The Boston Myth-athon

In the wake of the Boston tragedy, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other major social media sites were putting out information faster than many accredited news sources. People were sad, angry, confused, and worried. Both individuals and organizations were sending out information from Boston and all over the world to try to give people accurate information and connect people with friends and families. While these social media sites are often useful in providing valuable information in the midst of chaos and poor cell service, much of the information is often unreliable. The pressure to provide information immediately allows for sloppy journalism and false information on social media sites.

One of the first myths I saw was on Instagram. A screenshot of the post is below, and it shows a little girl running the marathon. The post claimed that she was running in honor of Sandy Hook elementary school, and died as a result of the explosions.

The claim is 100% false. After seeing a few of these posts, both on Instagram and Facebook, I checked more credible news sources, and saw nothing indicating any young girl had died. Since then, CNN tweeted and posted an article on their homepage about the various myths that were spread.

The article disproves the 5 major myths that were spread, and also has a photo from the Twitter account @Hope4Boston (photo below). 

CNN writes “Sometimes accidentally and sometimes maliciously, false information gets loose. And in the rapid-fire digital echo chamber, it doesn’t take long to spread”. CNN goes on to dispel the 5 major false rumors that were spread. The myths are listed below.

1. Man planned to propose, girlfriend killed
   
2. Young girl died at finish line (same story as photo above)
3. Race organizers will donate for retweets
4. Authorities shut down cell phone service
5. Conspiracy theories

I was glad to see CNN posted this article, since the above 5 stories had been circulating on social media and had been mentioned in my own friend group. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just Twitter and other social media sites publishing false information.

Most significantly, the New York Post originally published that 12 people died in the explosions, which is also simply not true. Vanity Fair posted a satirical article outlining the few things that the New York Post actually got right — that the marathon was in Boston, and that they spelled Boston right. The inaccurate and misleading article was online for hours, and is now receiving much criticism for its false reporting. A screenshot of my close friend’s Tweet is below.

Of course, there were benefits to the use of social media yesterday. Cell service was spotty – so many relied on Wifi and websites to get information. There were several lists and documents to help people find their families and in helping people communicate. For example, various individuals tweeted about where people could gain access to Wifi. However, the examples and photos above demonstrate the many pitfalls and shortcomings of social media during and after the Boston Marathon, and highlight a major flaw in journalism and the deterioration of availability of accurate and reliable information.

Social Media’s Role in the Recent Venezuelan Elections

In October of 2012, Venezuela experienced one of its most imperative elections in history. Due to the approval of his amendment to the Venezuelan constitution that abolished term limits, the Socialist president Hugo Chávez was able to run for reelection. His rivaling opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, lost by 11 points, but mounted one of the fiercest challenges during the late president’s 14 years in power. The elections showed a historically high turnout, above 80% of the electorate, in a country where voting is not mandatory. Playing a huge role in the voting turnout, and in the ultimate outcome of the elections, was social media.

The article “Social Media Brings Changes to the Venezuelan Election,” (http://tinyurl.com/Social-Media-in-Vzlan-Election) presents evidence pointing to the widespread use of social media by both candidates to garner support for their respective campaigns. According to the piece, “12 million Venezuelans, or 47% of the population, surf the internet, making it one of the most connected countries in Latin America.” While Chávez maintained his historical control over the state media and used it to secure a third term, he also expanded his electronic reach to Twitter, with 3.3 million followers—2.2 million more than Capriles. Because Capriles’ campaign was mainly targeting youth middle class votes, however, he used social media more aggressively, expanding his presence “by using Facebook, YouTube and the photo-sharing website Instagram.” He even went as far as to create a Blackberry smartphone App for his campaign. While the article claims that Capriles managed to get more re-tweets than Chávez, his opponent still won the election.

Personally, I believe that while social media may have played a larger role in increasing voter turnout and widening the support networks of both candidates than it has in the past, it still could not orchestrate the final outcome of the election. After all, Chávez was infamous for his massive following made up of predominantly poor, lower-class citizens; and these citizens were most likely not the ones deciding who they were going to vote for based on their Twitter feed, because, quite frankly, they probably do not even have Twitters, or mobile phones for that matter. Nonetheless, the explosion of social media in the Venezuela’s historic October election definitely indicates that leaders around the world have taken notice of the power that this medium holds.

Hurricane #Sandy: The Value of Social Media in a Crisis

This article talked about various social media efforts taken during hurricane sandy to connect people, alert people of unsafe places, and alert reaction efforts.

Technologies Used:

• Google’s Crisis Map: This map showed information and specific places affected by the storm, the path of the storm, shelters, operational gas stations etc.

• Facebook: statistics done showed that “we are ok” was the most common status updates post Sandy

• Twitter: ““Over 127,000 pictures tagged #Sandy were posted on Twitter”

• Instagram: “520,000 images tagged #Sandy were shared on Instagram”

This article also talked about the downside of social media, which we discussed in class, which was a big problem during this storm.

I think social media is a vital resource in the aftermath of disasters. But, people must take tweets for example, with a grain of salt during disasters like this, because these social media forums are not news sources they are social media outlets. In addition it is important to remember, as mentioned in class, that a network built up before disasters is important or else there is no way to connect to people, and the social media cannot be used to it’s fill capacity. Despite this, Twitter and Facebook were great ways during Sandy to know if loved ones were okay and safe. Hopefully twitter and facbeook will play a large part in uniting relief efforts post Sandy.

Furthermore, I did research into what would have happened if there was social media involved when hurricane Katrina hit, and came across this article. This article stated that there actually WERE some forms of social media used (outside of Facebook and Twitter). For example, blogs and wiki’s were used. More specifically, The Katrina People Finder Project was created to help people unite with their families who were separated from the storm. This basically was one central data base that collected information on missing persons from various blogs and wiki’s. “The Katrina PeopleFinder Project enlisted virtual volunteers to enter data about missing and found people from the various online sources.” I think that this is very interesting because we think social media as this recent creation that has emerged in that past couple of years, but here we see the connection of people created by the onset of social media back in 2005 when Katrina hit.