Twitter Explodes with Activity in Mumbai Blasts! A Lifeline or an Unmonitored Daemon in the Lurking?

Online social media has become an integral part of every Internet users’ life. It has given common people a platform and forum to share information, post their opinions and promote campaigns. The threat of exploitation of social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. by malicious entities, becomes crucial during a crisis situation, like bomb blasts or natural calamities such as earthquakes and floods. In this report, we attempt to characterize and extract patterns of activity of general users on Twitter during a crisis situation. This is the first attempt to study an India-centric crisis event such as the triple bomb blasts in Mumbai (India), using online social media. In this research, we perform content and activity analysis of content posted on Twitter after the bomb blasts. Through our analysis, we conclude, that the number of URLs and @mentions in tweets increase during the time of the crisis in comparison to what researchers have exhibited for normal circumstances. In addition to the above, we empirically show that the number of tweets or updates by authority users (those with large number of followers) are very less, i.e. majority of content generated on Twitter during the crisis comes from non authority users. In the end, we discuss certain case scenarios during the Mumbai blasts, where rumors were spread through the network of Twitter.