Is "There is a plane on the Hudson" deemed to become as famous as "Houston we have a problem?
This is with this sentence that Janis Krum announced the crash of a plane in the Hudson River on Twitter. The twitt spread in twittosphere like wildfire and it is likely that few members of Twitter have been in contact with the news. Comments on this case have focused on the balance between the traditional media and citizen journalism. Twitter has been more rapid, more viral than any other media. Not only is the information circulated on Twitter, but it has spread to other areas. A video Chesley Sullenberger - Pilot Flight 1549 - A U.S. True Hero! appears on YouTube just few hours after the crash and Chesley Sullenberger on Facebook, has a fan page on Facebook.
The story takes a few words. Following an engine failure, the captain of flight 1549 from U.S. Airways decided to land its Airbus A-320 in the Hudson River. The sea landing is done to perfection and a few moments later, Janis Krum posts to Twitter:
"There is a plane on the Hudson. I am on the ferry to pick up the people. Crazy."
The myth of the plane on the Hudson
I do not discuss whether it is a sign for (or against) the so-called citizen journalism. I would like to underline the mythic value of the myth of this story. I take "myth" in the sense given by Roland Barthes: an ideological tool, a sign. For Roland Barthes, the myths of our cultures are produced by a progressive depletion of the original meaning which replaces an entirely different story. The DS car , the photograph of the face of Greta Garbo, or wrestling are some examples.
The plane on the Hudson is a myth of the Internet. It says the rapid circulation of the information. It says that there is no event that cannot be covered, no place that is inaccessible. It says the ubiquity and the simultaneity. Everywhere, the eye of a camera phone can record an event and share it with the multitudes. We can now extend the initial proposition of Barthes :
"Every object in the world can move from a closed dumb existence, into an oral statement, open to ownership of the society ", Roland Barthes
Every event in the world can move from a closed existence, dumb, in an oral statement, open to ownership of the company ",
The fantasmatic resonance
This is not the first time that Twitter is ahead of traditional medias : here's the list given by dot.life
If the story of The plane on the Hudson has been fowarded and retwitted so many time, that is also because it resonates deeply in us. Each user who fowards this story in his social network is a person whose concious and unconscious interest has been awaken enough. The plane on the Hudson comes on time : in a world on wars, facing an economic recession that will be tough, the rarefaction of the fossile energies, we surely need a Chesley Sullenberger to safely land us
This story is also an oedipian one. The buzz is the sign - or the symptom - of the fantasmatic resonance that spread the internet from the initial fantasy, from retwitt to retwitt forward to forward. Obviously, each people is interested by the story in different ways. Some people are more sensible to the stereotype of the pilot, others identify themselves to the passagers, others will , others will be marked by the image of the plane laid in the river. The general theme of The plane on the Hudson reads in a cascades of themes in which every one can identify.
In psychoanalysis, we call uncounscious fanatasmatic resonance (Foulkes, 1948; Anzieu, 1984) the process by which a group is organised around an individual fantasy. In offline groups, the fantasy organizer is given by a privileged member. The group holds this organisation as long as the initial fantasy arouse an echo and as long as those who do not feel concerned stay in a passive and peripherical position. The resonance stops becauses it is no longer invested or because it mobilises defensive attitudes from others. S
ocial network like Twitter are dreamplaces for such phenomenon. What is transmitted is information AND emotions, fantasy, imaginary. Online, the resonance can be maximized because it is easy to find other persons that will resonate on the same theme or on a similar one. In addition, those for whom the fantasy gives rise to defensive do not attack the others because they can stay apart. Finally, last difference with the offline world, the fantasy is here privileged.Its ablity to aggregate people determine its dissemination while in the offline world, the starting point is given according to those who bear the initital fantasy. This is why digital worlds are particulary opened to transmission in all its forms : from the most secondary to the most archaic.
P.S.: It would be interesting to make the graph of the distribution of the initial twitt. This would probably be a good model for epidemic transmission. Why some are not affected ? What ensures their resilience ?
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