In the rush to be first, are we making sure we're right?
[et_pb_section admin_label="section"][et_pb_row admin_label="row"][et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text admin_label="Text"]Note: A version of this post first appeared on LinkedIn.We've all shared something, whether on Facebook or on Twitter or elsewhere, that we later found out was false.These viral rumors are just so titillating that we can't help ourselves, especially when it comes from someone we consider a reputable source.Take Rehana, the female Kurdish freedom fighter. Did she kill 100 ISIS fighters? Was she killed by ISIS? Was she killed by ISIS a second time? Was her name even Rehana?The answer to all those questions is "no." Well, maybe her name was Rehana, but no one involved in spreading the story actually knows her name.
Twitter screenshot via Digg & Emergent; click here for original Tweet.As Emergent founder Craig Silverman explained in his study of how content online rumors and misinformation get spread (and occasionally debunked) by news websites, "Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content", there was a simple reason this rumor exploded as it did:What a compelling narrative: A woman in a traditionally male role (soldier) in a part of the world where women often don't have the same rights as men, killing dozens upon dozens of evil terrorists.Who wouldn't want to believe that? And here's this photo of this woman in fatigues, holding a gun. The Twitter bio of the person who tweeted it says "journalist" (among other things). It must be true!The story of "Rehana" is well-detailed in Silverman's post about the event on Digg, but this post is not solely about that.And journalists see these stories and feel as if they have to share, too, even if they don't know whether it's true. Toss in a "reportedly" or "is being talked about on social media" and all's good, right?Except the problem is that most people don't pay as much attention to the caveats. And they don't share the debunking nearly as much as they share the original incorrect story.So Silverman's startup, Emergent, tracked more than 1,600 articles about 100 rumors that ran between August and December last year. There was the one about the Florida woman who had surgery to get a third breast (a la "Total Recall").While more sources wrote articles saying it was fake (20) than wrote it was true (18), the ones that got it wrong got shared a lot more. In fact, if you do a Google search for "woman with three breasts," the top result is still one of the stories where it's treated as true, though the Snopes & TMZ versions debunking it come shortly after.Problem is, sometimes even the sources that didn't purport it to be true had headlines that were provocative enough that people may have left with the impression it was true.That's where there's a "headline-body dissonance," Silverman explained - of those 1,600+ articles, 213 had a headline that wasn't backed up by the body of the story. The headlines were grabby, to get you to click through. Pure clickbait. That's 13% of the articles.Even recently, I shared a very interesting article where the headline said millions of people don't know Facebook is on the Internet. It was completely true, because it was about areas of the world where Internet connectivity is quite limited and there often are mobile plans (on "feature" phones) that include Facebook, but not a traditional data/internet plan. The latter is more expensive, so many people take the plan that just includes Facebook.The problem is, someone in the United States reading the headline might think the article was about folks here. And many did, after I retweeted it. While the headline wasn't inaccurate and was actually backed up by the article itself, it still was slightly misleading, something that didn't really occur to me until a couple of people pointed that out - and even though I myself had assumed the same thing before clicking through.The fact is, the truth is nuanced. The headline is simple. That's the way headlines are and always have been. If you convey too much of the information in the headline, no one's going to bother with it. They need to be short and catchy.But they need to be honest, too. With the ability to spread an unconfirmed rumor far easier than it's ever been - and the speed with which we can spread it far faster than it's ever been - the danger is greater now that we won't be able to overtake the falsehood with the truth.We need to be precise and accurate when we share information. And when we update and correct a story on the Internet, we need to make sure that headline gets updated so people clicking by will actually SEE the change.Silverman's report is a wakeup call for all in the media, but also for those who consume media. Everyone should read this report and recognize we all are responsible for learning the truth.That said, the gatekeepers of information really need to make sure they're giving the truth a fighting chance.Take a look:
Photo by Elliott Brown via Flickr Creative Commons[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]