In Twitter we receive dubious news
VLADIMIR LENIN ONCE SAID: “A false fact becomes truth if repeated enough.” Unfortunately this is what has been noticed in Twitter because of the recycling of tweets, known as retweeting and the increase in cheap trade in humanitarian issues, especially after the outbreak of the Arab revolutions. And just as there is the “good” twitter user, which gives us wise words to contemplate and reliable information, there are “bad” users that do not hesitate to squawk like crows with mischievous lies and invented news!
There are tweeters everywhere chirping like self-made journalists, and it doesn’t matter whether they are professionally qualified or not! What matters to them are how many retweets and followers they get — the more the better. They talk about matters as they want them to be, and not as what they truly are.
In my opinion, it has become very necessary for responsible media authorities in all ministries, government agencies, municipalities and security agencies, to establish official accounts in Twitter and Facebook. This would help them to keep track of ongoing sequence of important events in the country, second by second. It would facilitate their communication with the public in case of any accident, and to prevent questionable rumors and lies snowballing in the name of truth, which some people may believe and become driven to act in folly.
It is especially dangerous when those urgent news items that provoke dismay and related to security are tweeted. One hour of waiting for traditional media to cover an event or to issue an official statement can be sufficient for a questionable tweet to spread like wildfire! For example, during the follow-up on Twitter about the gas tanker explosion in Riyadh recently, one tweeter chirped that a bomb had gone off and he that he heard heavy gunfire. Another claimed that he saw a missile from a warplane, while another said he saw a civilian airliner fall! Unfortunately those tweeters claimed to be witnesses! How? We do not know, but some people still tended to believe them!
Honestly, I am not questioning the intention or intelligence of some twitter users; it is probably just lack of awareness and naiveté. But there is a real danger from those who hide in Twitter waiting to sabotage our security, our lives and our unity, through fake identities and fake pseudonyms that we see in abundance in Twitter. Unfortunately they gain many followers and become famous, and some followers are consider them reliable sources of insider news and are ready to believe anything they say.
People, who constantly follow the goings on in Twitter, surely witness first hand how fiction is turned into fact as a result of frantic retweeting. Therefore we have to realize, that Twitter can be the source of strange and dubious news, and not all that is tweeted in it is true, because it is full of odd people, with psychological problems who spread their mind diseases and negativity. They have malevolent goals and emit toxins between us, screeching like black crows instead of tweeting like blue birds!
Courtesy of Al-Watan newspaper
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