Last night, thousands of status updates were sent out into the Twittersphere by concerned individuals who believed they were passing on an Amber Alert for a three year old boy. Descriptions of the perp’s Mitsubishi Eclipse and license plate spread like wildfire, and #98B351 quickly became a trending topic. Not long after, celebrity @KhloeKardashian retweeted it, triggering over 3,655 different tweets in the span of one hour. A simple search engine check up, however, would reveal that this “missing boy” alert had been circulating for over two weeks, a man-made story that could not be validated by legitimate missing persons resources. In fact, it had been tracked moving coast to coast, slowly infiltrating text messages, Facebook accounts, and other pathways of technology everywhere. Last night would just be the point it would make its trending topic comeback after a week of dormancy. Whether the alert was fake to begin with, or truly once genuine, was information hidden somewhere in the bowls of the internet.
The massive twitter overtaking the alert had last night generates an interesting discussion on the Realtime web. With the amazing power of Twitter and other forms of social media, we are able to send and receive content at a moment’s notice. Breaking news, live action play by plays, what’s in and what’s out–Immediate information is just one click away. But do these new tools also require us to judge our sources with a more critical eye? Whether it’s on or offline, the power of a crowd is a influential thing. If enough people start to believe something, legitimate or fraudulent, the sheer volume has the momentum to start to convince others.
When Michael Jackson died, many of us learned about it from others Tweeting before stumbling upon TMZ or CNN on our own. At the same time, when someone shared a fake video of MJ hopping out of the coroner’s van after his alleged death, it soon generated millions of hits and plenty of “Elvis and Tupac theories.” False rumors of Jeff Goldblum falling to his death spread so quickly that even a local television news station reported it. And on Monday after a fake CNN page that described Actor Zach Braff’s overdose and suicide went viral, Zach had to make a video proving he hadn’t yet kicked the bucket.
These false rumors make up just a small percentage compared to the legitimate headlines shared via Twitter, but are they powerful enough to force us be more responsible Tweeps? Before you go updating your Facebook statuses or Twitter profile with a RT or headline you heard, do you do a little digging to get to the bottom of it? Or is it share first, confirm later?
