Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform

Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.

http://Spryka.com

My husband, @kragen, spent the better part of last night trying to get people to stop spreading false rumors and he made plenty of people angry in the process. He eventually wrote up a piece and put it on his website. It's about how false rumors can cost lives. I hope people stop to think about what they tweet, but I fear that tweeting without thinking will win out.

I sincerely hope that the swine flu peters out and doesn't become the international pandemic that we all fear it could become.

It's an interesting article but it's also a little amusing the way it takes Twitter to task for flooding us with empty chatter about the swine flu, and yet this article adds to that chatter without itself containing any real information about the swine flu, making the distinction between this article and the same sorts of observations posted on Twitter, seem a little bit arbitrary.

twitter isn't the problem.

You know what the problem is and you nail it right here:

"The problem is that while thousands of concerned and misinformed individuals took to Twitter to ventilate their fears, government and its agencies were still painfully missing from the social media space; the Twitter of account of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was posting updates once in a few hours – and that was probably the only really trustworthy source people could turn to online."

The world is changing and dinosaur entities like government and media either refuse to change with it (e.g. media) or can't keep up (e.g. government).

If the WHO and the CDC had twitter accounts that could keep up with everyone else, they would be the primary sources and people would have GLADLY Re-Tweeted them. It was the FAILURE of the CDC and the WHO to do something as simple as disseminate information via a twitter account that caused problems. Plain and simple. Join the 21st century. Don't bitch about it. Your average 15 year old can do this, so entities with vast resources should be able to be trained to do so. There are tools like twitterfeed that make this mind-numbingly easy:

http://twitterfeed.com/

That is all.

While I think you have a very valid point about twitter, the panic-mongering rumor mill, I question why the CDC should possibly update it's twitter feed more often than it does -- every few hours when there is actually something to say/report/some actual news. It is the CDC's job to provide actual, verified information about public health threats, not to feed the hype mill, or, for that matter, to dispel every idiot's assertions out there. I follow the feed from the CDC precisely BECAUSE it provides me with high signal to noise ratio of actual updates.

Also, to read about the response to #influenza porcina in Spanish from Mexicans (often pretty funny and largely more informative), look for hashtag #influenza. After all, that is where the flu originated.

Katrin

I am so tired of bloggers trying to get attention with twitter bashing.

What is the difference from any blogging site misinformation or "fox"news spin such as Global warming is a myth, than twitter...NOTHING.. some people in bloggosphere,bias news channels, and twitter all have dumb people and intelligent people and to say only a certian area of media or social media contains a higher concentrated number of dumb misinformed people is bias in itself.

There is nothing confusing about twitter or hard to understand about twitter speech if you have half a brain. I know many well informed, highly intelligent twitterers with good sources and I know some idiots who spew retard garbage. Of the 1,000 followers I have only about 3 percent of them I would considered uneducated. So maybe it is just the followers I attract or your bias and spent a lot of time setting up blogs and losing your followers intrest to something that gives you information faster and with less fluff so you lash out at your competitive social media platform such as Twitter ?? gee I wonder.

Some people listen to Fox news and believe Global warming is a myth, some listen to the small amount of idiots on twitter and some believe your crap too.

Got a problem complain to me on my Twitter handle autumn_meadows

"If the WHO and the CDC had twitter accounts that could keep up with everyone else, they would be the primary sources and people would have GLADLY Re-Tweeted them. It was the FAILURE of the CDC and the WHO to do something as simple as disseminate information via a twitter account that caused problems. Plain and simple. Join the 21st century. Don't bitch about it. Your average 15 year old can do this, so entities with vast resources should be able to be trained to do so. There are tools like twitterfeed that make this mind-numbingly easy..."

But the problem is that government organizations who need to put out verified, useful information often cannot and should not "tweet" and update every few minutes like the average 15 year old. The problem is our pathological need to be exposed to information -- any information -- at all costs at all times of the day, whether it is accurate and useful or not. Information takes time to process and reflect on... I don't value knee-jerk reactions and they only feed more panic and hysteria. How many people will hear the initial message vs. a recanting after the findings are actually thought through?

Dear Dinosaurs,

Take note: twitter isn't going away. Please try to be relevant. Please.

"I think it's only a matter of time before cyber-terrorists would essentially paralyze the global economy."

That looks to me a bold statement directed to generate panic and sensationalism. You are just doing what you blame people are doing using twitter.

Twitter is just a tool. If you have to blame something blame the people and not the tool. With or without twitter idiots will still be idiots.

The world of communication is already changed and there is nothing you can do about it (but you already know it since you are taking advantage of it).

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that's most adaptable to change. --darwin

The County of San Diego, where four U.S. swine flu cases have been identified, has a frequently updated Twitter feed: @SanDiegoCounty.

"Take note: twitter isn't going away. Please try to be relevant. Please."

Yes, Kilroy. Your echo chamber is relevant. More's the pity.

Long before Twitter, the mob in history always had its surges, its contractions. A mob brain is like a blob of mercury. Wiggling, jiggling. Fed by its own momentum. In a mob, you're a shiny globule of nothing.

The culture of the Tweet is a mob phenomenon. That's OK if you just tell yourselves all day long what you're eating. That's a pity if tomorrow you all become convinced, for instance, to swallow Draino as a buffer against a pandemic. But mobs do stuff like that. Mobs interpret the group smell as "wisdom." Mobs also lynch.

Yes, you're relevant. Mostly, though, your relevance isn't what you had in mind when you used the word. It's helpful to better culture when its most herd-minded conformists stay out in the open, broadcasting frenetically to themselves. Congratulations: you're the new TV. And it's so nice to turn you off.

CLEARLY the swine flu is the viral zombie infection many of us have been expecting.

The CDC does in fact have a twitter feed - http://twitter.com/CDCemergency as does FEMA - http://twitter.com/femainfocus and many other agencies responsible for disseminating reliable information. However, you have to choose to follow them. Context on Twitter comes from knowing who you're following - who is making a joke, who has reliable information, who's an idiot, who is really preparing for a zombie apocalypse, etc. Using hash tags for searching won't get you anywhere unless you know every person who's contributing to the conversation - would you walk down the street and take advice from every stranger you passed? It's all about judgment - online just like in the real world.

I saw this on Twitter so it must be true.
http://www.blog-stalk.com/showpost.php?ID=323

Randall Munroe offered his own satirization(?) of twitter and swine flu.

alrighty, lots of good points, but when you make countless typo's and spelling errors your credibility drops tons. Also, this is a damn joke....the media has once again played the 'OMFG!!!" card and is blowing this completely proportion....jesus, people....wake up and smell the concrete....you have a better chance of hitting the lottery than you do of dying from this....follow my example and ignore it....thank you :D

The entire premise of your essay is dead wrong.

I would refer you to Quarantelli's work in disaster sociology (and many others, for that matter) on the subject of the sociology of panic.

In your essay you have unfortunately (yet again, as with many others during the blog and media output on the topic of "swine flu") helped perpetuate the classic myth of panic being associated with disasters.

Please, read the literature- the academic, peer-reviewed literature- on the reality of social response behaviors during crises and disasters before encouraging media attention about the potential for a "global panic".

To ignore the literature severely affects your credibility and the credibility of the institution, Foreign Policy, you belong to.

I think this is turning into a colossal epidemic.

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