Ugh, Twitter rumours

This post opens with a disparaging remark about Gordon Lightfoot. It was a convenient joke, but an unfair one. GL has a long history of good music as well as dead sexiness.

Gordon Lightfoot became dead to a lot more than just contemporary music critics last week.

A false death report spread like wildfire over Twitter on Thursday, proving once again that social media – while a useful tool – has its definite limitations; in this case, veracity.

This isn’t the first time that a lie has spread so widely as to become “trending topics” on Twitter, a term used for the most highly tweeted issues. Last month Johnny Depp died and American Airlines offered free flights to Haiti according to Twitter. Twitter was also a major source of swine flu gossip and misinformation during the autumn, to the point that many medical experts were urging citizens not to engage in “twitter panic” incorrectly exaggerating the degree of the outbreak or its causes.

While many are quick to term these widespread misinformation waves “hoaxes,” I’m reticent to imply such malice. Certainly a few individuals purposeful began the lie, but surely the uptake by so many thousands and thousands of well-intentioned and possibly mourning others cannot be categorized under such negative and loaded terminology.

Nor are misinformation spreaders on Twitter innocent.

This phenomenon of tidal-wave like falsehood dissemination sheds light on some of Twitter’s currently problems – the medium suffers from structural limitations, a bad case of groupthink, and also some shirking of intellectual responsibility by its users.

Twitter as a medium lacks structural accountability. Anybody can post anything they want on Twitter and other user-generated social media communities like Youtube, Facebook, and so forth, regardless of whether or not it is true.

Secondly, there is the issue of online groupthink, a problem in that large numbers of people tend to engage in similar behaviour, whether rational or not, to maintain status or balance in the group. This speaks to the old parental refrain about jumping off a bridge if everyone is doing it, questioning their child in his or her ability to think for oneself and act independently; perhaps parents should start asking, “If everyone else tweets that Gordon Lightfood is dead, is that what you’re going to do just to be cool and fit in?”

Another problem with Twitter is the impersonal nature of the internet and the way it amplifies people’s willingness to association with comments or thoughts that they can’t prove, don’t really agree with, or agree with, but would never say in public. This harkens back to the original promise of the internet, that it would provide a more identity-neutral medium that would allow people to truly express themselves free of judgment because of their sociological status or actual personal identification. Sadly, this panacea of free thought turned out mostly to benefit cyber-stalkers, predators, bullies, and a host of anonymous underage teenagers giggling with their friends while surfing through tragic internet dating chat rooms at slumber parties.

This lack of personal accountability or intellectual disassociation continues today, evident in the perpetuation of misinformation trending on twitter because of the degree of people willing to retweet and retweet comments that they would never standby at a cocktail party. And this brings us to Twitter’s most blatant problem – the retweet tool. Retweeting is the epitome of online intellectual disassociation because it’s a tool that exists merely to allow one to provide a comment associated with one’s own online profile, one’s own self, without actually thinking the comment.

But, and here is the sad truth, few of these criticisms are unique to Twitter. As the adage goes, it’s a symptom not a cause.

Many mainstream media outlets had their hands dirty in the Gordon Lightfoot debacle. Content on mainstream news outlets, historically, has had to go through paid reporters, editors, and copy editors, ostensibly acting as checks to guarantee a veracity exceeding that of user-generated content realms such as Twitter, Youtube, and others. But not so yesterday, when several prominent journalist bloggers jumped on the bandwagon before taking a moment to check their facts. Their giving credence to the lie provided significant fuel to the fire.

Similarly, Twitter is not to blame for groupthink and its ensuing embarrassing trending. Twitter is not to blame for the URL linkapalooza and circular tweeting provides residual referrals but few new ideas or dialogue growth. Twitter is the medium, but we are its users. It’s time for us to stop waiting for the few brilliant or devious, users to create funny, unique, or entertaining content merely so the rest of us can retweet the daylights out of it.

In fact, if there is one thing that the Gordon Lightfoot phenomenon taught us, it is not the weakness of Twitter, but the sheer power. Twitter is not a high school rumour mill, we are the rumour mill and Twitter is the school itself. Twitter’s ability to spread information at such a powerful rate buffers the growing belief that social media may be less a additional conceptual sphere for communicating than an expansion of fundamental communication itself.

So this week’s events confirmed one belief for us while shattering another. Yes Twitter is a powerful tool. But it didn’t kill Gordon Lightfoot, we did.