Facebook has released an animated infographic, showing the density of status updates from each region in the first 12 hours after the tsunami in Japan.
The times displayed on the infographic are in US Pacific Time (PST), eight hours behind GMT and 17 hours behind Japan.
Apart from Japan, right after after the earthquake that spawned the tsunami, the areas with the largest amount of Facebook status updates were southeastern parts of China, the Philippines, Hawaii and the west coast of the US, perhaps due to how close they were to the earthquake and fears the tsunami would impact some of their regions.
About an hour later, status updates from Europe, particularly the UK, increased. The time was around 8.26am GMT, closer to when people would check the news on TV or online in the morning.
At 4.07am PST, updates from the east coast of America increased dramatically. The time in this region would have been 7.07am EST, again, closer to when many people would have been waking up.
By 6.29am PST, status updates across the east and centre of the US increase further. At this stage, status updates from Hawaii had decreased. (The first tsunami waves hit Hawaii at around 5am PT, however, damage was minimal). Updates went up again in Hawaii by 12.45pm PST, at a time when more people were awake.
Ireland saw peaks at 1.27am PST (9.27am GMT), 5.16am PST (12.16pm GMT) and 6.29am PST (1.16pm GMT).
Here’s the full animated infographic of the density of Facebook status updates in the first 12 hours of the earthquake and tsunami:
