

Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform - swombat
http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/25/swine_flu_twitters_power_to_misinform

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nopassrecover
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.

~~~
lucumo
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.

~~~
Tichy
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"?

~~~
lucumo
It _is_ misinformed to say that you shouldn't eat pork, yes. But I don't blame
the misinformed ones, as you seem to imply. I'm just thinking of solutions to
help people grasp the situation better. Being afraid is - currently - somewhat
an overreaction if you don't live in Mexico City. Not eating pork is probably
healthy, but completely misinformed if used to ward of the pig flu.

You have a point though, when you say the article focuses on one side. Maybe
there are very informed tweets and maybe people are corrected if they say
something stupid.

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tvon
Nobody ever said Twitter made you smarter...

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joeter
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
You can see the chart for the trend here:

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

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idle7
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...

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

~~~
idle7
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.

~~~
Tichy
Twitter users are still capable of using google. So if somebody tweets about a
pandemic, the next reactions of twitter users would probably be to google it.
I don't think they are stupid sheep who just do whatever their twitter-friends
tell them.

It is still useful information to hear that worries about a pandemic have
arisen, no matter if the advice for actions is right or wrong.

~~~
idle7
well, as we've seen, many people were re-tweeting false advice ("don't eat
pork") without bothering to check anything on google...

~~~
Tichy
Ah, I didn't even notice that some people seem to think it is transmitted via
eating pork. But did they get retweeted a lot?

Still not convinced that it is worse than email, for example - like those
meme-viri that keep spreading via email.

