Gut-wrenching stories went viral on Facebook, Twitter and the like amidst the devastating news of the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday, April 15.
Online, perhaps you saw the image of a man cradling a woman's head who had been injured from the bombings. The caption of this image read, "The man in the red shirt planned to propose to his girlfriend as she crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but she passed away...Most of us will never experience this amount of emotional pain."
The image had been shared on Facebook over 92,000 times by that Tuesday morning. But this woman didn't die. This tragedy never happened.
Social media breaks stories faster than we can even process actual events. In times of disaster, while these types of stories appeal to our emotions, they deter us from the facts. Especially with stories that are still developing, the Internet allows reporters to keep audiences up to the second on what they need to know. As the Tsarnev brothers fled from authorities, social media was indispensable to alert Bostonians to take shelter.
But because this sort of crisis is filled with chaos, it involves hard-to-decipher - or more than often, false - leads. Mark Blank-Settle from the BBC College of Journalism said, "On days like this, Twitter shows its best and worst: loads of info at huge speed, but often false and sometimes deliberately so." As helpless and fearful bystanders miles away from the emergency, it is inappropriate to use social media to theorize what is happening or let our frustration take over.
I believe this issue of false breaking news or human-interest hoaxes primarily stem from the demand to push information out the fastest. But we need the right information rather than the quickest post. So how can we distinguish the true from the false in a time where everyone is a reporter?
If we expend our technological resources fully, both journalists and audiences alike can verify what they are reading quite simply. The BBC suggests verification through time stamps and location trackers on social media posts, so that those with corresponding places and times with the crisis are better trusted. We can also track where the post began before its thousands of shares. The origin of the post is equally important as the information itself.
Even though we're encouraged to express ourselves on social media, perhaps we should look at these posts with a more critical eye before sharing. Even if the story is misreported or an accidental post, it spreads far too fast to retract it. The result is sensationalism.
Sharing these posts makes friends and followers aware of the tragedy, but it only prolongs the grieving rather than coping and understanding its severity. We have a social responsibility to share information, but we must make sure it is to help rather than deter, us from arriving at the truth. So long as we continue to take on this sort of responsibility correctly, I believe we can put our faith back in social media to spread news for the common good.
- Killpack is a junior from Elk Grove, Ill. majoring in communication.
