Is Nelson Mandela Dead? No.
Nelson Mandela is not dead. The latest Twitter death rumor about the 93-year-old freedom fighter and former South African president is probably based on a report about his ex-wife.Nelson Mandela
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was hospitalized to undergo minor foot surgery, but:
- She isn't dead, and
- She isn't Nelson Mandela.
In other news, Adam Sandler did not die in a snowboarding accident.
Continue reading at NowPublic.com: New Nelson Mandela Death Rumor
Twitter has been a huge success but the hoaxes it generates are beginning to grate and slowly but surely eating into the sites credibility for breaking news.The micro blogging site’s instantaneous nature can make it incredibly easy to pass along fiction as fact. Breaking news catches fire on twitter, but though it may be first and fastest, it can be false. Today, it is about the supposed death of South African icon Nelson Mandela. The emotional attachment most have to Mandela makes this cynical hoax a particularly worrying one.
Most people’s natural instincts spur them on to be the first to re-tweet “hot” news. Few avenues exist to instantaneusly check the accuracy of breaking news outside the main stream media. As a result usually before a story is debunked it had already gained legs and become a twitter trending topic or has been shared gazillion times on other social media network.
According to TechCrunch. “While it’s great at disseminating information quickly, it’s just as good at disseminating false information quickly. And if a lot of people are saying it — as thousands are here — it must be true, right? Wrong.”
There is a rather morbid and sick fascination with rumours that report the death of famous people. Morgan Freeman and Bill Cosby have all been victims. Perhaps there is a group of idle minds out there whose sole purpose on twitter is to make a name for themsleves by starting rumours and hoping the twitterati fall for it.
No doubt, the latest hoax about Mandela’s suposed death will generate calls to track down the origins of the rumour. Outraged “punters” will of course call for the twitter account of the culprit to be removed. However, for twitter to be taken seriously going forward surely there needs a swift mechanism from twitter for debunking sich high profile hoaxes. Surely before a story on the scale and magnitude of the “death” of Mandela appears o
n the trending topic list of twitter, the site could do with an effective system of cross checking the facts and if possible deleting such hoaxes or putting up a message to debunk them without encroaching into the realms of censorship.
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