Educational Media Reviews Online

Social media has been steadily transforming the way the general public receives and provides information in not only the context of daily life but in protests, politics, war, and disasters across the world. This documentary film focuses on the Boston Marathon bombing as a pivotal point in this timeline, illustrating how the news media is no longer where we turn first for our news and what has been gained and what has been lost by this new pattern of information seeking.

The title, The Thread, refers to a discussion thread started on the popular social media site Reddit by a Louisiana graduate student, Anthony Reed, the day of the marathon bombing. Before any official news organization had footage or pictures from Boston, Reed’s thread had 3,000,000 followers with pictures and with users posting finish times to assist in locating runners. The viewer is then taken on a day-by-day journey through Reddit, Buzzfeed, and Twitter from the bombing to the apprehension of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

This film is an excellent starting point for encouraging critical thinking about information creation and dissemination. Students will see the advantages of the speed of social media and then be taken down the dark path of rumors, vigilantism, racism and conspiracy theories that the same speed can cause. Imagery throughout the film juxtaposes the silly and entertaining with the seriousness of the Boston Marathon bombing to encourage the viewer to think about the credibility of the sources shaping real-life events and even traditional news media. These tools not only provide information instantly but they are also changing and being created just as fast. The trajectory of the Reddit thread featured in this film serves as a cautionary tale about using them carelessly.

This film includes graphic images and adult language.