Reading the Chapter 3: The Democratization of Everything and Chapter 4: Everyone is a Publisher, Everyone is a Broadcaster on Citizen Marketers leads me fall into deep thoughts on how social media has influenced the Wenzhou Train Crash Accident.
On 23 July, 2011, two high-speed trains traveling collided on a viaduct in the suburbs of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. 40 people were killed, at least 192 were injured in this fatal crash. In the first minute after the horrific accident, it was not any reporter or rescuer who has released the news, they arrived within hours, it was the passengers on board that sent out and updated the shocking news with a lot of pictures on scene through their micro-blog and other social media outlets. Immediately the news spread out nationwide among Internet users and caught everyone's attention.
Later on, China Railways Department made several unacceptable orders during the rescue, like burying the four compartments which fell off the bridge without further rescue of passengers inside and any analysis afterwards. These exposures by people on the scene through social media immediately caused a huge stir among Chinese public. They require transparency and democracy during the whole rescuing process, they claimed all wrong decisions trying to avoid the sadly consequences must be stopped asap. All the voices on social media created an invisible power which attracted the attention of the central, arouse the sympathy and justice inside everyone. Afterwards, other media, including newspapers, TV channels, radios and even state-owned media outlets cannot stand for tolerance of the ignorance and disrespect of lives.Things changed. The buried trains were dig out, related departments are more cautious dealing with the compensation, Railway Departments made announcement promising they would investigate the real cause instead of the "Thunder attack" at first...Finally, the result of investigation showed there were problems existed in signal system as well as management process.
This accident should have been avoided, however, thanks to social media, the facts were not buried. Every passenger on board who released the news, and everyone using social media to spread out the news was a reporter, a publisher and a broadcaster. Social media did not only let people know the real facts, but gave an upper hand calling for the truth, justice and transparency which appeal to our hopes.
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