"There was a car crash! R.I.P. Kanye West"
"What's with this new trending topic.... Kanye West died? What a loss."
Sound familiar?
How about:
"R.I.P. Zach Braff! CNN says he committed suicide!"
"I can't believe it, did Zach Braff really die?"
"Zach Braff was my FAVE actor. Garden State. oh em gee"
Okay, even I fell for the Zach Braff one for a couple of minutes. That fake CNN page, which now displays an apology from its creator, fooled me! The only laughable part of the situation was Zach Braff's YouTube response.
Over the past few months, Twitter has been the origin of a plethora of celebrity death rumors, including rumors about Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, Zach Braff, and Jeff Goldblum, to name a few. This has caused a growing buzz among social media addicts and many Twitter users, questioning the accountability and validity of Twitter and the news it spreads.
In Kanye West example, MTV posted an article openly declaring the rumors as untrue, the day before "R.I.P. Kanye West" became a trending topic. Yet the story still spread.
Such rumors seem to have cropped up (as far as I can tell) in much larger quantities within the last four months or so. Why? I can think of two reasons.
- Uh, there are more people on Twitter! More spammers and bots, too.
- Michael Jackson's death spread like wildfire on Twitter. In fact, I first heard about MJ's death via Twitter, from a friend who was posting a link from @HarveyLevinTMZ's Twitter account. TMZ actually had the story before CNN. CNN and TMZ reported his hospitalization around the same time, but TMZ, and in turn Twitter were at least 20 minutes ahead of CNN with news of his death. I was fascinated by this--how could CNN have allowed that to happen with such a huge story? The most obvious answer is that CNN had paused to verify facts and gather more information; Twitter had not.
Yesterday, Google announced its intention to include tweets within its search results. Glenn Batuyong comments on the Mashable article: "Congrats to Twitter! Let's hope that somehow this deal will improve Twitter's general reliability (HINT) but does this mean that fake garbage like 'RIP Kanye West' will be top SERPs on Google?"
Couldn't have said it better myself. Should be interesting to watch what happens!
Regardless of whether or not Twitter starts to filter through Tweets, I think it's important for Twitter users to use common sense. Where is this information coming from? If you're in doubt about a suspect Tweet, Google the subject matter of the Tweet and see if anything shows up.
ReplyDeleteI agree -- it seems that the bigger problems occur when Twitter users (and in some instances, other news media outlets) rely on Twitter as the source of information, rather than a purveyor of info. If users spread a message via Twitter that has a link to back it up, it's more likely to be reputable. We did however see with Zach Braff that sometimes links are fake. It's funny when you think about it -- a CNN reporter would never write a story based on what a few people were saying at a Starbucks or in their workplace, yet reporters will listen to what everyone is saying on Twitter.
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