It has been an interesting week what with the development of a potential pandemic. I don’t discount that the situation is potentially very serious but it is being exacerbated by the rise in self proclaimed experts. I was speaking with an emergency planning officer today, and their greatest concern is not their ability to respond to a potential pandemic but rather the rising note of panic within the general public. When the story started to break I began to use the @agilecontinuity twitter account to retweet any stories regarding the progress of the disease. I made sure that these stories came from the BBC, Reuters and other respected news sources. On Monday you could already see the rise of alternative information sources.
On twitter especially, the reporting of fact was beginning to be drowned out by opinion and commentary, most of which was unqualified (difficult to do in 140 characters). Self styled experts began to make statements regarding the progress of the potential pandemic and the danger which it posed. These experts would then attack others for expressing an opinion in a progressive game of my pub facts are better than your pub facts. It is bad enough that twitter seems to be completely populated by self styled pundits and social media gurus (their term not mine), but within days we have seen the development of the swineflu guru whose only claim is that their mate is a doctor. Most of the information they provide is cut and paste from the WHO and CDC website. I suspect it would be better to go directly to these organisations rather than get your advice from some unknown website or twitter link. We do after all pay them to employ experts who formulate such advice for our benefit. I also suspect that the preminent experts in this subject area are a little too busy to be tweeting right now.
I have heard some commentators blaming twitter, but that would be a case of shooting the messenger. Twitter is simply an effective way of amplifying the signal, and what we see playing out online is a reflection of what is happening offline around the world. A mix of information vacuum and base human nature are the cause. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not an expert in Swine Flu or virology (and probably neither is anyone you meet on twitter or in the pub), but these chaps are:
- World Health Organisation
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- UK Department of Health
- US Government Pandemic Flu Information
UPDATE: Discovered that Seth Godin has just posted a more general post discussing the same theme. See his post Might as Well Panic. I do like the “devil doesn’t need a advocate” phrase.
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