The Power of a Tweet

Lately the talk that has been about anything and everything has been about the coronavirus. It has been all over the news, twitter, instagram, and facebook. It has been made into memes and jokes all over, but what happens when an innocent tweet takes it to another level?

On Monday evening a rumor started that the University of South California had a student, who was taken to the hospital because it was discovered that the student had the coronavirus. The rumor spread like wildfire as it was a reply to a tweet on the school's twitter account. It began circulating hundreds of tweets about it and other students began to petition to cancel classes. The school was quick to reply to the chaos and shut down the rumors. There are no cases related to school and they reminded everyone that “there is no known connection between affected individuals and USC.”

What started as a reply on twitter grew into a huge rumor that gained a lot of attention all over the platform. I think people don't realize how much of an affect we can have on social media. In today's world, just about anything can go viral and it can cause some backlash and in this case it was rumors towards the well-known school, University of South California. The school had to deal with many tweets towards the incident and make sure the public knew that these rumors were false.

We have the freedom of speech, but at times this can lead to incidents like this. On twitter it is known to say just about anything that goes on in your mind. People tweet things like "eating cereal" and that is the norm, but in cases like USC rumor this is pretty common. It started off as an innocent, but grew into something much bigger. I think what we all have to keep in mind is "the power of a single tweet" and the repercussions it can have whether they be good or bad.


all references to:  https://www.foxnews.com/health/social-media-coronavirus-rumor-usc