ShareThisRALEIGH, N.C. - American universities have gone to great lengths to install special sirens and mass-alert systems on campuses in the four years since a gunman massacred 32 fellow students and faculty at Virginia Tech University.
But college students, with the dizzying speed and reach of social media, have their own alert systems. Their instant mass communication on Twitter, Facebook and other social media can be a good thing, emergency workers say. But it also can fuel hysteria.
On Nov. 16, a man carrying a golf umbrella at the edge of campus at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., showed just how quickly chaos can ensue when misinformed students tweet, text and post.
Two people called emergency dispatchers to report a man carrying an assault rifle -- accounts that set off quick lockdowns at ECU and alarms throughout the college town. Email, text messages and phone calls went out across campus. Outdoor speakers blared warnings.
Though practice drills have offered universities insight into how well their official mass-alert systems would work in a real emergency, "social media was a real learning experience for us," said Mary Schulken, ECU public affairs director. A lot of information "ended up being tweeted and retweeted and posted to Facebook," some with serious implications.
There were false reports of a gunman holding hostages in a campus building or on a city bus, or of someone with a crossbow holed up in a house near campus.
Concerned parents and friends read the accounts with fear. They, too, added to the mayhem.
Law enforcement officers fanned out across Pitt County on a manhunt that eventually would lead them to an umbrella. Updated information was posted to the campus website.
"In terms of combating misinformation, you have to be more aggressive in getting the correct information out," Schulken said.
ECU officials are reviewing the lockdown episode. Other schools and law enforcement agencies also tried to learn from the episode.
Though social media can create confusion in a moment of crisis, it also offers tremendous benefits, law enforcement agencies say.
Sgt. Josh Mecimore of the police department in Chapel Hill, another college town full of tweeters and social media users, started a Twitter feed this summer to help disseminate information to the public.
Though it can be difficult to stop the spreading of misinformation, particularly when it's unintentional, Mecimore said the best way to combat inaccuracies is to post correct information as quickly as possible on credible sites.
"We just hope people would look to those sites and get their information there," he said.
(Contact Anne Blythe at ablythe(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
