Can you believe Facebook or email?

Your friends on Facebook send you an email about Bighorn Elk walking cross the Buffalo Bill Dam in Wyoming. The information is wrong but that does not stop the story circulating among users of Facebook. Where is the fact checking in the big social media sites?

The elk dam email is typical of a lot of social media communication in Facebook and other large sites. Most Americans would not know what an ibex is so they change ibex to bighorn elk. Americans know little about Italy outside of the background for a few big moves so the location is changed to America. I do not know why they chose the Buffalo Bill Dam. Perhaps it is because the people writing this stuff realise a more popular dam would be recognised.

If the same message was send through Twitter, bighorn elk would be changed to sheep to make the message fit. You cannot shorten Buffalo Bill Dam to Hoover Dam because people would notice so use Alamo Dam.

The whole point of communication in Facebook and other big media sites appears to be either to sell something or to get noticed. When you write stuff to get noticed, you do what the professional press release people and ignore facts, you go for what people know then fit your story to their ideas. If we were using this social media back in the days of the Earth is round / flat debate, Earth is flat would win because people want to be noticed more than they want the truth.

Occasionally I read an article in Wikipedia and frequently they have mistakes along the likes of Americans invented computers but Wikipedia does have discussions about content and some occasional refinement of the form After people in several European countries invented computers, Americans invented one type of computer. The social media sites rarely have any form of revision. The lack of facts are reinforced by constant repetition. The truth is defined by the number of times the fictions are repeated, with the most repeated fiction becoming a fact.

PS

From Bob:

The "sheep" are actually Italian Ibex.
The picture location is the dam at Lago di Traversata dal Bacino di Campliccioli di Antrona,
That's in the Peidmont Alps near the Swiss border.
The dam is not made of concrete, but masonry using the local rocks that contain natural salt.
The website about dam and ibex (sorry - in italian):
http://www.gulliver.it/index.php?modulo=itinerari&template=dettaglio_photo&id_gita=49323