Swine Flu On Twitter
April 26th, 2009
Reading this post at Foriegn Policy regarding the prohibitive amount of noise on Twitter regarding the swine flu had me thinking of ways Twitter could actually be used to stop the spread of disease rather than spreading disinformation.
How about everyone with the swine flu post their location and a handy hash tag (#ihaveswineflu) or a tweet like “I’m infected.” Then everyone else will know to stay the heck away from that place.
Other than that, the only other way Twitter can help out is by keeping quarantined people entertained while they stay home, limiting face to face contact with other humans. It may end up being a good thing if everyone just became so obsessed with the CDC Tweets and the Google map that they never leave the house. This is one virus that isn’t transmitted via the Internet.
And if I come down with the flu myself, I’ll do my part and let you know.
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Posted In: General, Technology
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The Foreign Policy mandarins do not seem to consider that the general public have the ability to work out for themselves how real the Tweets are and how much to take them at face value. Anyone who takes an interest in any media nowadays will know that sensationalism is the name of the game and truth and factual reporting takes a seat at the very far end of an exceptionally long stretch limo. That brings me on to my issue about ‘free speech’. Of course, free speech is an absolute necessity but it should limited to un-sensationalised facts and verifiable truths. But that’s a whole subject on its own. Perhaps you’ll do a piece on that one day?