If ever there was a situation inflamed by social media, the London riots of August 2011 was it. There were YouTube videos of looting and hundreds of erroneous tweets that gained currency as other people took them at face value and retweeted them.
Sitting in my spare room half a mile from the larceny taking place in Lewisham high street and a stone's throw from Peckham, Eltham and other supposed hotspots, I was incredulous at the reporting taking place. We'd got off the train to a certain frosty frisson, but most people were uneasy and curious in equal measure and wanted to see for ourselves what was actually happening. That local news sites, Facebook posts and Twitter all seemed to suggest apocalyptic scenes of smashed up cars, forced entry and burning buses was no comfort. Nor did it tally with what we could see or hear for ourselves. Eventually, we stood out in the empty streets and called home to reassure family that the situation was very far from what TV reports suggested.
A year later, Twitter reactions and breaking stories on news sites based on digital hearsay continue to mislead. But a healthy dose of skepticism has crept in too. You can make the outrageous and the implausible ‘trend’, but it's just as likely the voice of dissent or counter-information will have its time in the spotlight too.
Sites such as the BBC's and The Guardian's allow commenters to agree with or not, report or simply refute what others say, making the blog commentaries more democratic and balanced too.
What Twitter and other instant reporting tools can't always do is substantiate what they claim within the 140 characters the short form posts allow. So you could be breaking an important story, but if you can't say all of what you need to to back it up, its impact may be lost and your message buried beneath an avalanche of trending posts about @1D's multi-million-pound Pepsi deal.
Adding photos, links to maps, audio quotes and a couple of explanatory lines can make all the difference – but only if you have somewhere to post it. UK citizen news site Blottr was set up for this very reason. Celebrating its second birthday and with the obligatory Android and iOS apps with which to report on the move, it allows 'ordinary' people to report extraordinary events.
At yesterday's event to mark its two years were posters showing that Blottr was the first site to break the news of Gaddafi's death, along with a photo. News agencies and the BBC trailed the word on the street – and the web. If such citizen sites can get the details right and not be derailed by partial reporting – there's every reason to expect citizen sites to gain currency and become established information outlets in their own right.
Just today, there were multiple reports about the identity of the British family shot dead in their car in France. Multiple sources – guests at the campsite, word from policemen at the scene and other people in the know – all gave the same name.
Traditional news sites were conflicted about how to proceed, with the BBC and Guardian electing to state that such reports existed but that they would wait for the official statement from the French authorities before naming the slain family.
Not everything that's instant about the internet is for the good, but the democratisation of information and our ability to have a stake in what's reported surely is.
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