Internet Flu

The internet is on fire. It has caught the infection of rumor, over lack of knowledge of the new Swine Flu. One of the biggest infections is Twitter, which, over the weekend, was exploding with hundreds of tweets every minute, full of misinformation about the flu.

Never before have he had such a medium for such misinformation to spread so quickly. We've had chain letters, chain e-mail, chain phone calls, but the simplicity that the Web 2.0 world offers us today means that there's just so much more available to people - and people are so much more inclined to use these tools - to talk about issues. And because of it, wildfires begin. Wildfires spread. And mass panic, much larger than anything before it, begins, spreading, infecting everyone, far faster than any actual disease could.

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Date posted: 28 April, 2009
Tags: internet psychology
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