US

As the world mourns those who died on one of the darkest days in recent American history, the cruel shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary has again shown how social media channels can build cohesion in times of difficulty.

Reports are starting to detail the full extent of the damage from last Friday's school shooting in Newtown in Connecticut, the actions of Adam Lanza have sent a tremor across America and around the globe.

Described as a 'troubled son', Lanza took the life of over a dozen young children, the shooter's senseless lack of mercy has caused citizens to take to the Internet to voice their indignation towards such a horrific tragedy.

Twitter saw a spike in related tweets on Friday, hashtags such as #prayersforNewtown and #schoolshooting appeared as well as an array of Instagram images of teens sharing posts depicting their solidarity visually and through messages of support.
 
Vicki Soto A Hero Immortalised

With Barack Obama's victory today being attributed to women voters, it looks like we still live in a quasi-patriarchal world as far as the alpha male territory of social media is concerned.

In the 2012 US presidential election the traditional ways of campaigning- canvassing, fund-raising and character assassination, played the same part they always have. However, this time the tools were the top social media networks and content optimised for mobile devices.

The Gender Divide

Facebook and Twitter were the top names and weapons of choice for Romney and Obama, with Tumblr also gaining increasing momentum to distribute images which reflected election trends. Tumblr's animated gif images make it the perfect medium to ridicule, as the jokes loop on and on.

However, it seems that very few female voices triumph amongst this onslaught of channels, which serve to accentuate male prowess. To some extent this is true both in the design of many types of new media and the gender of those who are top influencers amongst their peers.

As you may of heard, there is a US election taking place at the moment, with the results just a matter of hours away. Instead of going through opinion polls, repeating tired old quotes and trying to guess who is going to win, we're taking a look at the slightly more light-hearted side of things- how the internet has treated the election campaigns.

Just because Obama and Romney have spent billions of dollars over the course of months on their election campaigns, it doesn't mean everyone is going to take them seriously. Below you can find some of the funniest and weirdest memes that have come out of the last few months of campaigning.

1) Big Bird's Appearance

Things really started to take off once the presidential debates began. With a live audience of millions, any small mistake or odd phrase was quickly picked up on. The biggest thing to come out of the first debate in October was, strangely, Big Bird from Sesame Street.

A PBS (the public TV network) journalist was chairing the debate and Mitt Romney admitted that he would cut the government funding currently given to PBS. The quote that really grabbed everyone's attention was this: "I like PBS, I love Big Bird, but I am not going to keep spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for".

Hurricane Sandy has devastated the East Coast of America this week, leaving flooding, power cuts, fires and fallen trees. As with any big event these days, the internet has been awash with photos, updates and videos from people suffering the storm first-hand.

The storm has taken centre stage on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as thousands of people share their experiences. Here we bring you a look at some of the most shocking, terrifying and amazing videos and photos to have appeared online.