In the hours after the attacks
on September 11, Internet-connected people around the world soon
saw that the new medium of e-mail would be an important carrier
of comment and reaction. Essential as special newspaper sections
and television and radio were, some of the most memorable (and some
of the most unpleasant) comment came by computer. E-mail came and
kept coming, quickly and widely reproducing, as if biologically,
through being forwarded to large address lists and then to more
address lists. People expressed themselves to their friends, of
course, but they often attached other comments. Stories (some real
and some folkloric) were passed on, editorials by well-known people
(Arundhati Roy, Barbara Kingsolver) were simply clipped and forwarded
Ð both by people who hated what was said and those who deeply agreed.
Photographs (particularly of New York) were immediately available
on the web as photographers set up websites almost as soon as the
photographs were taken . Institutions saw it as their task to quickly
establish archival websites to allow easy linking to information
and comment.
What is remarkable, perhaps, is
how certain of the e-mail and websites became well known, even notorious,
because they were the ones most widely distributed. The response
to the tragedy showed the best and worst of the new media. The network
made a huge amount of visual and textual information widely and
quickly accessible at no cost. The network also showed how fast
ugly and irresponsible comment could sweep through it. Sean Andrews
of the New Media Group in English at George Mason University has
collected here some of the reaction in e-mail and websites, separating
them into "E-mail", "Images" and "Archives
and Commentary." In no way can what he has collected be scientifically
representative: it is a random collection. For economy of space
and privacy we have tried to excise the long lists of e-addresses
that often came at the beginning of messages. We make no attempt
at analysis or comment. We include items that are clearly offensive
to many, hoping our readers will share our sense that these too
must be part of the record of electronic reaction to the attacks.