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Inf Syst Front (2011) 13:3343 DOI 10.1007/s10796-010-9275-8
Information control and terrorism: Tracking the Mumbai terrorist attack through twitter
Onook Oh & Manish Agrawal & H. Raghav Rao
Published online: 25 September 2010# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract This paper analyzes the role of situational information as an antecedent of terrorists opportunistic decision making in the volatile and extreme environment of the Mumbai terrorist attack. We especially focus on how Mumbai terrorists monitored and utilized situational information to mount attacks against civilians. Situational information which was broadcast through live media and Twitter contributed to the terrorists decision making process and, as a result, increased the effectiveness of hand-held weapons to accomplish their terrorist goal. By utilizing a framework drawn from Situation Awareness (SA) theory, this paper aims to (1) analyze the content of Twitter postings of the Mumbai terror incident, (2) expose the vulnerabilities of Twitter as a participatory emergency reporting system in the terrorism context, and (3), based on the content analysis of Twitter postings, we suggest a conceptual framework for analyzing information control in the context of terrorism.
Keywords Mumbai terrorist attack . Twitter. Information control . Situation awareness
1 Introduction
On November 26, 2008, terrorists mounted multiple attacks on Mumbai, resulting in arguably the worst terrorist incident in the history of India. According to the analysis of B. Raman, a former head of the Counterterrorism Division of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) in India, the Mumbai terror attack was the first mass casualty terrorism against innocent civilians, using hand-held weapons in India (Indian Ministry of External Affairs 2009). His analysis implies that the use of hand-held weapons in the Mumbai terror incident enabled the attackers to convey their political agenda through the mainstream media. He argues that, given the preference of traditional anti-Indian terrorists for timed or remotely controlled improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the exploitation of hand-held weapons against civilians is indicative of a tactical shift in terrorist strategyIEDs tend to rain indiscriminate blows on target areas in a short period of time such that it is not effective enough to send their messages about whom they intend to kill for what political agenda. Furthermore, because the visual impact that can be created by IEDs lasts at best one or two...