Beware the overzealous response to acts of terrorism
To follow the drama of the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers online through Twitter, Reddit, television news, police scanners and newspaper updates was to be inundated with an abundance of almost real-time information. Anyone with a computer and internet access could get a virtual view of events, blow by blow, and connect the dots, rightly or wrongly, along the way. To follow the tweets of Watertown eyewitnesses, in particular, was to be thrust into a front-row seat of a real-life movie of guns popping in the dark and bodies falling, police cars racing and bystanders mistakenly apprehended.