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Social Media and Swine Flu: Everybody #Panic!

[Finally, a chance to talk about something that's spreading virally, without it being a lame cliched metaphor.]

We haven’t hit full-blown pandemic panic yet, regarding the swine flu that’s radiating outward from Mexico, but heck, it’s still early. Also, it is dovetailing nicely with the long-awaited Twitter backlash, so we’re seeing some tut-tutting about how Twitter, more than other types of social media, is prone to spreading hysteria and misinformation, 140 characters at a time.

Heck, it’s even been parodied in an XKCD comic.

However, just because it’s expected, doesn’t mean it’s not right. (Although perhaps a tad exaggerated.) We’ve seen how hot fury, chilling alarm, and righteous indignation spread quickly through social media, while corrections and reasoned responses have a harder time getting out to people.

Though in many cases, it’s for a lack of trying.

Even worse, we’ve also seen how efforts to debunk rumors, bust myths, and correct misinformation may actually reinforce them — it has to do with the way our brains are wired, where the more we hear something (even if it’s a refutation), the more familiar we get with it, and thus the more we’re likely to believe it.

The answer isn’t to “SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING*,” of course. If you try to suppress conversation, it just moves to other venues. But you can’t ignore it.

If you’re an authority (like, say, the CDC), it isn’t enough to say, “The information you need is on our Web site.” That’s not where the conversation is, yet I’ve heard government types (and others) who nominally have authority on something continue with a kind of “We built it, they should come” mentality.

(Additionally, when it comes to finding stuff on your Web site — well, the CDC home page is kind of busy, and the swine flu page is kind of dense. It’s not at all structured for conversation.)

If stopping misinformation and spreading correct information is important, you should be out there in the fray. It’s not enough to have presence — you have to have participation. The CDC is on Twitter, but they’re not replying to people, only broadcasting updates. It’s something, but if you really want to have a fighting chance at quashing rumors, you have to combine honesty, authority, and ubiquity online.

One way to do it is to leverage your authority to crowdsource a community of informed experts to be your eyes, ears, and voice among the general populace. The private sector has been playing around with this idea (crowdsourced, person-to-person customer service got a writeup in the NYT last week, though it’s been going on for a while). While people may look at it kind of funny because it’s government doing it, just because it’s propaganda doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Anyway, hopefully things will have calmed down by CrisisCamp in mid-June, and we’ll be able to do a calm after-action report on the use of social media communication tools in this crisis.

Do you have thoughts about how social media is being used to cover the swine flu dustup? Please leave a comment below.

[*Incidentally, if you're wondering why the heck people online keep mentioning this phrase, as well as "Madagascar closing its ports," it's a reference to the Flash game Pandemic 2, where you play the part of a pathogen trying to kill everyone on Earth.  Madagascar only has one seaport, and if it closes before you can infect it, you can't get a flawless win.]

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