Murder in Paris: social media on Charlie Hebdo attack

Al-Araby al-Jadeed tracks the social media response to the events in Paris.
Narrated
4 min read
The New Arab Staff

Farid Farid

07 Jan, 2015
Social media followed vigils held across Europe [Getty]

Almost as soon as masked gunmen launched their attack on the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, social media websites began filling with details, reports and much speculation.

The first reports, which began to be posted on Twitter at about midday, said that 10 people had been killed by two gunmen.



The French AFP news agency posted on Twitter that the gunmen had used Kalashnikov assault rifles and a rocket launcher (lance-roquette).


This report was questioned by many, and was not confirmed in the following hours.


Hebdo journalist Martin Boudot posted a picture on Twitter of his colleagues taking shelter on the rooftop of their offices, but subsequent posts about the attack have since been deleted.


As more information came in, with reports of 12 dead including two policemen, social media users turned to Hebdo's Twitter account - the magazine's last post before the attack made fun of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The post has since been reposted more than 22,000 times.


The magazine previously published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which were deemed offensive by some Muslims. The Hebdo offices were firebombed in November 2011 after it published a "sharia edition".


The French president, Francois Hollande, headed immediately to the scene to condemn the attack. 

 


International condemnation followed from other world leaders, including the US president Barack Obama, German chancellor Angel Merkel and British prime minister David Cameron.


The most prominent institution on Sunni Islam learning, Egypts al-Azhar, roundly condemned the attack.


Later in the afternoon after much speculation, AFP reported 10 Hebdo staff, including 4 prominent cartoonists, had been confirmed killed in the attack.


Video footage by documentary filmmakers, Premiere Lignes, showed the attackers escaping in a black Citroen.


  


Twitter users began a worldwide hashtag campaign #JesuisCharlie (I am Charlie), to express solidarity with the magazine. At about 6pm it had been included on 460,000 posts. A poster of the hashtag was tweeted by popular French radio host Bruno Guillon.


It has subsequently been used as a symbol of press freedom and freedom of expression.


Protests and vigils were later staged in various capitals as Europe came to terms with the events in Paris.


However, some Twitter users called for violence against Muslims in response to the attack. The hashtag #KillAllMuslims was the fifth most was the fifth most used on Wednesday in the UK.

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