It seems since I wrote the original piece about the “swine flu scare” on Saturday things have taken a life of their own.
There have been quite a few “horror” stories in the media, not to mention the repeat mention of the “Spanish Flu” of 1918 and the millions of dead and the clear implication that the current outbreak could reach the same proportions.
Now Raul has pointed out an interesting article with regards to Twitter and how it is actually leading to even more panic (not that this surprises me).
If my reading list on Twitter was only restricted to the individuals who had produced the posts above, by now I would be extremely scared and probably feeling a great urge to post a scary Twitter update myself.
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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;
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I think it’s only a matter of time before that the next generation of cyber-terrorists – those who are smart about social media, are familiar with modern information flows, and are knowledgeable about human networks – take advantage of the escalating fears over the next epidemic and pollute the networked public sphere with scares that would essentially paralyze the global economy. Often, such tactics would bring much more destruction than the much-feared cyberwar and attacks on physical – rather than human – networks.
The article makes a few good points, but the latter makes the mistake to think that this kind of abuse could be prevented.
Over the years I observed a few trends which Twitter now increases.
First of all there is the “participation” aspect. 9/11 was probably the first live broadcast terrorist event in human history, something that went around the globe in near realtime, with people participating online and at work, giving a play by play. Everybody was part of the event, even if you were thousands of kilometres away.
In the following months this became even more obvious as people repeatedly “felt” for the losses of the family members who had lost someone. Having outright emotional outbursts and depression.
This all comes down to the fact that we want to belong. With human face to face interactions having been greatly reduced by modern technologies and the way we live (from “hiding” in your car on the way to work, to living in large houses that are mostly self contained) people try to find other ways of emotionally connect. Part of this is the “fake” emotional attachments to completely strangers whose stories are broadcast in the news or the Internet.
Secondly, people are easily scared, very few people understand how a pandemic works, what makes things so dangerous and mostly how this could impact them directly. The examples given in the article linked above are symptomatic for this. The media is mentioning pigs (swine) and people but leaves a lot of additional information out that would calm people down. After all, if it doesn’t fit in the two minute blurp on TV or the 30 second read on the news website nobody will bother. Not to mention: “When it bleeds, it leads”.
Thirdly, the limited nature of twitter, as the article points out 140 characters don’t allow you to give a lot of context, though there is a bigger problem. People who are concerned first and foremost want to warn their “friends”, because of the “cred” that comes with having “befriended” someone people tend to be less suspicious of the information being presented and so a “Ponzi Scheme” of misinformation is being kicked off. This is were the amplification factor of Twitter comes into play.
Even people who may be skeptical will most likely think to be better “safe than sorry” and will contribute to the misinformation. After all, a “friend” warned them.
This is one of the downfalls of social media. Where there is a clear authority in the news media (in the past anyway) that you could question, in social media it all depends on the trust you give the person on the other end. The more scared you are though, the higher your bullshit threshold, because if in doubt….
If the media wouldn’t have been as sensationalistic about the outbreak over the weekend, my suspicion is that Twitter itself would be less flooded with these warnings and misinformation. As the media is continues feeding the fears with their talk about pandemics, millions of deaths etc. we have reached a perfect positive feedback loop in misinformation.
As people will “foster” more and more relationships through social media, the always connected, always plugged in and always short, way of life will continue to amplify these kinds of misinformation.
Unless people learn to be less panicky and more determined to get context this Swine Flu was just the beginning.