Social media and a school death threat

How Twitterers acted to head off tragedy in St. Louis

I just heard a fascinating story that speaks to how the community is tapping into social media on life-and-death matters — in this case, a bomb threat at a high school. Let me tell it to you.

Short version:

Tuesday night a history graduate student at at George Mason University in Virginia stumbled across a threat made by a student against a St. Louis school on the Wikipedia page for Langston Hughes. (See accompanying screen shot, which names the school’s principal as a target.) He alerted history professors and other followers on Twitter. One of the history professors, Marjorie McLellan (@margiemcl on Twitter), grabbed a screen shot of the threat before Wikipedia removed it — without, apparently, notifying police or officials at Lift For Life Academy charter school, south of downtown St. Louis.

About six or seven historians and librarians tracked down the user ID and other information about the teenager who made the threat. They then used Twitter to exchange information and ideas about what steps to take. McLellan phoned the St. Louis Police Department — which sent her to voicemail. She persisted but the officer said he “did not have access to the Web” and didn’t know how to get on the Web.

Give up, right? No.

McLellan, a history professor at Wright State University in Ohio, then called a nearby police department known for being smart about cybercrime. Those cops called the school. Officials there then called the St. Louis police, who closed down the school, conducted a search and sent everyone home on Wednesday. (Overreaction? Not a chance, given the recent history of school violence in this country.)

The police tracked down the teen who wrote in a friend’s name on the Wikipedia post; he’s no doubt in for a long round of counseling. McLellan notes that she she wouldn’t have known the local Ohio town was smart about cybercrime without reading her local newspaper, the Dayton Daily News. She may not have decided what steps to take without the continual feedback loop that Twitter provides.

Astonishing. A new ecosystem of news and civic responsibility.

McLellan’s sister, journalist Michele (a journalist and friend), told me: “I think it says a lot about the value of social networks to galvanize spontaneous communities in response to problems.” It does. And we’ll be seeing a lot of similar actions galvanized by aware “smart mobs” in the years ahead.

Erica Van Ross, a spokesperson for the St. Louis police department, would later tell her, “We certainly thank you and your group for your diligence in making sure someone was aware. This is certainly proof of the power of the internet and good people.”

Here is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s report on the incident: How Twitter warned of death threat at St. Louis school.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.