The Web Makes the Oil Spill Crushingly Real

I've been deeply troubled the last few weeks about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but haven't known what to write about it until I stumbled on the streaming footage of the leaking oil.  This oil spill isn't the first of its kind, but the internet is revolutionizing the way we understand the damage.  Just as Twitter provided a window into a social crisis in Iran, mobile carriers inspired millions to donate to Haiti's hurricane disaster, and Facebook groups mobilized both sides of a debate about free speech vs. sanctity of religious symbols, technology is again completely altering the way we experience a crisis.

Unlike in the Exxon Valdez oil spill of the late 1980s, we've been presented with an image of how much oil is flooding the Gulf of Mexico in real time.  The immediate result has been that the crisis has been impossible for authorities to ignore, but I think we'll see a deeper cultural impact as well.  What would have once been a distant, abstract problem is now a very real and in-your-face issue. 

Further, the PBS News Hour YouTube channel invites users to submit video responses with suggestions about what we should do to stop the spill.  People are invested in both this now very real crisis and in working together to come up with a solution.  I think we'll see more and more of this type of real-time community awareness and response in the future.

Hopefully, with greater awareness and involvement, we stop and clean this oil spill before it becomes too great a tragedy to appreciate the important step it has inspired in social media.  So check out the footage and see how massive this crisis is, and then submit a suggestion of your own for how to help.