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TMCNet: Twittering in a hurricane

[September 01, 2008]

Twittering in a hurricane

(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sep. 1--NEW ORLEANS -- The howling wind at my window woke me at 6 a.m. Monday but it wasn't Hurricane Gustav that worried me next. It was Internet traffic as the storm clawed ashore in coastal Louisiana.

Faced with the kind of story that spans hundreds of miles, the Tribune is experimenting with online citizen reporting under the watchful gaze of seasoned journalists.

But after conversing with Gulf Coast residents on the social networking site Twitter--creating the online persona "GustavReporter" to do it--I found myself with 670 followers Monday, and also a duty as the storm rolled past to pass along their factual statements and dampen falsehoods.

Twitter, a micro-blog, allows users to trade short messages similar to text messages via cell phone or computer. The information is shared with any other person on Twitter who wants to see it.

Bloggers traded mostly helpful information Sunday, including accounts of stalled evacuations on Mississippi interstates. But on Monday morning, it looked like even well-intentioned participants might inadvertently start rumors, too.

"Anybody in Hattiesburg? I-59ers? Big band with many tornado warnings at coast inbound."

This was right where, at last report, traffic had halted. But a quick phone call to Mississippi emergency management provided relief: No. No one stuck on the road. Potential urban legend quashed when the correct information was posted.

The upside of citizen eyewitnesses reporting on Hurricane Gustav with online social networking tools such as Twitter is the unfiltered, unedited real-time information they pipe directly to the cellphones and Web browsers of anyone interested in receiving first-person accounts of the storm.

The downside is that a few of those unfiltered, unedited reports turned out to be hysterical or the stuff that produces rumors.

At least during Gustav, the newly widespread informal network of anonymous online communities proved to be a potent conduit of information for the isolated and helpless and also a powerful megaphone for false reports.

The bottom line: Caveat emptor.

Psychology comes into play with Twitter "reporters" just as it does in journalists' face-to-face conversations with sources--people want to sound brave or voice fear, appear informed or ask questions, to help and be helped. The information they offer might be dire, related to their convenience, or very personal.

Heavily discussed at the height of the hurricane on Monday was whether levees around New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward were being overtopped or breached, or whether an errant tugboat or barge might be banging around the industrial canal.

The night before, one member of the online community lost the air conditioning in his car where his pets were being sheltered, only to have his online network find him someone in a nearby town who could look after his four pets for a while.

Some Twitter reports proved helpful to people trying to find faster ways out of the city.

But then, as the city evacuated, someone Twittered this:

"Homeless are being denied access to evacuation transportation if they don't have ID. PLEASE EVERYONE RETWEET."

Seemingly texting into a phone from downtown New Orleans, this person told the world that homeless people were denied access to evacuation buses--a report that was completely untrue.

A call to the mayor's office, and the Tribune's own reporting at the scene showed the report to be false, but that didn't stop it from bouncing around the Internet for hours, sowing misplaced outrage along the way.

Another rumor--also false--was that evacuation authorities were checking identification documents to weed out illegal immigrants and prevent them from receiving evacuation assistance. New Orleans officials said everyone got on the bus.

Still, there was no denying the impact or power of the information when it was at its best, as when Dee Mangold, 35, of Ridgeland, Miss., passed on bonafide tornado warning information to people in southern Mississippi.

"I think it's very useful," said Mangold, known as iDeeDee on Twitter and as an employee of Mississippi Public Broadcasting in real life. "People are searching for that anytime you have a disaster, or a threat of disaster. People are looking for information."

But making sure that it's trustworthy can be as trying as any day spent in a howling wind.

jjanega@tribune.com

To see more of the Chicago Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chicagotribune.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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