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Fake tweets. They’re easy to create, look 100% real, and are one of the easiest ways to stir up trouble for just about any target you can think of. Take this story, from a Politifact article:
As the Dow Jones plunged Feb. 5, not long after President Donald Trump boasted about the stock market gains, a fake Trump tweet surfaced in which he vowed that such a drop in the “Dow Joans” should result in the president being shot out of a cannon into the sun.
Though it was a hoax, that didn’t stop the Twitterverse from going nuts over it.
At 4:38 p.m. Feb. 15, Shaun Usher, who lives in Manchester, England and author of the Letters of Note website, wrote on Twitter:
“There’s *always* a tweet,” and then linked to a supposed Trump tweet from Feb. 15, 2015:
“If the Dow Joans ever falls more than 1000 ‘points’ in a Single Day the sitting president should be ‘loaded’ into a very big cannon and Shot into the sun at TREMENDOUS SPEED! No excuses!”
The current political climate has drawn a number of fake social media messages which gained traction, but this problem is hardly limited to politics. Take a second to consider what type of fake social media posts someone might spread from what appears to be your company accounts. Or, how about your own personal accounts? Compound this with the fact that these fake messages are easy to create and share anonymously and you start to see what a scary situation they can cause.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]
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