#‎ParisIsAboutLife‬

This week, I had planned to write a blog about something else, but due to recent events, I feel like I need to write this now.

On Friday 13th November 2015, multiple attacks were carried out in the city of Paris, killing at least 129 people. 129 innocent people. You're probably thinking this has nothing to do with media, so why am I writing about it on a media blog? I'm blogging about this because I believe, on that night, social media did something extraordinary.

My personal experience went like this: it was around 11pm, and I was looking through Twitter. I stumbled upon the trending topics 'Paris' and '#PrayForParis.' Obviously wondering what was going on, I clicked on them to find out more, and I was devastated at what I found. My first instinct was to check on my family, since I have a lot of French relatives, some who lived in Paris, I checked on them first - thankfully they were okay after I was reminded that they moved to Monaco. Then I tried to get as much information as possible about what was happening, to see if I could help, but also for morbid curiousity.

Once I had looked at various posts, articles and videos, I came across the hashtag "#porteouverte" which translates to "door open." This hashtag was used throughout the city of Paris, and some of France, and it was made so that people who needed shelter, could find somewhere safe to wait out the attacks. Never before have I seen anything like that, and I was overwhelmed. People were using social media to help strangers. Usually a hashtag is put in place to promote a product or to report on an event. This is the first time I've ever seen a hastag potentially save lives. In my opinion, although a lot of lives were sadly lost that night - it was a trending topic on Twitter which saved many more lives.

Another way people spread awareness (not the saving lives kind) was by sharing this image which was created by Jean Jullien.

Also, I wanted to state the reason for the title of this blog post being #‎ParisIsAboutLife‬ and not #PrayForParis, like I originally planned. It's because I saw a drawing made by Joann Sfar, who is a cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo. I'll just let the drawing explain my reasons.

#blogpost