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Yesterday morning my Twitter stream lit up with breaking news reports of an explosion at a Power Plant under construction in Connecticut. In this short screen cast I show how a Google Search and Advanced Twitter Search can be used to gather real-time incident intelligence from people at or near the incident.
When initiating my search I made a critical error. See if you can catch it.
This technique could be useful to:
How else could you use Google search, Google Alerts, and Advanced Twitter Search for social media intelligence gathering?
Related posts:
Besides using both "Middleton" and "Middletown", I don't see a mistake.
I do however find it interesting that if you look at the results at 00:37 of the video, the bottom showing Tweet is from @USABreakingNews that is reiterating a news report from WFSB-TV of "More than 100 injured, 4 critically…" when according to the mayor's press conference there were 5 deaths and 12 injuries. That is a pretty big range difference from my perspective.
I think it is imperative for agencies to be a source of trusted information and not add to the rumor mill and speculation that often accompany these events. Great job illustrating how an Agency can gather geo-located information using the Social Media tools.