Social media are self-correcting

Three days have passed since contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Like many people, once the news broke I followed the latest developments through micro blogs and the popular instant messaging service WeChat. There was good and bad news, but much of it has proved to be rumor as nothing is yet known of what happened to the plane and its passengers and crew.

Rumors have become a sure companion of such incidents. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011, a rumor spread that a change in the wind direction would blow radiation across China, which led to panic-buying of iodized salt after another rumor spread it would help prevent radiation poisoning. Such rumors spread quickly through the social media, thus many blame the medium rather than the messenger.

But while it is easy for rumors to quickly spread as more and more people click "forward", it is also easy to quickly correct rumors in the same way as new information comes to light.