Archive for March, 2012

Getting you tweets in a twist and the curse of validating your sources

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Poor RTE the Irish national (Dublin based) broadcaster, It’s finding it tough these days, there all twittered out up there in RTE, Unfortunately the have discovered that, All it takes to get a twitter account is a e-mail and a free twitter handle, and anyone can be a user, even some one who is not who they really are! Its a pity that social media is actually social and just like the caller at the door that says he’s from the “Gas company” and he isn’t and he robs your house, the same can occur on the Internet. Only this time the fun is that you don’t need a fake ID card or a face, you just need a twitter and some journalists that don’t investigate their sources, and a presidential debate by a Dublin based “national broadcaster” station.

 

RTE should probably look at Twitter’s support page titled “About Verified Accounts” (https://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/119135-about-verified-accounts#) there is a section there about getting a verified account, it sounds like RTE didn’t do this. They could have Googled “how to create a fake twitter account” and it would have given them an insight in to how people can fake twitter accounts. I just worry that news sources are starting to use social media for reporting instead of using reporters for reporting, Or even worse that the reporters are not now doing the reporting work, or starting to become “social media experts”.