On Monday night in Manchester, England, at least 22 people were confirmed dead and many more were injured due to explosions in the crowd of an Ariana Grande concert.
The event is causing widespread panic – not just in Manchester, but all over the world – as people fear their loved ones might be injured or missing. Because of the quick responses from Twitter users, many people were able to find safe places to stay and receive the help they needed, in addition to being provided with constant updates on the situation.
The problem is that with the speed at which information spreads, many false stories begin to circulate, which can be harmful to the situation and those involved.
Many tweets about missing people, primarily children, went viral quickly. Most of the tweets appeared to be from concerned friends and family members posting pictures and descriptions of their missing loved ones.
After many of these tweets gained popularity, some users started to notice that a lot of them were fabricated, using photos of people who were not actually missing. Even though these tweets were confirmed as fake, their popularity continued to grow with tens of thousands of retweets.
Rachel Devine, a photographer in Melbourne, Australia, discovered photos of her daughter in tweets claiming she was a missing victim of the explosions, even though her daughter was with her in Melbourne.
Photos of Ariana Grande with blood on her face also surfaced and became viral on Twitter. Posing as aftermath photos of the explosions, they were actually pictures from the set of her television show Scream Queens, taken in 2015.
Twitter creates a platform for anonymous users to receive attention and get noticed very quickly. Because of this, fake news and falsified stories often circulate the social network without being fact checked, leading to widespread distribution of false information.
In situations of danger and tragedy, such as the explosions in Manchester, this can be extremely harmful.
Not only are personal images shared labeling the wrong people as victims, but false updates about the event itself are spread to the point where it is difficult to tell what actually happened, since tweets from anonymous users are not confirmed.
In a panic, people will share and retweet anything that has to do with the situation.
The accessibility of instant information has many benefits for connecting the world, but it can be extremely harmful in situations of danger and tragedy if its users aren’t careful.
Parents and family members can experience cruel and unnecessary grief seeing images of their children labeled dead or missing, when they’re actually safe. Law enforcement, investigators and safety officials will waste time sorting the real from the fake. And the understanding of the event on an international level can be muddied by viral instances of false information.
Users should be diligent about retweeting or sharing information related to terrorist attacks or similar tragedies by confirming the information from anonymous sources with credible news or government agencies.
In order to be most helpful in these situations, we must not let our emotions cloud our judgment.
emmagetz@indiana.edu
@emmaagetz
