I recently read an article discussing the reaction of the US government to the Onion's (a comedic news website) twitter posts. The government says that the Onion was posting false reports which stated that there was a hostage situation in the capital building. The post even showed a congressperson holding a gun to a young girl's head. Obviously, no one found the post amusing and immediately disregarded the false reports. A spokeswoman for the Onion declined comment and the situation seems to still not be addressed. However, she does mention that the Onion's Twitter account was not hacked into. This is a serious situation because of the strong following of the Onion among the American people. After taking this into consideration, it will be very interesting to see if there is any actions taking place with this situation. I can't imagine that the US government is going to sit and watch this event pass by without consequences. All in all, this shows how influential social media posts can be, and how careful everyone needs to be (including companies) when posting on social media avenues.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/the-onions-hostage-tweets-draw-scrutiny/?ref=socialnetworking
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