Twitter has been praised for its actuality and news breaking character. Remember the earthquakes and the two recent airplane crashes (Hudson River, Schiphol). Twitter often was the first to bring the news.
Twitter’s power lies in its simplicity, -the 140 character limit-, its speed and it’s domino-effect. Tweets (twitter messages) can be read by your followers (I have appr. 650). If they find something important, funny or whatever they could “RT” or Retweet (i.e. resend) the message, and their friends could retweet it as well. Via these secondary networks Twitter can go viral (in its replication and spread).
Below a friends of a friend network of a well known twitter personality Robert Scobleizer, as obtained by Twitterfriends. Only the “relevant network” is shown, directed to someone in particular: tweets beginning with @ (followed by the twitter name of your friend). The actual reach of tweets not starting with @ is greater, because they can be read by all followers.
Apart from following specific tweople one can also search for certain words or (hash)tags via Twitter Search or #hashtags.
Pushed by celebrities, such as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey, who recently joined Twitter. Twitter’s traffic was poised to double and the number of tweeting people has steeply increased.
Twitter has been glorified by the stars. They created a real (meaningless) twitter mania.
But what raises high, can drop low.
Several sources dethroned Twitter because of it’s viral role in the recent swine flu outbreak. One of the first and most serious critiques came from a blog (Foreign Policy: Net Effect). It’s title: Twine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform.This is a serious allegation. Evgeny Morozov‘s main critiques:
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The “swine flu” meme has led to misinformation, fear and panic. Wrong info includes: fear that it “could be germ warfare” or “that one should not eat pork and certainly not from Mexico”.
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Unlike a simple Google search Twitter gives too much noise (irrelevant or wrong information).
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Messages from trustworthy sources have as much weight as those from uninformed people.
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There is very little context you can fit into 140 characters, even less so if all you are doing is watching a stream.
- Evgeny also worries about a future misuse of Twitter by cyber-terrorists shaping conversations on serious topics. A number of corporations are already monitoring and partially shaping twitter conversations about particular brands or products.
In addition some posts highlight that most of the Tweets belong to the category “witty or not so witty”. (also see this post)
And after these comments many similar comments were to follow: In fact these comments and critiques were going viral as well: take a look at this Google Search for Twitter Swine Flu and note the negative sound of most of the headlines.
The CNN website quotes Brennon Slattery, a writer for PC World,
“This is a good example of why [Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it’s just propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions or key information (..). The swine flu thing came really at the crux of a media revolution.”
Is Twitter just a hype and useless as an information source? Is it dangerous when a wide number of people would turn to Twitter in search of information during an emergency? Or have people just found a stick to beat the dog?
I will go to several aspects of the twitter flu coverage as I have encountered it.
Number of tweets
Indeed, as brought forward by Mashable, Tweets about “Swine Flu” are *now* at 10,000 per hour!!
Yesterday, 5 out of 10 twitter buzzwords were connected to Swine Flu:
- # · Swine Flu
- # · swineflu
- # · Mexico
- # · H1N1
- # · Pandemic
Searching for information on Twitter
You can imagine that it is hardly useful to keep track of tweets mentioning *swine flu*, nor is searching for these buzzwords or hastags useful, if not combined with other terms or names, like CDC or laikas (just to find what you tweeted yourself).
I keep track of certain words via Tweetdeck in separate columns, accepting a certain “noise”, knowing this will only yield 20-50 tweets per day. It would not come to my mind to just blindly search for swineflu on Twitter.
The official media
It is said that Twitter doesn’t give useful or correct information, and indeed it hasn’t been designed for that (being merely a social Network). In its primitive form it is just online gossip or as The Register (UK) puts it- “it is not a media outlet“. But odd enough, the official media did not behave differently. Cable television programmers went into crisis mode and a look at newspaper front pages and website home pages around the world showed a range of responses, from the almost hysterical to the concerned and more measured (Reuter’s Blog).
Look at this message from AJ Cann, that I retweeted :
Ben compares it with the story of the boy who cried wolf and he concludes:
(….) because not only have the public lost all faith in the media; not only do so many people assume, now, that they are being misled; but more than that, the media themselves have lost all confidence in their own ability to give us the facts.
Furthermore among the ones I follow are News or Health Sources, like @CNN Health, sanjayguptaCNN, @BBC Health, @BreakingNews, @health and recently (because of retweets of friends): @WHOnews , @CDCemergency, Reuters_FluNews, Fluheadlines.
@BreakingNews and @health mentioning real casualties and the WHO calling an emergency meeting, I realized the seriousness of the problem. I was also pointed to @WHOnews and @CDCemergency, the most trustworthy sources to follow.
