Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform

http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/25/swine_flu_twitters_power_to_misinform

by swombat • 17 years ago

22 16 17 years ago

neteffect.foreignpolicy.com

I'm not a big Twitter fan but pretty much this article is claiming "Twitter allows people to post what they might otherwise say in general conversation. People are saying things that can cause panic and so people who take what others say at face value without confirmation will also be panicked."

The most alarming statement in this article was "The question of whether we need to somehow alter our global information flows during global pandemics is not a trivial one". Fight fear with education, not with censorship.

lucumo2• 17 years ago

The problem is that education about the current situation is not reaching them very well. The author suggested that health organisations put updates online as soon and as often as possible. Injecting education into the online information stream if you will. Maybe directly into Twitter even. If some (hopefully recognised) experts were to start Twittering "pork does not kill you", the fear would be culled.

Anyway, I doubt this mass hysteria will really be all that huge if things don't get worse. The current situation is still pretty new.

Tichy3• 17 years ago

That article could not even quote any severely misinformed tweets. Is it being misinformed to be worried a little bit? Also, the article focused on tweets of scared users, there might be zillions of tweets by users who are not scared.

I think if anything, the whole issue might make people reflect more on things they read and hear, which would be a good thing. Other than that, the same kind of articles have probably written years ago, if you replace "twitter" with "internet" or "wikipedia".

While I don't panic, I find the whole thing interesting because I have never actually witnessed a pandemic. My first epidemic I witnessed last christmass, when the whole family suddenly had a vomitting virus. That was a bit scary. A global epidemic would therefore be really scary. Since few people have experience with this, worrying seems like a sane reaction. Or would the appropriate reaction be "I am sure the government will handle it fine, and if anything serious was going on, they would surely warn me on TV"?

idle73• 17 years ago

i think the author didn't really mean censorship; altering is also possible on a micro-level with users adopting a higher level of editorial standards...

nopassrecover4• 17 years ago

This is twitter - that's like asking people to have a higher editorial standard on SMS messages to their friends.

idle73• 17 years ago

well - how about stop sending messages if you can't trust the information you are spreading? that's what i meant by editorial standards. so yes, it's censorship of sorts, but it's more like self-censorship - or self-restraint to be more exact.

joeter• 17 years ago

I was testing this last night... The twitter search was interesting because after your first query, it dynamically updates a display with how many new results would be added if you refreshed the search. The trend for swine flu kept rapidly mounting.

I could see this alarming the average person especially if Twitter was to distinguish their brand as the ubiquitous "realtime" search.

diego• 17 years ago

You can see the chart for the trend here:

http://twist.flaptor.com/?gram=swine+flu&table=0

tvon• 17 years ago

Nobody ever said Twitter made you smarter...

Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform

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