Can News Be...Too Fast?

Every day, people from all across the world immediately receive international news through social media. Due to social media, people can receive news and information in the blink of an eye, but is that necessarily a positive thing? 

Social media has made it possible for everyday people, just like you, to receive some of the world’s most dire and pertinent information and news, even before people directly involved with it. The new social media world we live in is a distant comparison to social media 10 years ago. The internet is much faster now and news travels across the globe within seconds. In many cases, news can get shared across social media and end up being fabricated, as well as the news about someone going viral before they even knew. Fresh in everyone’s mind is the recent tragedy of Kobe and Gianna Bryant’s deaths, where social media caused a tremendously negative effect. Before Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s wife had received any news, TMZ reported that Kobe Bryant’s helicopter had crashed. 

Social media has become intrusive as a side effect of how fast information travels in our smartphone, high-speed society. Due to how fast information does travel on social media, should there be user responsibility? What would that entail? Well simply, consumers of social media should responsibly share news by making sure it isn’t an unreliable source or satire. An international event that is currently unfolding has been a victim of both those factors is the Wuhan Coronavirus Epidemic.

The Coronavirus has essentially dominated the news for the past 2 weeks and escaping it on social media is impossible. Due to it being one of the dominating topics of 2020, there is no shortage of social media posts about it. Although many posts are informative updates and firsthand accounts of those in China, there have been clear negative effects from other posts, or posts disguised as one of these. One issue is the massive number of posts stating the number of people who have died or who have contracted the disease. While many of these accounts are real and provide a necessary viewpoint, there is just as much falsified content capitalizing on the moment. Some social media users are using the Coronavirus as an opportunity to create content, much of it using fear-mongering. In one instance, there was a video of someone dressed as a doctor “exposing” the truths being hidden from us about the virus. It ended up being a young man trying to gain attention from it. A majority of these “negative” posts are spreading incorrect information and unnecessarily frightening people. 

The massive scale of this event and its influences on how social media cannot be understated. Social media has helped in informing the public about the virus but, in the grand scheme of things has been detrimental to the public fighting the virus. In times of emergency like this, a certain amount of restraint and responsibility must be exercised, for the overall safety of people all across the world.