Crowd sourcing event news in real time

When television first appeared it revolutionised news - now people could see events, sometimes live, for themselves, albeit on the small screen. Then came CNN - 24 hours news that also changed the 'news cycle' and the way people consume information. More recently the ubiquitous cell phone video/camera and YouTube has further decentralised news provision. And now, perhaps the ultimate extension of this trend, a number of websites provide real-time crowd sourced information about events unfolding on the ground, with no intermediary (here is an example from ID PhD student Mareike Schomerus today - Jan 30 - on crowd sourced news on demonstrations in Khartoum Sudan). From an econometricians' perspective the possibilities seem endless - what kinds of hypotheses would you test with time and location data on the individual actions that make up mass events?