Social Media, Breaking News and Your Community

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Lately we have seen the power of media shift. It used to be that the news channels and newspapers had the “scoop” and would be the first to publish the breaking stories. Today with more mobile devices and easier network access, we’re seeing individuals break news stories more from their personal blogs and communities or through social media like Twitter. In the last few weeks, we have seen this happen with the Iranian Elections, the death of Micheal Jackson and even a building collapse in New York.

On the flip side of this, people take advantage of this to spread fake stories as well. Just as many people were dealing with the death of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett yesterday, there were others spreading false claims about the deaths of Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum. Both of which were picked up by Twitter as well and spread near and far before the hoax warning caught up with them. In the past, we have dealt with these things in urban legends and email which gave rise to sites like Snopes. However the massive social media networks of today move faster than these sites can cope.

So my questions you are:

• How do you verify breaking news?
• What part does your site play in the part of breaking news?
• Do you post breaking news on your site?
• Have you thought about the ramifications of an incorrect story?