{"id":258946,"date":"2013-10-26T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=258946"},"modified":"2024-01-28T16:46:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T21:46:02","slug":"yes-twitter-is-flawed-during-an-event-like-the-boston-bombings-and-so-is-everything-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2013\/10\/26\/yes-twitter-is-flawed-during-an-event-like-the-boston-bombings-and-so-is-everything-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Twitter is flawed during an event like the Boston bombings \u2014 and so is everything else"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By now, most Twitter users are probably aware that the news they get from the network isn\u2019t always 100-percent accurate \u2014 especially in the case of breaking news<\/a> such as the Boston bombings, when chaos reigns and information is scarce at best. Some news outlets have gotten a lot of mileage out of a recent study by a group of information scientists that supposedly shows \u201cAlmost everything you read on Twitter about the Boston bombing was a lie,\u201d as one blog put it<\/a>. But is that really surprising? Not when you think about it \u2014 nor does it necessarily invalidate Twitter as a source during breaking news events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study<\/a>, which was done by a group of researchers from IBM Research Labs in Delhi, India and published in September \u2014 and picked up recently<\/a> by Smithsonian<\/em> magazine, VICE<\/em><\/a> and The Daily Dot<\/a> \u2014 looked at close to 8 million tweets surrounding the events in Boston. The scientists found that 29 percent of the most viral messages were inaccurate and\/or contained fake or spam-related content such as the \u201cdonate $1 for every retweet\u201d message from one account, or the tweet mourning for a Sandy Hook runner who never existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fake<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even traditional sources are flawed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Of the remainder of the 8 million tweets, the researchers said that<\/a> more than 50 percent consisted of \u201cgeneric opinions and comments\u201d (although it\u2019s not clear how they defined that category) while just 20 percent contained accurate, factual information. \u201cSo much for getting your information from Twitter,\u201d said The Daily Dot, which called the network<\/a> \u201cone of the least accurate sources\u201d and said its signal-to-noise ratio, \u201cwhich can be low on a normal day, is lower still during crises.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main thing this statement ignores, of course, is that the signal-to-noise ratio of everything<\/em> is lower during a crisis like the Boston bombings \u2014 and that includes major network news channels such as CNN (which got several things wrong<\/a>), as well as the channels of information coming directly from the police and other authorities. That was also incredibly flawed, as anyone who listened to and\/or retweeted things from the police scanner discovered before too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If even the authorities can\u2019t be sure what is happening in the aftermath of such an event, how can we possibly expect Twitter to be any different? If anything, the fact that 20 percent of the tweets collected by the researchers were true seems like something worth celebrating rather than criticizing \u2014 and even that leaves out the \u201cgeneric opinions and comments\u201d the scientists ignored, many of which may have also been accurate, or contributed in some way to the sense of the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fake<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Be skeptical of everything, not just Twitter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As we\u2019ve tried to point out before \u2014 and as others such as Reuters media writer Jack Shafer have also noted<\/a> \u2014 breaking news has always been a chaotic event, information-wise. It\u2019s just that most of that information chaos has historically occurred inside newsrooms or at police headquarters or inside a hospital, with journalists and others filtering the information before it is released. That\u2019s both a good and bad thing, but in any case it no longer exists<\/a>: news, like water, now finds its own path, without the help of journalists or anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is that a bad thing, given how much misinformation circulates during such events? Perhaps. The IBM researchers note that one of the big problems with Twitter during events like the Boston bombings is the creation of fake and spam accounts<\/a> that take advantage of such a tragedy \u2014 and there\u2019s no question that muddies the waters. But is it really that serious a problem if people believe for a short time that retweeting a message will send $1 to bombing victims?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And even the researchers own graphs show that the accuracy<\/a> of the information on Twitter improves rapidly over time, with the worst misinformation present only during the first few minutes. As time goes by, a more accurate picture starts to appear, which is just what you would expect. Should you be wary of information on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of such an event? Sure \u2014 but the real lesson is that you should probably be wary of almost any<\/em> source of information after such an event, including the police and the mainstream media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Shutterstock \/ DonSkarpo<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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By now, most Twitter users are probably aware that the news they get from the network isn\u2019t always 100-percent accurate \u2014 especially in the case of breaking news such as the Boston bombings, when chaos reigns and information is scarce at best. Some news outlets have gotten a lot of mileage out of a recent study by … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Yes, Twitter is flawed during an event like the Boston bombings \u2014 and so is everything else”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigaom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258948,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258946\/revisions\/258948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}