The Rise of Twitter and Swine Flu
April 30th, 2009Posted by: J.W. Crump Posted in Blogs
John D. Sutter of CNN seems to think Twitter is going to cause a riot. In this article he explains how new media is helping create a “hotbed of unnecessary hype and misinformation about the outbreak.” Others like Sean M. Wood of Communi-K believe that mainstream media is more likely to spread panic in an attempt to scrap up new readers in their dying industry.
Interestingly, a lot of Internet attention has shifted from factual information about the epidemic to stories about how news of the epidemic is being spread. I have a working theory that Ashton Kutcher created Swine Flu. After all, how else would you explain his recent battle (again, coincidentally with CNN) for top Twitter-god?
Thanks to celebrities like him, Twitter has finally surpassed being only for those ‘in the know’ to being ‘for anyone with a pulse and computer’. People who once ignored the social media tool are now taking notice thanks to the Ashton-CNN-gate and the Swine Flu controversy. And let’s not forgot the supposed ‘Oprah Effect’ that some speculate to have increased user numbers by over one million.
So with all these new users, is there cause for worry that social media will begat panic (as this comic so hilariously illustrates)? Below is a recently made graph showing the number of tweets concerning the topic:
The tweets are mostly offhand comments about the disease. Some contain links to recent news while lots re-ask the common questions about eating pork. While many are discussing it, no one is saying anything new. The tweets don’t seem to be causing panic any more than in-person chat would do. If anything, I notice a lot of informative replies and Direct Messages to some of the sillier questions. This could actually ease panic by calming the masses. Isn’t that the point of social media (and heck, the Internet) in the first place? To be as informed as possible.
UPDATE: Luckily, thousands of tweets are pouring in this morning about Adam Lambert’s bottom two appearances on American Idol, nearly just as many as about swine flu. Twitterers are getting back to normal.
