Digital Media Buzz > The Rumor Mill: Social Media Trumps Traditional Media

The Rumor Mill: Social Media Trumps Traditional Media

By Moria Byrne

As social media expands into the role of news source, media experts question the reliability of personal contacts as sources.

In a recent experiment sponsored by Public Francophone radio, Janic Tremblay and four other journalists tested how reliable social media sites for accurate news. Tremblay and friends concluded in their blog documenting the experiment, Behind Closed Doors on the Net, that social media news was only as reliable as its sources.

“It’s really important to choose the right people (to follow) because what they say and do will be very important,” says Tremblay, a radio broadcaster of Radio-Canada.

There are 30,000 followers on the Canada Broadcasting Channel (CBC) Twitter profile, according to Tremblay. Yet, he’s only seen retweets once or twice coming from CBC.net. Apres, a local Canadian newspaper, has the same number of followers on Twitter. Tremblay receives many retweets of Apres’ articles from readers. Why? The stories from Apres journalists have been retweeted by people following the individual reporter.

“There’s some kind of relationship that develops between the journalist and their network,” Tremblay says. “And network seems more enthusiastic to retweet the stories from the journalist themselves rather than his employer.”

Using Twitter as a news source is really all about finding a trusted source for news information, according to Robin Carey, press contact of Social Media Today. The micro blog entry should be cited, contain a link to a reliable news source or social network site and provide proof the event/news did happen.

“If I receive a link to a blog that’s not citing any links or citing any sources, well, and no one else knows about it, I’m going to be a lot more skeptical about that,” says Andy Carvin, senior strategist, NPR Social Media Network Desk.

Carvin says he learned about many major stories such as Michael Jackson’s death first on Twitter. He’s found his Twitter feeds to be accurate almost every single time, as he follows people on Twitter who are reliable sources.

For example, if someone sent him an article on Twitter from TMZ that said Michael Jackson was dead, Carvin wouldn’t automatically trust this information. TMZ doesn’t have a track record of being completely accurate all the time, Carvin says. Readers need to be discerning and pay attention to the sources of tweets received, he says.

“You are who you follow,” says Tremblay, who follows people interested in news or working in the news industry on his Twitter account.

Misinformation
“The one downside of social media is that enables the spreading of misinformation,” Carvin says.

Tremblay saw Twitter create a momentary panic among residents in Lille, France. There was news on Twitter of an explosion in Lille. As many as 5,000 people signed onto a special fan page with updates on the Lille explosion status. The danger Tremblay saw in this uninformed chatter was that people were not only were people sharing (retweeting) the news, they were responding to the news. Also, most of the updates people posted on the Twitter site were actually false. The day after, the media reported that it was a plane crossing over a sound barrier.

“You can hear a lot on Twitter but you don’t always know what’s happening (what the truth is),” Tremblay says.

A month ago, a Canadian singer, Doug Fieger was reported dead on Twitter. The message originated from a Facebook entry written by her stepfather.

When journalists spoke to the record company for verification, the spokesperson reported that singer was doing well. This created a great deal of tension between people who had passed this false message along. Eventually, journalists confirmed that the singer was in fact dead. Yet, the mistake continued to plague the Twitter community in Canada, according to Tremblay. He believes that the incident may have forced users to reconsider how they use Twitter in the future.

“Maybe we’re starting to learn that there are some subjects that we better not tweet about,” Tremblay says.

Although social media allows users to share information freely, Tremblay noticed during his experiment that most retweets originated from a news source.

There was a PEW Research Center study, 90 percent of the information mentioned on Twitter and Facebook comes from regular, traditional media and only 4 percent on Twitter comes from original content.

And there’s still admittedly a quality gap between social networks and regular news, says Robin Carey, press contact, Social Media Today. But she thinks that the gap is increasingly going to close. “You’re going to see a lot more cross pollination between traditional news gathers and social networks,” Carey says.

Opportunities
While social media network Facebook allows users to share news articles and videos, the channel revolves around sharing personal information about daily life, according to Carvin. Twitter, on the other hand, is a “real-time chat room;” a combination of a chat and a newswire service, according to Carvin. Twitter has been gaining greater attention over the past year as a real-time news source during the Iran election.

Twitter became a useful tool for gaining information when there weren’t any usual forms of communication available to journalists.

There were no electricity or phone lines working after Haitian earthquake. Yet, people managed to contact each other on Twitter. Many citizen journalists provided critical insight and updates following the earthquake, according to Tremblay who monitored the post-earthquake chatter on Twitter. Also, Haitian photojournalists, Carel Pedre, Marvin Ady and others took pictures and sent them on Twitpic. Their pictures were all over the newspapers the next morning.

Despite the advantages of social media, Tremblay still believes news belongs in the hands of journalists; they have institutions to protect them and professional journalism skills.

Self-policing
Users keep each other in check through an open communication and transparent approach to social media and community.

If someone’s got a large group of followers and writes something false, people will respond, according to Carey. Social media channels are a medium that are inherently transparent and self-policing.

A well-known blogger, Dave Winer was having a conference call with someone else in northern Virginia when the co-worker heard an explosion and told Winer. As the blogger mentioned this event on Twitter, his many followers started passing this information around. Meanwhile, a local radio station, WTOP, quickly posted a write up about the explosion. In the course of a half an hour, a several people in northern Virginia wrote back to negate earlier claims. Some felt it wasn’t an explosion but a small earthquake. Twitter users had corrected the rumor. Eventually, the weather channel confirmed that what Winer’s co-worker and others in northern Virginia experienced was in fact a small earthquake.

If someone says something out of the ordinary, enough people will question it, and eventually it gets resolved, Carvin says.

Best journalistic best practices ask writers to confirm a source, according to Robin. Just as Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein needed to get confirmation from Deep Throat before going public with the Watergate story, the same holds true of all news stories. There isn’t an equivalent rule in social media, Carey says. Information is confirmed through links, but the information isn’t required to have a source. Instead, it’s the “wisdom of the crowd” that serves the same function, Carey says. Undocumented information could lead to copyright infringements and defamation among other problems.

Yet, a survey of online research revealed that 65 percent of journalists go to social networking sites (Facebook or LinkedIn), while 52 percent refer to Twitter and other microblogging sites for information, Poynter reported.

Future
Most online journalists get their news, from informal networks or Twitter or other social networks, according to Carey. She believes the trend will continue to grow.

Social networking sites are the most popular with 75 percent of 18-25 year olds and 35 percent of 25-34 year olds.

The number of people using social networks is growing at such a fast rate, the new director of BBC Global News, Peter Horrocks, told staff last week that they need to start using social media or find another job.

Yet, as there is a quality gap, most people would be unwilling, at this point, to accept something on Twitter totally on face value, Carey says.

“Most people realize that they need to cross reference that (micro blog) with a paradigm for trust,” Carey says.