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Social Media Anticipation Guide
When Charlie Strong, the University of Louisville’s football coach,spoke for nearly 15 minutes at the 2012 Governor's Cup luncheon in Kentucky his most interesting comment was his final statement of the day. Strong stated in great confidence, "Social media is going to be the downfall of society. It is. Once you tweet, it's there and it's never going to go away. They say, 'Well, I can go take it off.' No, once it's posted, it's posted."
Read the article “Swiss Soccer Player Expelled for Racist Tweets.”
1. How does this event reflect Charlie Strong’s quote? In what ways does this example support this quote?
2. When information is posted in any form of social media, our society is quick to believe it without question or scrutiny. Why are we so willing to accept these social media fallacies as truth?
3. If these types of situations happened frequently in your world, how would this change your life? More specifically, if you were the target of negative social media, how would you be affected emotionally?
4. What are the consequences of being able to speak anonymously via social media?
5. Is social harassment based on false truths a recent addition to society because of the accessibility to social media? Can you think of any other examples in American history where social harassment stemming from false information impacted someone or a group of people negatively?
“Swiss Soccer Player Expelled for Racist Tweets”
LONDON — A Swiss football player was expelled from the Olympics on Monday for his threatening and racist message on Twitter about South Koreans. The comments by Michel Morganella came hours after Switzerland lost to South Korea.
Morganella “discriminated against, insulted and violated the dignity of the South Korea football team as well as the South Korean people,” Swiss Olympic team chief GianGilli said through a translator at a news conference. He said the player was stripped of his Olympic accreditation.
Morganella is the second athlete kicked off a London Olympics team for offensive Twitter comments, following Greek triple jumper VoulaPapachristou.
He posted the message after playing in the 2-1 loss against South Korea on Sunday. He said in the tweet that South Koreans “can go burn” and referred to them as a “bunch of mongoloids.”
The 23-year-old player later released a contrite statement through Swiss Olympic.
“I am sincerely sorry for the people of South Korea, for the players, but equally for the Swiss delegation and Swiss football in general. It’s clear that I’m accepting the consequences”.
“After the disappointing result and the reaction from Korea that followed, I made a huge error,” Morganella added.
Gilli said the player had been “provoked” by comments sent to his Twitter account after the match.
Still, the Swiss team leader acknowledged that Morganella had to be sent home under the terms of the International Olympic Committee’s code of conduct, which requires athletes to show mutual respect.
“In this case, we felt we have no alternative,” Gilli said.
Swiss media published images of a tweet from Morganella’s account (at)morgastoss. The account has since been deleted. The tweet was written in a garbled form of French, appearing to combine a kind of French slang called verlan and text-messaging style.
Swiss officials with the team in Cardiff, Wales, said players were told Morganella was already on his way home.
Gilli said he had tried to contact the head of the South Korean team in London to offer a personal explanation.
“We would like to apologize, especially to the South Korea National Olympic Committee and the South Korea Football Association for the behavior of the player,” he said.
The IOC has encouraged the 10,800 athletes at the London Games to communicate with fans through social media, but it issued guidelines on the standards of behavior it expected.
Morganella played the entire game in both of Switzerland’s matches. He received a yellow card against South Korea in Coventry. The Swiss drew 1-1 with Gabon in Newcastle on Thursday. Switzerland plays its final group match against Mexico on Wednesday.
Morganella debuted with the senior national team in May and currently plays for the Italian club Palermo.
“We hope that he will draw the necessary lessons for his still young football career,” Gilli said.
Last week, Greece Olympic officials tossed Papachristou off the team after she posted a comment mocking African immigrants and supporting a far-right political party.
Work Cited:
"Swiss Soccer Player Expelled for Racist Tweets."New York Daily News.N.p., 30 July 2012. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <
Visualized: Incorrect information travels farther, faster on Twitter than corrections
byCraig SilvermanPublishedMar. 7, 201210:43 amUpdatedMar. 7, 201210:55 am
Many times on Twitter I’ve witnessed what I call The Law of Incorrect Tweets:
Initial, inaccurate information will be retweeted more than any subsequent correction.
The goal should be to make the correction as viral as the mistake. But that’s a challenge, and Tuesday at Harvard’sTruthiness in Digital Media conference, I saw (for the first time) what it looks like when we fail.
