I’m Not Dead Yet: Stopping Info Misflow
(non-copyedited version)
It used to be that we heard about major news events from sources with institutional authority… a news company with investigative journalists and fact-checkers, for instance. Think of breaking-news moments that we associate with well-known and highly respected authority figures: Walter Cronkite removing his glasses and announcing the death of President Kennedy, or Tom Brokaw broadcasting the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Now, we collectively experience events in real time, and everyone is a potential newscaster. Our culture, with its recent hyperfocus on breaking news[1], hasn't prepared us to deal with the impact of what we share with one another during those events, and how we handle the information that bombards us. New media tools and social networks have given us new ways to spread information — and new questions to ask about our responsibility.
The events of June 25, 2009, provide an excellent illustration of how misinformation centered around breaking news can spread quickly across social networks. Both Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett died on this day. Across many social networks, people expressed their surprise and grief at the loss of two pop culture icons. Then came news on the same social networks that actor Jeff Goldblum had also died, on a movie set in New Zealand. A quick Google search turned up a hit for a news story on MoviesOnline.com, reporting the death[2]. Many people began sharing the news (yours truly included). Tapping into cultural superstitions about deaths occurring in threes is an especially poignant way to make information go viral, apparently.
Alas, the much-beloved Mr. Goldblum was not dead. He wasn't even in New Zealand at the time[3]… but the runaway nature of the story allowed it to charge into the social network sphere and stay there for a good twenty-four hours, even after it was officially debunked within an hour or two of its first mention[4] (via an institutional authority: Goldblum's agent). In a case like this, twenty-four hours of presuming a popular actor's death isn't likely to do any serious damage (except, perhaps, to the actor’s ego), but when the news is of a more critical nature, twenty-four hours is plenty of time to inflame passions and cause people to act, sometimes in unwise ways, on misinformation.
Before the Internet, we relied on the authority of our peers to share trustworthy information, with some degree of success (and failure… I grew up thinking I'd die if I simultaneously ate Pop Rocks and drank a Coke[5]). The Internet hits the scene, and suddenly there’s an explosion of urban legends. Remember those email chains where a little boy with cancer only wished to see his email forwarded around?
Urban legends and hoaxes make emotional appeals that force us to address our common cultural fears (death, terror, freaky candy that pops in your mouth). If we trust the information source (usually a friend or family member), we usually believe the information is true… we transfer a person’s general trustworthiness to individual bits of news, without verifying whether the information is correct.
But if someone repeatedly shares enough false information, we naturally respond by lowering the authority that person has in the news-sharing department. Quick survey: How many people don't read emails from Aunt Beatrice anymore because she sent the human organ theft hoax again?
We're at roughly the same level with social networks right now as we were with email in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The tools are new and snazzy, and we don't yet have a sophisticated understanding of the role they play in our lives.
And it’s not just us or our family members who have become enamored with these new tools. Just look at the mainstream media's coverage of breaking news today. News anchors actually read tweets and Facebook posts on air as a method of sharing news. That's not just silly; it's also irresponsible.
[1] Remember when a "breaking news" bulleting on the television news actually meant something?
[2] "Jeff Goldblum Is Not Dead, Despite What Google Says," http://searchengineland.com/jeff-goldblum-is-not-dead-despite-what-google-says-21588 [Accessed November 27, 2009]
[3] Goldblum handily addressed the misinformation in a hilarious appearance on The Colbert Report a few days later: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/220019/june-29-2009/jeff-goldblum-will-be-missed [Accessed November 27, 2009]
[4] The story originated with a prank website that allows anyone to plug a celebrity's name into a news story template, and generate a fake news report. See: "Cliff Death Hoax," Snopes.com, http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/cliffdeath.asp (accessed November 27, 2009)
[5] "Death of Little Mikey," Snopes.com, http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/poprocks.asp (accessed December 13, 2009)
