The news of the Fort Hood shooting spread like wildfire. The gunman, Spc. Ivan Lopez, open-fired on his unit following a possible altercation between him and his fellow soldiers and then turned the gun on himself, taking his own life.
Social media has been a huge news-spreading movement that has helped spread the news about these happenings throughout anyone that gets on the internet. According to cnn.com "On Thursday Milley said investigators believed a medical history that indicates an unstable psychiatric or psychological condition may be a "fundamental causal factor," in the shooting." this was the idea on Thursday, when Friday came about, things changed. According to the same website, "an altercation between Spc. Ivan Lopez and his fellow soldiers, rather than a medical condition, may have led to Lopez opening fire."
News of this event spread across social media all day. The news of the day and the hashtags were all about the families of the wounded or killed and how crazy Lopez was for shooting up a military base. I was on my Instagram feed and I follow a few military personnel and their photos were all about the Fort Hood shootings. Hashtags were created to help spread the news about the events as well. #prayforfoothood was a completely new hashtag that was created on social media to help spread the news.
The people who spread these news stories on facebook were one of their own. I opened up my Facebook account and looked up the "trending" link on Saturday morning and the "Fort Hood Shooting" was still around the top. I click the link and decided to take a look at some of the things that were happening on facebook today. People were spreading news and adding to the stories and coming up with their own ideas about why Lopez decided to do it.
Events like these scare me because I have many friends stationed at military bases across the globe. My best friend is a marine in Okinawa. I called him earlier today, accidentally woke him up...he wasn't too happy about that, and I was talking to him about what happened and he told me about his roommate. His roommate tried to hang himself while one of his friends got raped all in the same day. This freaks me out because of the things that happen in military bases all around the world without us knowing. If it wasn't for social media, we would never have known about these events in Fort Hood. Social media is a great news outlet for us because of the ease of access we have to it. As a college aged kid, I spend a considerable amount of time on social media feeds. This is where I get most of my news from and am thankful for Facebook and Instagram.
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