Mumbai attack coverage demonstrates (good and bad) maturation point of social media
Full article here
The devastation in Mumbai has been top-of-mind and top-of-the-news over the last few days – with good reason. It’s also been the hottest trending topic on Twitter and covered widely as the latest disaster to be live broadcasted via tweet.
Sadly, the people writing about how cool it is that people are live tweeting the events in Mumbai are missing a huge point. What’s happening now — and what is happening in Mumbai — is bigger than all of us. It’s bigger than communicating via Twitter. It’s bigger than just reading blogs. This is where social media grows up.
Social media is providing the ability to report and take in unfiltered news in a more direct way than ever before possible and we’re doing it on a mass scale. It’s no longer just a toy for early adopters and Internet nerds; it’s taking its place as an influencer far beyond technology. There is, however, a downside: there’s very little way to know what is true and what is rumor. As fellow ZDNet-er Michael Krigsman said to me the night, “we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy.”
I remember when our course’ Chairperson, Ms. Carmen Luz V. Cueto, gave her honest opinion about quoting resources from Wikipedia and putting it on our final project paper, “You can’t verify the integrity of the source.” Such can still be considered as true now, and perhaps even getting worse as the minute passes. As the article states, we’re trading off potential accuracy for immediacy – and that in layman’s term would more or less mean sacrificing the truth over getting whatever information can be retrieved no matter if it’s factual or not.
What’s really mind-boggling in the article is Ms. Leggio’s statement that “He’s right. On one hand, social media shows the wisdom of crowds while at the same time demonstrates the reactionary failures of the crowd.” While there are plenty of talented people out there sharing real good stuff over the social media that we have today such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., there are also plenty of people ready to spoof you into any other topic that seems real yet where in fact are just mere fiction of sorts.
I guess it’s a pretty good time for everyone involved in the social media to grow up in one way or another – we can’t just talk about topics and state that it’s actually true because it’s unfiltered. No one can simply know if you are indeed telling the truth or just goofing off. While everyone appreciates that you write a line or two about yourself, writing about Americans stealing oil out of Iraq or terrorist actually saving Mumbai rather than destroy the capital is just plain unethical.
