Over the past few years, there has been skyrocketing growth in the use of social media to get the word out during emergency situations. From fires to disease outbreaks to police shootings, more and more people turn to Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites to get the latest updates on incidents from reliable sources and “friends.”
Earlier this year, Emergency Management magazine ran a story titled: Can You Make Disaster Information Go Viral? In that piece, new efforts were highlighted to improve the reliability of emergency communications using social media during man-made and natural disasters.
I applaud these social media efforts, and this emergency management communications trend has been a very good thing up to this point. But dark clouds are on the horizon. And soon, maybe you’ll need to hold-off on that retweet.
Why? This game-changing story from The New York Times shows how highly coordinated disinformation campaigns can spell big problems for emergency communications in the future.
No, I’m not talking about some bystander who got a few facts wrong about a car accident.
The NYT article describes pros who set out to convince you to act with detailed misinformation. Here’s an excerpt:
On Dec. 13, two months after a handful of Ebola cases in the United States touched off a minor media panic, many of the same Twitter accounts used to spread the Columbian Chemicals hoax began to post about an outbreak of Ebola in Atlanta. The campaign followed the same pattern of fake news reports and videos, this time under the hashtag #EbolaInAtlanta, which briefly trended in Atlanta. Again, the attention to detail was remarkable, suggesting a tremendous amount of effort. …
On the same day as the Ebola hoax, a totally different group of accounts began spreading a rumor that an unarmed black woman had been shot to death by police. They all used the hashtag #shockingmurderinatlanta.
This is a really big deal folks, and not just for emergency management teams. No doubt, there has always been false or misleading information online, but this deliberate attempt to deceive and misdirect people in crisis situations is taking matters to an entirely new level. Mistakes can and will be made in every communication effort, but actively broadcasting detailed instructions that could intentionally result in harm is another matter.
But before I explain why I am concerned, I urge you to go back and read (or at least skim) the NY Times article — For more information read the original article here.
