Published Paper Details:

Social Media presents its users with immediate access and opportunity to express their opinions and emotions. Social Media connects people world over creating a networked community. In the wake of the recent Siachen avalanche tragedy on February 3, 2016 where in ten Indian Army soldiers were buried alive and one Lance Naik Hanumanthappa was found alive after six days, there was significant out pour of activity on the social media. Social Media witnessed out cry of Indians all over the world and others posting, commenting and tweeting about the incident online. Mainly their prayers and pride in Indian Army. Empathy is basic element of humanity. Not only this tragedy raised empathetic reactions but also elevated the spirit of nationalism within no time. This creates a need to know whether empathy is as wide spread in textual communication as face to face communication and how netizens reacted to this tragedy. This study shows that how one catastrophic event brought out a sense of oneness among the netizens. This research follows the content analysis methodology where in 150 tweets from the day of disaster have been coded and analysed in terms of Empathy, Anger and Others. The study shows that empathy was present in almost all of the posts and tweets along with sense of nationalism and also anger over not providing improved technology to house the soldiers. This study has been done in the back drop of Social presence theory and Medium theory with which empathy can be understood better.