Re: Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform

[Imri Goldberg <lorgandon () gmail com>]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster () gmail com>wrote:

> And despite all the recent Twitter-enthusiasm about this
> platform's unique power to alert millions of people in decentralized and
> previously unavailable ways, there are quite a few reasons to be concerned
> about Twitter's role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about
> swine flu.
>
>
> First of all, I should point out from the very outset that anyone trying to
> make sense of how Twitter's “global brain” has reacted to the prospect
> of the swine flu pandemic is likely to get disappointed. The “swine
> flu” meme has so far  that misinformed and panicking people armed with a
> platform to broadcast their fears are likely to produce only more fear,
> misinformation and panic.
I actually felt something similar yesterday. Yesterday's evening, at least 7
ambulances and a police car passed on the road with sirens on. There were
probably more, but I didn't start counting right off.  Since the last time I
saw five ambulances in a row, was right after a suicide bombing a few years
ago, I immediately thought that there has been another terror attack. I
checked the news websites, and saw nothing about it.

I decided to write on twitter (which also updates my facebook, and a small
box on my blog. I know no one probably reads either, but still :). Then I
thought that if I wrote that I thought it was a terror attack, I could start
a panic. So I wrote that I saw the ambulances, without trying to analyze
what happened.

It turned out to be a bus accident, with many people wounded.

-Imri

-- 
Imri Goldberg
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