Osama Bin Laden's Death

Editor’s Note: This entry is dedicated to tracking and documenting various online events and conversations surrounding the recent news of Osama Bin Laden’s death.

Background

At 11:00 p.m. (Eastern Time) on May 1st, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born founder of the jihadist terrorist organization al-Qaeda responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States. Following this announcement, both the mainstream media and internet began to run amok with floods of conversations and reactions to the news of bin Laden’s death.

According to Akamai (AKAM)², a content delivery network serving about 20% of the Internet’s content, news stories about bin Laden’s death reached its peak at more than 4.1 million pageviews per second on its client sites, which includes major publications like NYTimes, Reuters, BBC and USA Today.

Timeline: Early Developments

At 12:58 am local time on May 1st, 2011, IT Specialist Sohaib Athar (Twitter handle @ReallyVirtual) tweeted about a helicopter near his home in Abottabad, Pakistan. Following President Obama’s adress the next day, he became a topic of interest for ‘live-tweeting’ the raid on the mansion where Osama bin Laden was killed.¹

At 9:47pm (ET) on the same day, Dan Pfeiffer, communications director for the White House, tweeted an announcement about Obama Presdient’s national address scheduled at 10:30 pm. At 10:24pm, Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted: “So I’m told by a reputabe person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”

At 10:25 pm, Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a The Rock) tweeted:

At 10:43 pm, President Obama tweeted: “About to address the nation. Watch live: http://w.gov/live.” At 11:00 pm, President Obama addresses the Americans at home via live broadcast.

At 1:09 am, Brian Anthony Hernandez posted an article on Mashable⁸, detailing a timeline of tweets posted and re-tweeted by Washington insiders and the news media.

Spread

Obama / Osama Confusion

After the news broke, several people mixed up “Obama” with “Osama” when reporting the news on various outlets. A headline on Fox News displayed “Reports: Obama Bin Laden Dead”. A screen grab was tweeted out shortly after by Twitter user @KyleHudgins that read “Great Job, Fox40! Classy.”⁷

In Washington, D.C. a Fox news anchor accidentally said “President Obama is, in fact, dead.”

MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell tweeted “Obama shot and killed”.

On Twitter

The news of Osama bin Laden’s death instantly spread across Twitter, setting a new record for the “highest sustained rate of Tweets ever” according to Twitter’s announcement on May 2nd⁹:

Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever. From 10:45 – 2:20am ET, there was an average of 3,000 tweets per second."

At 11p.m. ET, there were 5,106 Tweets per second. At 11:45p.m. ET, when Pres. Obama finished his remarks, there were 5,008 tweets per second.

On Facebook

Within two hours of news reports and Obama administration’s confirmation, a Facebook page titled “Osama Bin Laden is Dead”³ began to accumulate massive counts of upvotes and user-tagged photos, standing at 357k likes and over 600 related photos as of 1:30pm (ET) on May 2nd, 2011.

There is also another Facebook page titled “Bin Laden Ain’t Dead, He’s Chillin With 2Pac,”⁴ which shows a photoshopped image of the deceased rapper Tupac and Osama bin Laden exchanging a hand shake.

On Google Earth

Meanwhile, Google users began posting tongue-in-cheek reviews⁵ of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where the al-Qaeda leader was allegedly hiding before getting fatally shot by the U.S. forces:

Located in cozy, quiet neighborhood. Interrupted only occasionally by machine gun fire. Lacking in ameneties, but an up and coming area. Handyman special. One satellite phone available with smoking bullet hole for comms back home. CIA helicoptors offering complimentary air lift service for corpses. Great property to get away from it all. Must See!

- Submitted by Cra ‎on May 2nd, 2011