Social Media And Its Role In The Panic-demic

As former member of the fourth estate, I feel quite elegiac about the sound of the presses slowing towards an inevitable stop. Ever since I saw His Girl Friday as a very small child, I wanted to be a reporter. [And who wouldn't - Roz Russell was gorgeous, bantered beautifully with even more beautiful Cary Grant and got to do good through the power of the word!]

Today, however, I find myself in the surprising  and uncomfortable position of being more than a little miffed at my paper- and broadcast-based journalistic brethren. Their eagerness to point the finger at social media as panic-mongers of DOOM as the Swine Flu crisis develops.

REACTIONARY REACTIONS?

An example of the digi-pointing can be found in a blog by Milo Yiannopolous of the UK’s Telegraph who notes:

Twitterers are saturating the Twitterverse with scaremongering and nonsense about swine flu via the #swineflu hashtag. Let us be clear: swine flu aint some hot internet meme. It’s not a lolcat or a great flash game. It is a serious disease.

The speed with which idle chatter about swine flu is propagating, at the hands of those (it seems almost wilfully) ignorant of the facts, is terrifying and may cost lives. It has now become impossible to separate hysteria from vital news. For perhaps the first time, Twitter has become a hindrance and not a help to newsgathering and to the public seeking information.

And closer to home, the usually level-headed and excellent news source NPR has also chimed in, with  Evgeny Morozov noting that

despite all the recent Twitter-enthusiasm about this platform’s unique power to alert millions of people in decentralized and previously unavailable ways, there are quite a few reasons to be concerned about Twitter’s role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about swine flu.

You’ll forgive me if I state that this sounds a bit like sour grapes. True, one of the justifiable concerns about social media is that there is a dearth of fact-checking. And yes, there are idiots out there who will play the Web 2.0 version of the game of telephone, terror edition.  But has there never been a panic caused by a broadcast network or a newspaper? Truly? Rumours never have flown because of a hyperbolic headline or an over-emphatic piece on a 24 hour news network?

ANOTHER LOOK AT SOCIAL MEDIA IN RELATION TO SWINE FLU

No one is downplaying the fact that this is a potentially deadly illness and that people have been tested positive for it on several continents. The threat is real and frightening.

However, it is also true that almost nobody has looked at the positive ways social media has been used in the course of this porcine pandemic.

Just to offer a few examples:

The Centre for Disease Control has been offering updates on Twitter such as

“20 confirmed cases of swine flu in U.S. 1 hospitalized. All have fully recovered. http://bit.ly/uycgL #swineflu”

And over on FriendFeed, one of its users has created a Swine Flu room which aggregates “various real-time information streams on swine flu from across the web,” making it a reliable and timely source of information.

The CDC has also used YouTube to present a video by Dr. Joe Bresee of its Influenza Division dealing with the signs, symptoms, transmission and treatment of Swine Flu.

So, in fact, social media has been a means for calming the public and providing it with a stream of accurate and useful information – which is not a story you are likely to see in your local paper, if in fact you still have one.

Twitter Feeling Less Chirpy: The Migration is Well Underway?

Despite the fact that there must have been a chorus of “hosannas” when Jon Stewart briefly referenced them on The Daily Show the other night, the folks at Twitter might not be feeling too chipper (or chirpy) at the moment.

Over on FriendFeed as of late, amongst many of the early adopters and A-listers, much of the discussion has been about leaving Twitter.

Alas, microblogging service, they just can quit you.

The Early (Adopter) Warning Signs

It’s not like anyone missed the signs that this was coming. Citing FriendFeed once again– mostly because that’s where the flock with foresight have flown –there have been innumerable posts about Twitter’s status noting whether it was up, whether tweets were vanishing into the ether or whether it was so down that nothing was happening and even the fail whale was too ashamed to make an apologetic appearance.

But What About Those Who Came Into the Conversation Late?

As a recent but really curious newcomer to social media, it’s been fascinating to actually watch the adoption curve of the trend in action. Because just as the earlies are flying off for more hospitable climates, there are many late adopters who are using Twitter and enjoying the process. For example, it has been a way for classmates to keep each other apprised of cancellations and summarize the substance of classes missed.

Personally, Twitter and I had more of a flirtation than a love affair. I only gave it a whirl (or twhirl?) for a few months before leaving it last week.

I didn’t like the fact that its concise nature seemed to encourage or even crystallize narcissism in some cases, or that you couldn’t really place a conversation in context.

That’s one of the things I like about FriendFeed. You can get the whole conversation and its offshoots in one spot. It often makes for fascinating reading as well as engaging participation.

What Does This Mean For Twitter- and for Its Users?

Poor Twitter – you can’t help feeling sorry for the former favourite. Especially as the disappointed and displeased word-of-mouth by former influential fans has spread in intensity and scale faster than a nasty virus at a preschool.

Is Twitter doomed? Or has it merely lost the favour of the tech elite? Is the mainstream still using the microblogging service – or are they leaving in droves also? And where are they going- Jaiku? Plurk? FriendFeed?

I know my chirping days are over but what about you: Will you continue to tweet? And if you do, will there be anyone to answer back at this point?

And if you were Twitter- how would you handle this increasingly dire situation?

Twitter: For the Birds?

To be honest, I was dubious about Twitter at first. Because technically, when you’re writing about what you are doing- you’re actually ceasing whatever activity you were engaged in to type on a computer. Even birds do something while they tweet, right?

Besides, those limited posts are not exactly conducive to elegant prose.

But rather than be a killjoy, thought I’d delve further into the phenomenon of Twitter. I started by asking one of the savviest technical guys I know, a certain M. B., what appealed to him about Twitter.

What he stated made absolute sense. To boil down his much more eloquent and in-depth comments: it is quick, convenient and can be used with your phone- you can take it anywhere and you don’t need to lug along a laptop. (And, if you think about it, that’s what’s been happening in Europe and Japan for years. They have been making much better use of cell phone technology for years. But North America is getting there….finally.)

That’s just in the case of the average user. Apparently Twitter has also been a boon to the Los Angeles Fire Department in terms of communicating during disasters- that’s striking in its cleverness – especially as municipal agencies aren’t exactly quick to embrace change, technological or otherwise.

Now what about Twitter’s use for public relations? Think about those two words- you’re relating with the public – and this is a new way to do so. It’s also a great way to give companies a human face and to connect to their key audiences. Innovative companies are using Twitter for customer service purposes and gaining credibility boosts for their efforts.

The best (and best-known) example of this is Zappos. In fact Tony Hsieh, its CEO, has created a handy and well-written starter guide and tutorial for Twitter.

And Twitter may change the way the industry intereacts with clients. The nifty blog PR 2.0 pointed out just last week the use of a new application named TwitPitch. For this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, social web application expert/author Stowe Boyd was only accepting TwitPitches for meetings with companies. No e-mail proposals at all.

TwitPitch (which may be named ironically- think about it) takes the idea of the conciseness and clarity required of good PR writing to a whole new level. You have 140 characters- go! It will be interesting to see to what extent this catches on and what it means for PR practitioners.

In the meantime, Twitter will have its more mundane and narcissistic uses. But as one of our profs noted, it must be remembered that it’s not the technology that’s stupid, but the way that some people use it.

So for every idiot out there who is going to bars with “Twitter walls” and posting what they are doing so they can see their posts up on that wall –You’re in a bar texting that you’re in a bar texting. Way to go — there’s someone else making good use of the technology.

Maybe those who really want to feather their nests should get tweeting….?