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Thing is, many of them are difficult if not impossible to verify. And the more information streaming at us, the more overwhelmed we become and less likely to have the resources to check everything personally.

It’s a matter of being discerning on the one hand while holding a healthy disbelief on the other.

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I’m so thankful for power social media has in our world right now. While it can be dangerous, and people reacting topically to tweets and such without knowing the full extent of articles, it does bring so much more awareness than projects and relief efforts would otherwise have. As the world gets more and more connected, social media allows us to get involved, take personal action, and feel part of the collective experience, as opposed to viewing it from the outside.

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That’s a crucial point. After the Bresma orphanage kids were brought to the States, I received an email from someone who follows me on Twitter asking if I could mobilize “your network” to help another orphanage. This orphanage–if it does indeed exist–has a Twitter account, but no photos, few followers, etc. It may well be a legitimate orphanage, but I had no way of tracking down information to find out; there simply wasn’t enough provided, whereas with the other orphanage I had been able to verify its existence and its actual situation. When I asked the person who tweeted me whether the orphanage was legit, she wrote back something to the effect of “Good point.” She’d been retweeting these pleas for help without really knowing herself whether they were founded.

I’ve been truly amazed by the power of social media during this crisis. At the same time, I didn’t retweet any coordinates of people allegedly buried in rubble or in need of other help, simply because I wasn’t sure if all of those tweets were legitimate. And if they weren’t, then the efforts to call attention to certain tweeted GPS coordinates could cause more harm in an already chaotic rescue effort.

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Regarding your question about social media and the effects of viral campaigns, I think they can be both powerful and dangerous. While they offer a way for campaign news to spread easily and quickly, it is just as easy for good intentions to spin wildly out of control (see the #followmeatsea incident). I agree with you that we really can’t take everything we see in social media at face value. It is so important to do our own research by reading other resources and talking to other people who are “on the ground” and able to more accurately access a situation. Once we all just start relying on hearsay, then we’ll truly create chaos.

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