BigShinyThing

Survivor Rachel North’s blog.

Survivor Holly Finch’s blog.

The online petition for a public inquiry into the 7th July bombings.

From the first reports on LBC to the BBC website, main media providers were initally clueless as to what was going on and reliant on (and imploring for) those on the ground (ie ‘ordinary people’) to report what they saw via email, photophone and digital camera. Within 30 minutes of the tube network lockdown, blog search engine Technorati provided links to people’s personal reports. Bloggers who covered the atrocity saw their web access statistics skyrocket as the public voraciously sought first-hand breaking news.

Even after the rolling news services such as BBC 24 were in play, they needed images such as these to ground their reports. Also, these ‘amateur’ witnesses may yet hold the vital evidence and key images of the attacks that escape CCTV in the most watched city on earth. Flickr already has a dedicated page to the events and Wikipedia the most exhaustive (and accurate) account of what actually happened. Multiple media providers have since analysed how the blogs reported the story first.

Note: shortly after this was posted the UK police started appealing for footage and photos as evidence - the UK public is also providing its own panopticon.

The photo above was taken outside a bus stop in Hackney on 8th July 2005. It reads, in bright pink lipstick, “Do we have to pick sides?”