Baltimore Riots: Social Media and the Crisis on My Doorstep

[Commentary] The first I heard of April 27th’s riots here was on Facebook. In a parent group usually populated by requests for play dates, a mom posted that violence had broken out not less than a mile from my home. After days of peaceful protests, I was at first incredulous. I looked out my window at the sedate cafe across the street: Nothing out of the ordinary. But there on Twitter, my feed was lighting up from the moment the first rocks were thrown by teenagers, at police, in the Mondawmin area of Baltimore (MD). Why was this happening? How big would it get? What should I do and/or think about it?

That’s when I had a personal realization about the power of technology in a crisis: It’s easy to become jaded about the power of social media, but it is a colossal mistake to take it for granted. Yes, we’ve heard about the power of social media many times before -- from the Arab Spring to the documentation of police brutality all over America. But something unique is happening at this point in history, even at what feels like a relatively mature stage of the development of the technology. Mostly, it has to do with the sheer density of smartphones -- 64 percent of Americans now own one, and 85 percent of millennials do. The result is something that we thought we had before, but I am realizing we can never have enough of: Context.