Apr 28, 2009 9:45 am US/Central
Is Social Networking Spreading Misinformation?
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Tweets and blogs are buzzing, but not all reports on social networking sites are accurate?
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It's a whole new world out there for teens, twenty, even thirty-somethings, whose principal sources of information are online and lightning fast, where trying to tell fact from fiction, reality from rumor can be challenging.
Kenneth Pickett is 38; manages a store in Wicker Park, and gets much of his news from social networking sites.
"It's already been filtered to a certain extent through other people. I think that if your friends and associates are sharing information then that information is passed on to those individuals," Pickett said.
On sites like Twitter, 140 character messages deliver the latest news and opinions in shorthand to users hanging on every word.
"When I read it and I look at the news, I already know about it because I Twittered," said Chicagoan Susan Alvarez.
Alvarez says her main source of information is Twitter and she believes what she reads on it.
So as government officials from the White House to Chicago's health department were trying to calm and clarify, these Tweets appeared on the Internet:
"Could it be germ warfare?"
"In the pandemic of Spanish flu...bodies were piled like wood in our local town."
"Outbreak in Mexico. 62 deaths so far!! Don't eat pork from Mexico."
Also on the Internet today: "Swine Flu: Twitter's power to misinform," wrote one Internet columnist we tracked down.
"A lot of people in a very short period of time were misinformed on a very important subject," said Internet columnist Evgeny Morozov. "And I think that in the future that opened gates for many more sinister groups to take advantage of Twitter as a means of misinforming people."
Steve Rhodes traded the ivory tower existence of Tribune company for a home-office website named after his favorite bar.
In the Beachwood Reporter Monday, he writes, "Twitter is not replacing journalism", but he doesn't diminish its influence.
"Well, they oughta be out there and I don't know why they're not there yet, but I think they just haven't caught on to the power of these technologies and the need for them to really be on top of this sort of thing," Rhodes said.
Because the Internet generation understands that all too well.
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on his shoes," Pickett said. "You never can tell, you can't be too sure."
Truer now than ever before: the blessing and the curse of our connected world. Whereas Evgeny Morozov said Internet-inspired swine flu panic is one thing, but unless someone's watching to set the record straight, sinister forces using phony facts and photos could trigger a much more destructive panic.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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