I was up and making coffee when the alert came on my phone about an incident at the Pickering power plant. I read it, noted that this is several hundred km to the east of me and resumed making coffee. Once I made the coffee. I went online to several news sites and saw nothing about it.
Not surprising since the alert had just come out. I was about to journal (it’s been helping me focus) when I thought I would try a small experiment. Not that I am on social media often anymore but I would purposely stay off of it for at least an hour.
By that time I guessed the ‘alert’ would be rescinded but I wanted to predict how social media would react. Unfortunately, I was fairly accurate in my prediction.
What did I think the alert would be rescinded? The entire message threw up red flags. The alert system is supposed to be used for true emergencies, not for letting people know “there was a problem, everything is fine”. This total looked liked an accidental release and posting of a message; possibly during a disaster test of some sort.
I figured, within several minutes, people will be reposting the alert across social media, no matter where they live. Some of these will be attempts at humour. Several people will complain that they don’t see stories on mainstream media about this.
Within 10-15 min most mainstream media will have a story on their sites / feeds just repeating the original alert because that’s all they have at that point. Here’s something you may not know. Overnights and weekends, most media have a slimmed downed presence in their newsrooms – if at all. The assigned reporter on-call will have gotten the alert and have to quickly post something to their sites and feeds as they don’t want a competitor to ‘beat’ them to the story. They have nothing else to report as the authorities are still trying to figure out what is going on. If the alert was sent in error, the issuing agency is being pummeled by everyone trying to find out what’s going on. The staff working is trying to deal with this, but the fact that it’s not a weekday means the communications team who could deal with this is not there.
By now more people will be posting and retweeting, including the links to the media posts. In other words, the same information is being amplified. But now some people are thinking up theories about why no more information is being released and posting that. These are now being reshared and some misinformation is starting to show up. Since many people think everything they read on social media is the truth, they believe it.
After I wrote the above I rechecked the mainstream media sites to find reports that alert was sent in error. I then decided to log into Facebook and Twitter (first time for Twitter in weeks) to see the state of things. Sadly I was pretty well right on in my predictions….. Even more sadly, I was not surprised.
Several lessons.
If you get an alert note where it is coming from. Something several hundred miles away is not an immediate issue for you.
Don’t rely on a single source for the whole story, particularly if they are not an official source.
An official source is not “My sister’s best friend’s brother who knows someone who works in the area”.
Don’t amplify misinformation by reposting it. It doesn’t help anyone.
In this hyperconnected world, it still takes time for media to gather the information to do an accurate report. The media can do it fast or can do it accurately with all the information. You can’t have both.
This event has shown that the Ontario alert system needs further review, to ensure test alerts don’t get put out to the world. We’ve seen issues like this before so hopefully, a review will be done.
If a major event like this would ever happen. Ontario Power Generation and the province already have a set of procedures in place including notifying local authorities and the media. If you don’t believe me, ask your local authorities. Just like in business disaster scenarios are tested regularly.
