Is Social Media Aiding Fake News?

How a fake bomb threat brought a university to a stand still and took journalist’s credibility

On the 10th of January, students at Bournemouth University were hurdled into buildings and armed police were called as reports of a man wearing a bomb vest were coming in.

Thankfully, the ‘bomber’ ended up being a poor runner wearing a running vest mistaken for a bomb jacket but, from what was being reported everywhere, the situation seemed a lot more sinister.

All over Twitter, student journalists were reporting about a man ‘covered in blood’ trying to get into the student union building. The most popular tweeters were immediately contacted by newspapers and broadcasters such as the Daily Mail and BBC Dorset. Within the hour, the news articles were up.

But here is the catch, the main people giving statements weren’t actually at the campus at the time, nor were they getting actual quotes from people on site. They got their information from Twitter.

As someone who works within the university student-run media society, the worry over this wrong information from the students hit close to home. Even one of our news accounts first put out the wrong information posted on Twitter. It was soon quickly deleted with an apology for spreading wrong information and potentially creating panic. The same cannot be said for the independent tweeters featured in the Daily Mail. Got too many retweets for it to just be deleted perhaps?

The main issue of all of this is, of course, fake news. Not only did it spread a huge amount of false information circling around a lot more than the truth, a common sight with many fake news reporting, but it also created widespread panic on and off campus. People were contacting friends making sure they were not harmed by this phantom bloodied man. Unfortunately this isn’t the first time fake news news spread on social media has caused a panic.

Now of course, none of this would have happened had Twitter not have been involved. For the most part, Twitter is great for spreading news but, cases like this show that it has a long way to go. The most shocking tweets get the most retweets than others but, when the truth is less exciting than the fiction, often they don’t get the same amount of shares. Fake, sensationalised news feeds of twitters share-ability and, for the mean time, there isn’t a lot you can do about it.

Yes you can comment saying ‘this isn’t correct’ but, with shocking events shared by hundreds, most likely your comment will be drowned out by people panic. The best hope for this is for journalists to verify sources the best they can, and keep their credibility. Sadly though, a fast news cycle and the importance of getting the story out first means you risk important article clicks. Social media is serving, not intentionally, the biggest issue facing modern journalism, fake news, whilst being helpless to stop it. I only hope over the next few years, those in charge will make much needed steps, what ever they may be, to help fight it.

Related posts:

Facebook has announced that its global operations will achieve net zero carbon emissions and be 100% supported by renewable energy during 2020 As a result of wildfires burning north, south and east…

My name is Taiwo Oluwasanya, a 28 years old Lagos -based who works with one of the best ad agency in Nigeria.. “About IamTai” is published by oluwasanya Taiwo- #Iamtai.

Ubrica has taken the initiative to bring about an effective way of improving the quality of healthcare in the community. By buying from SokoJanja, helps put money in the sellers pocket and they can…