Facebook a double-edged sword in Thai carnage
Facebook celebrities with millions of followers also stepped in to coordinate and reassure.
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Facebook celebrity doctor Parkphum Dejhutsadin said his phone suddenly started pinging scores of his two million followers in Thailand were desperate and they needed his help.
With nowhere to turn to as they cowered in a shopping mall from a rogue soldier who had already killed more than two dozen people, they looked to Facebook and other social media platforms to send their pleas and to try to find an escape. Parkphum could help, and said for the next 16 hours that’s all he did: living up to his panda-eyed Facebook persona as sleepless doctor "Mor Lab Panda".
"I asked people to send their phone numbers and the police will find people by using their own methods," said Parkphum. "That night I felt that I could not sleep, otherwise people might die."
While social media have been accused of exacerbating or even encouraging mass shootings such as last year’s mosque massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in Thailand they were also crucial to pulling off a safe and dramatic rescue from the shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima city. But police said the shooter, who killed at least 29 people and wounded 57 before he was stopped, had not only used social media to publicise what he was doing but also to track police movements through online news sites.
Parkphum, a medical technologist working for Thailand’s National Blood Center, is so famous he even has his own set of stickers for social media messaging apps with his trademark "panda eyes" and white coat.
Other Facebook celebrities with millions of followers also stepped in to coordinate and reassure.
