Last night during the Social Media & Health Care Twitter Conversation the issue of swine flu surfaced. So I took to my soap box to point the finger at the hysteria created this week on Twitter. While I’m juiced about the potential for social media to influence the delivery of health information, I was disappointed with the noise created surrounding the Aporkalypse.
Then, in his infinite social media wisdom, Ed Bennett suggested that he hadn’t heard much noise. He follows smart people. Wow.
Now I adhere to the Armano Human Feed model which suggests that we all employ an army of agents to scour the noise of the infosphere to create a clear signal. I understand this but apparently have more work to do. The swine flu showed I have a little fine-tuning to do with my signal.
My mom once told me that we choose our friends. Ed reminded me that we choose who we follow.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
So, does this mean I'm getting cut?
Ed was right about who we follow.
One of the nice things about Twitter's API, is the ability to create filters using third-party APIs.
On TweetDeck, for instance, you can filter out keywords (look at the bottom of the column you'd like to filter & you'll see a "-" option).
That's what I did as soon as the swine meme got out of hand (even some of the "smart" peeps I follow went a bit overboard (and I understand why)).
The problem with Twitter "noise" is that any one of your followers (not matter how 'smart' they are) can become noisy: noise is relative. And the public stream is still an important souce of information: having an educated public is especially important in crises.
My concern about the TweetNoise, from a public health perspective, is how to introduce music, especially during a time of crisis. We need more leaders on Twitter (we have enough followers).
The CDC aught to be a strong leder during these times. (As of today, @CDC is still not 'owned' by the CDC – it's a private account that has nothing to do with the CDC. In times like these, if I want to follow the CDC on Twitter, I'd have to know about @CDCemergency. Ironically, Google has pageranked @CDCembergency high enough that anyone searching for the CDC's Twitter handle will likely go to @CDCemergency. Still, the CDC can ask Twitter for the account, or ask for a url re-direct to @CDCemergency.)
We need authoritative agencies to continue to improve their presence on Twitter. This is just the beginning, so hopefully time and experience will improve Twitter's standing.
The experience with swine flu has shown me both the power (potentially) of Twitter's use in epidemiological survey but also its power for spreading fear, ignorance and misinformation (in fact, malicious spam).
I believe that crowdsourcing on Twitter does, eventually, help spring forth good information. It's the short time periods, however, that prove the most challenging. The cost of fact-verification is steeper within a 1-hour period than a 72-hour one.
The CDC did a good job during this and I think there were some good lessons here.
I'm a *huge* fan of Twitter. And it's because I'm a huge fan that I want more skepticism (not cynicism) about Twitter. I've been on Twitter long enough to be past the praise stage: now's the time for scrutiny.
A tweet is only as good as the brain behind it.
Thanks for those insightful comments. I almost want to turn them into a separate post!
Thinking of how it all went down, I actually do have some really smart people in my feed who just got noisy and concerned. No way to tune 'em out one day and listen closely the next.