I also understood that the swine flu might be difficult to contain.
laikas: RT @BreakingNews: BULLETIN — WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION CALLS EMERGENCY MEETING TO DISCUSS DEADLY SWINE FLU OUTBREAKS IN MEXICO AND THE U.S.2:31 PM Apr 24th from TweetDeck
Direct Link to H1N1 Swine Flu Google Map:
Somewhat later came the informative phase. Long before the official media were giving any useful information, some of my twitterfriends alerted me to their own or other (official) news.
@ajcann already wrote a post on his blog Microbiology Bytes (a blog with the latest news on microbiology) :10 things you should know about swine flu. (April 25th)
laikas: Reading @sciencebase Swine Flu http://bit.ly/y5Xqz 7:47 AM Apr 26th from web
But keep in mind the golden rule:
Information on Swine Flu
- WHO – WHOnews on Twitter ; website page dedicated to Swine flu with FAQs (also in PDF)
- CDC – @CDCemergency on Twitter : website with a special page for Swine flu
- RIVM – [Dutch] – Webpage about the “Mexican Flu”*
- Google – Mashup
News and Blogs
- Reuters News: Global coverage of swineflu.
- Ubiquity (2009/04/26) : swine flu facts and information
- Microbiology Bytes (2009/04/25/) 10 Things you should know about swine flu and Influenza also from AJ Cann:
- Science of the invisible (2009/04/) 10 More things you should know about A/H1N1* and
- Science Base: Swine Flu FAQs (2009/04/27)
- An overview of good souces is also given by a fellow librarian Creaky at EBM and Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC: News, Public Health, Global Health: A potential pandemic of influenza (2009/04/27) In which she credits me and others “for posting scientific links and news about swine flu and steering me to several links for this post”. Thanks Creaky!
- In addition there are librarian guides about Swineflu Thanks @davidlrothman
Photo Credits:
- Red Twitter UK Networks: http://www.flickr.com/photos/porternovelli/3102296497/
- Influenza Virus: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/1411171541/
- FUAF Twitter network): Metaroll (2008/12/26) Visualizing Twitter Networks
- David Armanoon Logic and Emotion (2008/12) The human feed how twitter networks filter signal from noise.
* wonderful those different names.
[…] information, information literacy, news Laika’s Medlib Blog put out a great post – Twitter Goes Viral: Swine Flu Outbreak – Twitter as Dangerous Hype? It’s a long and linky post that does a great job of contextualizing this article: […]
Laikas, Thanks for your wonderful assessment of when to rely on tweets, and when to go to the so-called hard sources (i.e., CDC or WHO) for factual reporting about the phenomena we have witnessed this month (online or offline): A/H1N1, a strain of influenza not seen before. You have described the process of filtering information for critical analysis so well.
Creaky
[…] Scientist-Librarian Laikas has posted about the uses (and mis-uses) of Twitter which makes for a really good read: https://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/twitter-goes-viral-swine-flu-outbreak-twitter-a-danger… […]
Excellent and comprehensive post. I’m at odds with your identification of CNN as a reliable source of information. I was thinking at one point this week that it should be renamed the Swine News Network. I believe that their coverage fueled the fires of fear and panic.
Having worked on previous epidemics makes me appreciate having Twitter for Swine Flu — See my blog post — Twitter’s power to inform : Swine flu
This is a really comprehensive, instructive and inspiring post about swine flu & twitter!! I hope you get time to pass on Knowledge beyond words to read our latest post “Is the swine flu infecting social medias?”
Bets
[…] Twitter goes Viral: Swine Flu Outbreak – Twitter a Dangerous Hype? (Laika’s MedLibLog) […]
Thanks for this informative post. There seems to be so much pandemonium regarding outbreaks that it is hard to distinguish truth from speculations.
[…] Twitter goes Viral: Swine Flu Outbreak – Twitter a Dangerous Hype? | Laika’s MedLibLog […]
Ouch Lisa85856 looks like SPAM, don’t you think so Jacqueline?
We have been writing about swine flu again and more precisely about its propagation and the idea of swine flu parties. Come give us your opinion 😉
Novoseek: Thanks for warning me. I thought the map looked o.k., but have removed it.
Can you provide the link to your swine flu information?
ok. This is where is the article’s URL about Swine Flu Parties http://blog.novoseek.com/index.php/news-releases/swine-flu-party-1-people-awareness-0.html/ but if you want to read more about swine flu you can try a search in novoseek 😉
[…] and interesting people. In fact those people are my living filter to the Twitter noise (see previous post): I only follow people with whom I share the same interest (at least in some respects). Twitter […]
[…] Mons started by touching on a problem that is very familiar to doctors, scientists and librarians: information overload by a growing web of linked data. He showed a picture that looked like the one at the right (though I’m sure those are Twitter Networks). […]
[…] far it appears that the only epidemic was one of hysteria created by the media – both online and off. This week CNN’s hyped coverage did its part to keep viewers glued to […]
[…] and I choose the people I follow carefully so that I’m not overwhelmed by a flood of tweets. As I’ve said before: people who I follow are my human filter to the Twitter Noise. And I hope that is vice […]