The moment I heard about the Boston Marathon bombing, I did what many people did: I immediately sought out as much information as possible online. I watched the now widely dispersed videos of the bomb exploding, I looked at the gruesome pictures of victims of the attacks, and I read countless articles about the unfolding tragedy. It is of course trite to observe that the internet has fundamentally altered the way people consume news, breaking or otherwise, but the importance of this fact, however obvious it may be, was made especially vivid to me as I watched the story of the Boston Marathon bombing unfold over the last few days from England, where I am currently in graduate school.

The Boston Marathon bombing, like most tragedies, has prompted countless reflections and questions; some of this soul-searching has been quite general – how is humanity capable of both ruinous evil and heroic good? – and some of it is quite specific – how many people where injured, who are they, exactly how did they get hurt? The much-discussed topic of how technology and social media have impacted the response to the Boston Marathon killings is both general and specific. It is general in that people are asking expansive questions about what role, if any, amateurs armed with computers and an internet connection should play in an active terrorist investigation, and it is specific in that, regardless of how you answer the first question, amateurs are playing a role in an active terrorist investigation, zeroing in on the minutest details of the thousands of photos of the crime scene floating around the internet. We’ll attempt to navigate between the two poles, exploring the intersection of technology, social media, and the Boston Marathon bombing details that have emerged so far.