According to Information Week, blogs and cell phones helped to provide some of the earliest coverage of the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday. What has been said to be the deadliest shooting rampage in American history, began when a fellow student started a mass shooting spree, first in a dormitory at around 7:15 AM and then in a classroom building just hours later.

Having received a campus-wide email twenty minutes earlier, blog posts began pouring into Virginia Tech’s website publisher, CollegeMedia.com as early as 9:47 Monday morning. Although their server was down, students of the Collegiate Times filed blog entries on their parent company’s website as they attempted to confirm information about the shootings.

The students were able to report the number of fatalities and keep an open communication with their faculty through instant messaging and email. One student even captured sound on his cell phone of several gunshots. By the afternoon, the university posted a podcast of statements from its president, Charles Steger. Icantread01’s live journal includes an account called “Madness on Campus,” in which his friend Kate stopped the shooter from coming back into a room by blocking the door. Kate was shot in the hand. Cyber-soc.com includes icantread’s post as well, plus a post from Jennie Tal whose friend was possibly shot in the leg.

Wired’s Threat Level blog and Cynical-C blog have a number of blog and cell phone accounts. Boing Boing also received a lot of first-person coverage that includes the DC Met-blogs open thread and Flickr photos of police cars on the scene. The Roanoke Times has a blog-style article that covers the shootings in reverse chronological order.

This tragedy leaves 33 dead, including the shooter. Police have identified the gunman as 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui, and are still working on releasing the names of the victims.

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