In my previous post, I wrote that this experiment could only test the accuracy of each journalist’s contact list, not the utility of social media.

In his interview with BBC after the experiment, Tremblay concludes,

“you won’t know the truth from Twitter…it’s one source, a little bit of information.”

While I still take issue with the study design, this experiment did magnify both the power and the danger of relying only on social media for reliable news.

On the plus side, Tremblay was able to conduct an interview with a jailed Russian activist. The detainee was somehow still in possession of his smartphone and tweeted from a jail cell for three hours, even though he had no legal representation and not been informed about why he was being held. The power and immediacy of Twitter (and possession of a smartphone) made this interview possible.

In another example, Tremblay points out the danger of relying on a little information without verifying sources. An explosion was heard in a particular city and within minutes, people were tweeting about it, adding their own speculations about the cause. In a few hours, there was a Facebook page set up with 5000 members. But what really happened was that a plane had crossed the sound barrier, a much different truth than the wild hypotheses.

Twitter and Facebook are only tools for communicating. Journalists must verify sources and publish with integrity.