I’ll let you do the reading, but, in a nutshell, it’s the report of a study that suggests young people could be damaged, emotionally, by using Twitter.  The reason being that we can process negative stories much faster than positive ones, leaving us with an overall negative impression.

The National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition looked at how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen “to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain.”  Volunteers we’re brain scanned and the findings suggest the volunteers could process and respond very quickly to signs of physical pain in people, but took somewhat longer to show admiration of compassion. The argument goes that the streams of news are just a bit too fast for us to process.

Another argument the report makes is that this slow processing of admiration could lead to a lack of inspiration – I’d very much argue this, as there is much inspiration to be had from “top bloggers” and “celebrity tweeters”.  However, whether people are able to identify with a tweeter who talks about the positives in their life, rather than one who cries for sympathy , remains to be seen.

As an educationalist, I cite the wikipedia argument – That Twitter as THE source could be destructive, but as A source is constructive.

However, as a community developer I think this report also has a major impact for community technology, aside from the obvious implications of having a world with a broken moral compass.  Will community relations crumble if fast moving news fails to highlight the positives?

On Easter day a lot of questions were being asked on facebook about an apparent fatal stabbing in the area I used to live in.  It turned out that no one had been stabbed, no one had died and the police had only cordoned off an area of the town after a serious assault.  The rumour mill, fuelled by a lack of news on Easter Day, had gone into overdrive and this had spread into facebook groups and statuses.  Currently, facebook groups and statuses don’t seem to have the viral impact Tweets have – but as facebook changes itself Twitterward it remains to be seen if this stays the same.

Either way, the internet became a rife ground for rumours and by the end of Easter Sunday questions were being asked on a local radio facebook group and various statuses were buzzing with comments about the dangers of living in the area.  This could be looked at as a media issue, as they were slow with an online response.  However, I see it more as a community one.  After all, any damage that was done to community safety or cohesion by the false rumours would be felt in the community.

Many will argue that when the real news came through, it would just quell those rumours.  However, this report suggests otherwise.  It also suggests that a community organisation having a tokenistic twitter feed or reassurance officers posting positive tweets won’t counter the negativity and stigma that rumours and negative tweets could cause.  However, from a PR point of view, someone to react quickly to counter the viral spread via twitter might go some way to controlling the message.  Highlighting the positives may take longer, but in the fast news culture,  shouldn’t that mean we get started now?

They’ll be many who will use these comments, and the report, to point to a Web2.0 Fuelled break in society, one that needs real people, in the real world, to fix.  The fact is that speed has become the essence and, while we may all benefit from slowing down a touch, there is little chance of that happening very soon.  There can be no doubt that there is an element of truth in their arguments for a real world fix – but there is also truth in that I found out about this report through seeing it on @jangle’s twitter feed.  How did you find this?