Today, if you believed certain corners of the Twitterverse, there had been a shooting in central London. As it turned out, it was the latest case of Twitter helping toamplifyfalse information.
“Gun alert in Oxford Circus right now. Is it true?”askedone of the tweets, while many more continued to spread the rumour withtalkof a “Gunman on the move” andsoundsof shots spreading among concerned tweeters.
In actual fact, explainsThe Telegraph, the whole thing stemmed from details of a police training exercise in dealing with gunmen somehow ending up being taken as fact and tweeted. London’s Metropolitan Police issued a statement explaining “It would appear that some information about a routine police training exercise being held today has inadvertently got into the public domain. As part of that exercise, participants have been given a hypothetical written scenario which involved an armed incident on Oxford Street.”
The whispers that led to “Oxford Circus” trending on Twitter and a whole heap of worry around the capital today have been compiled into anExquisite Tweetscollection that is well worth reading through. Unfortunately, twisting the truth even further, the initial source of the entire affair is wrongly attributed to a tweet about a fashion shoot. While it would be hilarious if a tweet about a shooting pictures of models somehow escalated into a warning of gunmen on the loose, it appears that actually the real source tweets that caused the confusion have now been deleted. It caught The Guardian out though. Its Media Monkey blog had toapologiseafterreportingthe series of tweets as accurate, closing with “Looks like it’s Monkey that will be heading back to journalism school for a social media refresher course.”
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The whole affair highlights that now we all have the ability to spread news at lightning speed to the world, we should remember that no matter how juicy the nuggets may be – a little fact checking goes a long way. That said, asking “Is a shooting happening?” on Twitter is a form of fact checking, even if it does also help spread the rumour. It’s a catch 22 situation and no mistake. What’s the solution? I wish I knew. Maybe it’s just as simple as “Don’t believe everything that you read”.
Story byMartin SFP Bryant
Martin SFP Bryant is the founder of UK startup newsletter PreSeed Now and technology and media consultancy Big Revolution. He was previously(show all)Martin SFP Bryant is the founder of UK startup newsletterPreSeed Nowand technology and media consultancyBig Revolution. He was previously Editor-in-Chief at TNW.
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