London 2011: Social Media Gets it Wrong

Social media played many roles in the recent London riots. In addition to the use of social media by perpetrators of the violence, the witnesses and victims in the UK, like those involved in other major upheavals (manmade and otherwise) around the world, made extensive use of Twitter to let the world know what was happening. But many of these people got it wrong.

Rumors spread about rioters releasing animals from the London Zoo (never happened), some people tweeted about attacks in some outlying cities (there were some outside of London, but not all the places that were mentioned), and there were even photos of tanks and troops disseminated as being the British Army preparing to strike back (the photo was taken from Egypt earlier this year).

This tendency for false rumors to go viral points out the limitations of the instant communications and unedited comments and observations. Even traditional news outlets struggle with sifting through information, trying to corroborate stories as fact under tight time pressures. In the new world of social media, each of us may have to become the skeptical editor, trying to sort fact from fiction.