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Shootings-The Information Vacuum
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Awash in social media, how are police learning to inform the public better after shootings?

Social media has law enforcement facing increasing pressure to release information fast amid a surge of mass shootings

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Published - May 19, 2023, 12:34 AM ET
Last Updated - Jun 21, 2023, 06:04 PM EDT

Jennifer Seeley was glued to her phone, safe at home but terrified nonetheless.

There was an active shooter at the Texas mall where she works as an assistant store manager. And she was searching desperately for information, praying. Was the gunman dead? Were her coworkers dead? What was happening?

So with law enforcement in the Dallas area town of Allen releasing information slowly on that horrible May 6 afternoon, she turned to social media for answers, stumbling across videos showing the bodies of some of the eight who were slain. Desperately she texted her coworkers.

“That’s where all of my information came from was what I saw on Twitter. And, you know, nobody was really releasing any information on what actually happened,” she says now, nearly two weeks later.

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