Does The Government Need Tools To Block False Rumours On Social Media?

Digital wildfires

It is a problem that crops up time and time again in the social media world, and that problem is false information. With the connectivity and speed of communication that networking sites offer, not only does it bring many positive outcomes, but also it allows some people to create fake accounts, and also spread rumours.

Source: flickr.com

Some people are calling on the Government to utilise some of the tools available to stop this from happening. One of these is a lie detector that is being tested online, and this would filter false information and accounts. A new study titled “Community Intelligence and Social Media Services: A Rumour Theoretic Analysis of Tweets During Social Crises” has outlined why the Government needs to utilise tools such as the lie detector, and also gives examples of when false information has become an issue.

The study focuses on Twitter as it is a live feed of real time information, and it follows a number of major emergencies that took place in the social media gaze. These include terrorist attacks in India in 2008, the Toyota recalls in 2009-2010, and the mass shooting in Seattle in 2012. Each case was very different but they all shared one thing. There was false information spread on the internet about the aftermath of the event. Police in India had problems when social media was reporting that additional attacks were taking place, but this wasn’t true, and later the BBC admitted reporting false information based on what they had read on Twitter.

The report acknowledged that Twitter is the go to platform for eyewitness accounts of major events including natural disasters, social disruption, and terrorist attacks, and a great example of this was the London riots in 2011. People are now turning to social media to gain information as opposed to traditional media, and this is a dangerous game, as you never know who is giving legitimate information. This can trigger mass panic, and through the medium of social media, there could yet again be another situation like the one in 2011 just because of false information that spreads like a virus.

The study does echo a lot of information that is already in the limelight, and warnings from the World Economic Forum are in the report. They warned that deliberate or accidental spreading of misinformation, coined “digital wildfires” by the report, would result in stock sell-offs as well as dire consequences such as mass panic evacuations that could result in many deaths.

The answer to this kind of problem could be something like the Sheffield based lie detector that identifies both misinformation and false accounts, and we could be looking at a future of further surveillance to try and help out traditional news forms. Again, it comes down to having a degree of common sense, and by following the verified journalists and news teams, then the information is usually correct, but with that said the example of the BBC reporting false information on terrorist attacks in India is a proof that something needs to be done about the public deceiving troublemakers online.

Alex Smith

Alex is an English Literature and Sociology undergraduate whose love for written word has led him to write about some obscure topics in his time. Currently a content writer at Social Media Frontiers, be sure to follow him @AlexSatSMF.

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