On the 6th of January last year the live feed of the MacWorld keynote was hacked, and the message “Steve Jobs just died was posted”. The false rumor exploited speculation that had been surrounding the health of the Apple CEO at the time. Despite the rumor being pulled down within the hour it was still enough time for the ‘news’ to become viral. This resulted in the Apple stock loosing 10% of its value ($4.8 billion USD) in its first hour of trading.
In a similar situation, last week, a rumor was posted on a blog in Bahrain claiming that Gulf Air (the Kingdom’s national carrier) had flown a number of Bahraini officials to a meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel. The story was accompanied by a photo of two of the airlines cabin crew standing outside a building with Israel emblazoned on the side. It was captioned by - Gulf Air loves Israel. The blog is in Arabic so I haven’t posted it.
Anything relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict is very sensitive in the Middle East and the fallout from such an allegation could have potentially serious political ramifications both locally and regionally.
The rumor is incorrect and the photo is a misrepresentation; it was taken last year outside the Israeli stand at the Paris airshow. Yet, the damage has been done, the story is now circulating on the main blogs in Bahrain and I predict it will hit the media this week, resulting in a lot of very negative coverage for the airline. We have taken a number of measures to correct this misinformation however people will still question it, as the age-old adage says, ‘there is no smoke without fire’.
Both of these examples illustrate the power of new media and the serious damage that it can do to companies in terms of brand reputation and bottom line. Information travels instantaneously, globally and unfiltered. All it takes is one person to start a rumor; this can be done anonymously through an alias.
My question is – should people be held accountable for writing and circulating potentially damaging incorrect information? If a person chooses to hide behind a cloak of anonymity to deliberately cause damage, surely this amounts to a criminal act and should be punishable by law? I believe so, the problem is that there are currently no formal laws governing cyberspace and global legislation seems relatively far-fetched at this stage. As the Internet continues to grow, governments and legislators will need to consider this. What are your thoughts, do you agree with me or do you think this amounts to Internet censorship?
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