Twitter Is a Great Tool. What Happens When It’s Wrong?

Untrue reports are often retweeted widely. Are there ways to halt such circulation — without inhibiting Twitter’s constant flow?By now, because of such incidents as the earthquake in Haiti, the recent revolution in Tunisia, and the shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, most people are coming to grips with the fact that Twitter is effectively a real-time news network — like a version of CNN powered by hundreds of thousands of users around the world. But what happens when that Twitter news network is spreading misinformation? That happened during the Giffords shooting, when the congresswoman was initially reported to be dead, and there are other more recent cases, as well: On Wednesday, for example, reports of a shooting in Oxford Circus in London, England, swept through the Twittersphere but turned out to be a mistake.The British incident appears to have been caused by two coincidental events; according to several reports, one was an e-mail about a police training exercise involving a shooting in Oxford Circus, which somehow got into the wrong hands and was posted as though it were the real thing. Meanwhile, another Twitter user posted an unrelated message about a TV commercial “shooting” in the area, and the combination of those two things helped fan the flames of hysteria for a number of hours about buildings being locked down and police sharpshooters being brought in, etc. — which can be seen in the chronicle of tweets collected by one Twitter observer at the site Exquisite Tweets.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2011/tc20110120_761716.htm