Today a QANTAS A380 plan flying over south-east Asia experienced engine trouble and was forced to land in Singapore. But that's not what social media networks were saying…Australian news are reporting that many social networks were claiming that the QANTAS flight had crashed. As the news spread, QANTAS shares fell 4% before recovering by the end of the day.
Tnooz.com tracked the coverage on social networks and shows some of the content that was being shared. It's amazing to see how the wave of social media was so rapid compared to traditional news media outlets. But not only was it rapid, news got incorrectly reported, claiming that the QANTAS A380 had crashed when in fact it landed safely with no injuries.
While QANTAS will certainly learn from this event in how it should be proactive in participating in social media conversations, for the rest of the social media world, it is interesting to see the effects of social when news goes a bit out of control. Not only did it affect the value of QANTAS shares, but relatives of travellers feared for the safety of their loved ones.
As social networks provide a platform for the rapid sharing of information, there is a real risk of incorrect information spreading ahead of "the facts". The QANTAS example is perhaps a sign of things to come. While traditional news journalism has been often criticised for not reporting the facts, perhaps there is a new role for traditional news journalism and traditional media outlets in the social world. Perhaps they now have to be custodians of social journalism in publishing fact-based content, and pushing against the tide of inaccurate information which can come out social media. But is that a role they are willing to take?
In pondering over this, I think back to some of the many celebrety deaths which turned out to be false. Around 1998, well before social media, news spread over the net that entertainer Bob Hope had died, when he was in fact still alive and kicking. I also remember when when around 2009 when Australia's Channel Nine reported the death of Jeff Goldblum. (See Wikipedia for these and other premature obituraries). Both are examples before social media where incorrect news was reported over digital and traditional media. While both stories were quickly shown to be false, the phenomena of incorrect news spreading around the world has been happening well before social. But social is like a dry forest in front of a bush fire — the fire is going to spread so fast that no one will be able to deal with it until the fire dies down.
The QANTAS A380 incident was a real incident that blew out of proportion. It probably won't be the last time these sorts of things happen across social media. Next time a plane has engine trouble, the new could be passed along social media like chinese whispers and snowball into "planed crashed" or worse still "plane crashes into sky scraper". Such a report would not have the same effect as September 11 had on world markets. But an incorrect report about QANTAS affected its shares with a 4% drop, so I hate to think what could happen to financial markets if wrong news spreads. Back to the premature obirturaries I mentioned earlier — what would happen to a publicly traded company if news was incorrectly reported on the death of one of their founders? It happened to Steve Jobs of Apple in 2008 when Bloomberg incorrectly posted an orbiturary for Steve Jobs on their website. But fortunately for Steve and Apple, Bloomberg quickly retracted it before Apple shares were affected.
