It's Time for Truth on Social Media

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I heard those words early in my journalism career. Reporters are trained to verify information they receive by confirming with a trusted source, but the media landscape has changed, even since I first heard that adage.

With social networks like Facebook and Twitter, news flows faster than ever. And the news is no longer centrally controlled, making it potentially less trustworthy. Reporters have more access to information through social media, but it’s no longer just journalists delivering that information. The power of information-sharing now rests in the hands of everyday people — that means you.

In a Harvard Nieman Report, Mark Little, founder and CEO of social news agency Storyful, wrote:

Not too long ago, reporters were the guardians of scarce facts delivered at an appointed time to a passive audience. Today we are the managers of an overabundance of information and content, discovered, verified and delivered in partnership with active communities.

Any individual or media organization can instantly send a piece of news to the web. This makes things more competitive — in print, everyone always wanted to be first (and right). But social media and the speed of digital news raise the stakes.

We’ve been watching this play out all week, following the Boston Marathon bombings. For instance, reports from trusted news sources to individual Twitter users inaccurately stated authorities held a suspect in custody.

Distrust in Media 

Georgetown political scientist Jonathan Ladd suggests the rise of the Internet and cable news, and the resulting diversification and fragmentation of the media, have caused a general distrust in the media. He writes in a blog post, “Because of technological changes, such as the rise of cable and the Internet, as well as regulatory changes, such as the end of the fairness doctrine, the media industry has become much more diverse and fragmented.”

He's right. But I'd take that one step further to include, specifically, social media's effect on fragmented news consumption.

And it’s not just the social media accounts of journalists and news organizations. Media consumers now have more opportunities to glean news straight from primary sources.

Access to Primary Sources 

We saw Friday how Boston residents and reporters shared information on social networks about the manhunt for the bombing suspects. On social media, they shared real-time photos, videos and information about the circumstances they witnessed.

They also shared information they heard over police scanners. A decade ago, listening in on law enforcement chatter required expensive equipment, limiting police scanners' use mainly to hobbyists and journalists.
Today, you need nothing more than a smartphone. Apps like the 5-0 Radio Police Scanner browse scanners around the world, porting criminal activities and police information to you anywhere.

Immediately following the bombings Monday, I used 5-O on my iPhone to access information from Boston. But the whole time, I remained aware that the officers I heard weren't always aware of the facts. What they said wasn't necessarily true or verifiable. And I couldn't verify it, I shouldn't report it.

The average person may not operate with that same filter, though. Unverified information heard over the scanner could turn into a tweet, which could get picked up by a media outlet and, thus, become a (potentially inaccurate) news report. 

Inaccuracies Spread 

In his book Trust Me, I'm Lying, Ryan Holiday writes about the dangerous and exploitative practices of bloggers and social media users, which in turn, can spread like wildfire. It’s a pattern we’ve witnessed this week.

"The more immediate the nature of their publishing medium (blogs, then newspapers, then magazines), the more heavily a journalist will depend on sketchy online sources, like social media, for research," he writes.
This process relies on a "delegation of trust:" reporting what others are reporting. Because NPR is a "trusted" source, other news outlets reported its false claim that Gabrielle Giffords had been fatally shot.

When a trusted site or Twitter user publishes something, we assume they did their due diligence by confirming the veracity and authenticity of a claim, and therefore, the news is safe to repeat as fact. Not always so.

More Access Can Be Good 

However, some more optimistic media professionals believe social media can help verify information and sources. We can follow the digital footprint of social media users.
In his book Hacking the Future, Cole Stryker writes,

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, one actually has more access to evidence with social media than traditional off-line sources."

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, one actually has more access to evidence with social media than traditional off-line sources."
In some instances, perhaps this is a good thing. But this week, that "evidence" became fodder for hasty accusation, as Redditors attempted to crowdsource the investigation and identification of the Boston Marathon bombers. As the week played out, it became apparent the Reddit search would not trump the one led by authorities. 

Verification Required 

Unfiltered information, without context or verification — usually the job of journalists — can be dangerous, as Storyful founder Little points out:

When I was a young TV journalist, the phrase ‘golden hour’ meant the early evening light that bathed faces and landscapes in a warm forgiving glow. As a social journalist, I've started to use the term in a different way. I now think of the golden hour as the time it takes social media to create either an empowering truth or an unstoppable lie, when a celebrity death trends on Twitter or an explosive video surfaces on YouTube. In other words, when journalism can matter most.

According to Little and the BBC, journalists should answer these questions when attempting to verify the truth behind user-generated content.

• Can you speak to the original source of the material?
• Can you geo-locate the photo or video? Can you correspond landmarks to those in Google Maps?
• Do the streets look similar to those on Panoramio or Google Street View?
• Does weather in the footage correspond to weather reports from that day?
• Does the reported time of day correspond to where shadows should be at that time?
• Do traffic signs and vehicle plates show the correct locale?
• Does this footage look similar to that being uploaded by other users in the location?
• Does the information or footage seem too good to be true?
• Where did the material first appear online?

By leveraging technology resources, human knowledge and community history, journalists and individuals can seek to verify the authenticity of user-generated content.

The Curator's Role 

More than two years ago, founder of Storify Burt Herman wrote for The New York Times: “A new class of gatekeepers has arisen, people whose reputations are built on their ability to highlight relevant information to their audiences. We are still looking for the right word to call these new gatekeepers, but so far ‘curator’ is what appears most appropriate.”

It's safe to say, today, that all social media consumers should be their own curators — consuming, verifying and disseminating what is accurate and relevant — because more information is easily available to us than ever before.

I still believe we can trust legacy institutions to provide us with the truth — most of the time. Still, we need to be smart media consumers by remembering that even the trusted institutions get stories wrong. And, as journalists, there's more than one side to a story, more than one truth. We must use the technologies at our disposal to determine which ones are accurate, and all social media users, including both content curators and content creators, must remember: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

Image via Darren McCollester/Getty Images