If time, curiosity, and context are the metrics there should be much more shadowing of politicians at strip clubs. But Wired fights the good fight in trying to bring an ethical perspective to something designed to be abused.
But how informed are we really by these glimpses? Is there enough context? Who do we trust when the information is potentially coming from those who have a vested interest in a cause? We have to wrestle with some of these questions when dealing with members of the mainstream media already, but their reputation often precedes them, putting the information shared in perspective. How do you apply that to a random internet handle that just popped into your feed? Most importantly, now that we are all able to engage in citizen journalism, what responsibility do we have to get it right?
One thing that has happened in past crises covered on social media is the rapid spread of misinformation and rumor. But now, owing to the sheer density of people who were actually there, distributing images, video and firsthand accounts through Twitter, Facebook, Vine and Instagram, I saw rumors pop up and just as quickly get smacked down in the comments...
However a new study from the American Press Institute claims that false information on Twitter beats out the attempts to correct it by a factor of 3 to 1. An important caveat to this report, however, is that social media may have a hand in propagating false information but the supposed trustworthy traditional media is often the source for the wrong information in the first place.
If you’re on Twitter to find out what is going on, you’ll need time to gather up enough evidence understand a story clearly. The quickest way to gather is by building, or simply following Twitter Lists. Often in a breaking news situation, there’s someone who has already build a fantastic list for you to follow. If you’re lucky, the list will be sanitized for your protection, with official sources and reliable reporters providing updates. You’ll want that list but you probably also want to go raw too. Grab TweetDeck and set up a breaking news filter column. Filter the search by applying geotags (near:Baltimore) and then turn on the option to only show tweets with photos or video. You’ll now have a raw feed of citizen sourced media. I go into further detail on setting up TweetDeck for gathering breaking news information in the Verification Handbook.