Fake Tweet Sends Stocks Plummeting

As many articles have already made clear, Americans will react to news that sounds like terrorism.

Today's fake tweet shows how sensitive consumers of information really are.

A hack attack on the Associated Press' Twitter account resulted in "an erroneous tweet" claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama was injured. It didn't take long (2 minutes) for Twitter to suspend the @AP Twitter account.

More than 4,000 retweets later, the credibility of the message was dealt a fatal blow when an AP spokesperson told NBC News the news was false.

Like the EKG of a country, the Dow Jones industrial average just after 1 p.m. shows the collective heartbeat (above). More than 140 points was lost in a flash. Five minutes later much of the loss was regained.

According to Bob Sullivan, NBC News: "It's incredible what a single 12-word lie can do."

How could being an investigative searcher make a breaking lie less effective?

Fact checking the accuracy of the claim is a little trickier in the case of Twitter. Breaking news often comes through this channel before being picked up by major news.

That is probably the clue. AP wouldn't be the first to break the news. Someone on the scene would have said it first; AP would carry it a minute or more later. All one would have to do is look for the source of the AP tweet.

Not being able to find an earlier tweet about this news is the tell-tale sign about its credibility.  A good search engine for tweets is topsy.comhttp://topsy.com. Check it out before you react with your gut.

Ann Margret Death Hoax

While this hoax is still making its way around the blogosphere, there are a couple good investigative tips to point out.

I first heard the story on the radio this morning. When the people on the air tried to look it up on the Web, they noted that the site's URL was mediafetcher, which made them wonder if the story was really true.

Tip 1: For breaking news, go to Twitter. When I searched for ann margret death, I saw mediafetcher.com too and below that a comment about twitter. Since lots of breaking news comes first through twitter, I searched twitter for ann margret and saw a mixture of condolences and claims the story is a hoax.

Tip 2: Read the page. The definitive fact in this case was noted in a number of tweets: the web site claims the story is FAKE. True enough, look at the bottom of the mediafetcher page:

FAKE... THIS STORY IS 100% FAKE! this is an entertainment website, and this is a totally fake article based on zero truth and is a complete work of fiction for entertainment purposes! this story was dynamically generated using a generic 'template' and is not factual. Any reference to specific individuals has been 100% fabricated by web site visitors who have created fake stories by entering a name into a blank 'non-specific' template for the purpose of entertainment. For sub-domain info, name removal requests and additional use restrictions: FakeAWish.com
Copyright © 2012 FakeAWish.com All rights reserved.

Best to do a little checking before ordering flowers.

This site may be one to watch for other fake breaking news for teaching purposes.

As for the purpose of the mediafetcher site, wouldn't you say that's a dark spin on defining 'entertainment?' If you want a challenge, find the top 10 domains operated by the individual(s) behind this hoax entertainment site. It gives you some context.

Two Photos, Two Different Stories

Given the graphic nature of the Web, visual literacy and information literacy are inextricably entwined. The ability to make sense of graphical or illustrative material is critical, especially since we are more quickly attracted to images on pages than text. At least that's my theory.

Visual literacy falls into the area of investigative searching: how credible is the image? What does it mean? What is it's purpose?

Without going into it deeply, images can be assigned several purposes: to convey information in a more robust way than text alone (hence, a picture is worth a thousand words), to make a page more visually appealing, to move us emotionally and, here's the one I want to address here, to deceive us.

Fake or photoshopped photos are quite easy to produce. Recall the photo of the sightseer atop the North Tower posing for the camera while an AA jet fast approaches? That's what I'm talking about.

So here is the visual challenge for today. Look at the two shark pictures. Here are links to larger images:

Hitching a ride

Kayak on a serene sea


Both of them may be real. Or just one of them. Or neither. How can you tell? Careful investigation will reveal the answer. If you want to leave your assessment and how you did it by commenting, go ahead. Otherwise I'll talk about some techniques in the next blog.