The presentation by GiladLotan, the vice president of research and development forSocialFlow, included a chart that compared the Twitter traffic of an incorrect report to the traffic for the ensuing correction. It’s the Law of Incorrect Tweets visualized:
The data for that chart comes from one of threecase studieshe shared inthis blog post. It focused on an incorrect tweet by NBCNew Yorkin November that said the NYPD had ordered its helicopter to move away from the site of the Occupy Wall Street protests:
That report was soon corrected by the NYPD Twitter account:
NBC New York and the main NBC News accounts tweeted out corrections, but, as you can see from Lotan’s chart, the new information did not reach as many people.
“People are much more likely to retweet what they want to be true, their aspirations and values,” Lotanwrote.
He also noted that he has seen corrections beat out incorrect information on Twitter, which is encouraging and suggests my “law” is maleable:
Does misinformation always spread further than the correction? Not necessarily. I’ve seen it go either way. But I can safely say that the more sensationalized a story, the more likely it is to travel far. Many times the story about misinformation is what spreads, rather than the false information itself (for example: theSteve Jobsfalse death tweet which cost Shira Lazar her CBS gig).
If you understand the dynamic, you may be more likely to change it. One cause: Incorrect information is bound to be more provocative and interesting than a correction. The other cause is that too little attention ispaid tomaking corrections on Twitter.
Journalists need to make the effort to contact anyone who retweeted the incorrect information and make them aware of the correction; it also helps to ask them to retweet the correction to their followers. I offerother advice for correcting tweets here.
AP Twitter account hacked, posts false White House scare
Wilson Rothman and Rosa GolijanNBC News
April 23, 2013 at 1:17 PM ET
Following a hack attack, the Associated Press' verified Twitter account posted "an erroneous tweet" claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama is injured. Moments later, the @AP Twitter account — with nearly 2 million followers — was suspended.
Immediately following the false tweet, theDow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered. (See chart below.)
Following the false @AP tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered.
"That's a bogus tweet," an AP spokesperson initially told NBC News, a statement that wasrepeated by the company's corporate communications account. Though the false tweet disappeared, the false message continued to exist on the service in over four thousand retweets.
In a briefing that occurred after the erroneous tweet appeared, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reportersthat "the president is fine, I was just with him." Julie Pace, AP's chief White House correspondent, reiterated during the briefing that "anything that was just sent out about any incident at the White House is actually false."
AP media relations director Paul Colford is quoted, ina blog post, as saying that the company had also suspended other AP Twitter feeds, "out of a sense of caution." He added, "We are working with Twitter to sort this out."
FBI spokesperson Jenny Shearer told CNBC that it is investigating the AP Twitter hack.
A wire statement issued later explained that the mid-day tweet "came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwordsof AP journalists." A group called the Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit for the hack. The group's original Twitter account is currently suspended, but on Tuesday afternoon, an alternate "official" account was live.
Social media accounts associated with CBSNews programs"60 Minutes" and "48 Hours"were compromised on Saturday.The same group, known for its pro-Assad politics,took creditfor that attack too, as well as earlier attacks on the Twitter accounts of NPR and the BBC. The group is not to be confused with the hacking collective known as Anonymous — in fact, they havepreviously clashedonline.
Passwords are weak link
Becausepasswordtheft is the culprit behind social-media account takeovers, security experts say that better
protection is needed. Responsibility for security is shared between the user and the service.
"The challenge (with corporate-owned Twitter accounts) is, we share the password," Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, told NBC News. "Once you get enough people with the password, bad things are going to happen," he adds. "There's no good way of isolating or limiting access these high-profile accounts."
Wisniewski said it is up to Twitter to strengthen security by using two-factor authentication, a log-in technique used by Google, Apple, Facebook and others that requires the pairing of a password with a code delivered to a user's cellphone.
"In my opinion, this is overdue for Twitter, especially for verified accounts," he said, regarding how incidents like this could be prevented. "Humans are the weakest things when it comes to a phish [attack]."
Twitter sent users a note saying that, "while we investigate (the AP hack), we wanted to get in touch to provide some information to help keep your account secure. And given the recent incidents, it is especially important to be extra vigilant about any attempt to phish your information." The note included a link toa support pagewith basic security precautions.