds as the way we first understood events. We are now participants in these events. Not all of us have something interesting or fair-minded to say. We are subjected to a lot of overly-partisan, childish, ephemeral drivel that we have to sort through in our social media experience of events. Our experience is more real, in a sense, more dynamic, more participatory, but also harsher and more easily hijacked by those with extremist views and shrill voices who are no longer silenced by the dominance of a thoughtful, moderate network or cable news filter. Some retreated to their partisan corners not soon after the first shouts of collective relief and pride at Bin Laden's death were still echoing in the cyber-sphere. I read one Tweet that said something to the effect of: "React to the news how you want to react but don't tell me how I should react." Fair enough, but I think we all bare some additional responsibility now that in an instant we can publish our thoughts, proclamations and provocations to the entire world. We now all shape our collective experience of the news and that can be both wonderful and terrible. In other words, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our cable news stars but in ourselves.