Beware the ‘ghost stories’ from the past being used to change today’s conversation

Travelling back in time is easier than you’d think.

One of the unique things about working at the social media desk of a digital news organisation is the ability to see trends and conversations as they happen. I can watch how many people are reading an article, where they are reading it from, how many times they’re sharing it, if they are commenting or merely posting it to the their timeline to make a statement – it’s a fascinating insight into how we consume our news and interact with it.

But every so often, an article that has been long been considered put to bed by a journalist or editor is flung back into the social conversation.

These “ghost articles”, if you will, have a fairly typical life cycle – they’re shared initially by small accounts, usually in reply to a conversation, providing context or proving a point in a debate. The piece is then picked up by much larger accounts or shared on huge forums, and that’s where a problem arises. More often than not, they’re posted with less or totally inaccurate context.

One such article that recently appeared from the past on my radar, for fairly obvious reasons, was coverage of the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia; the Maltese investigative journalist known best globally for her work on the Panama Papers exposé. Daphne was killed by a car bomb in October 2017 and in the months that have followed her family has campaigned tirelessly for the truth about who killed her.

An article detailing her death, and the suspicious circumstances surrounding it, was shared on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook as more details concerning the killing of Jamal Khashoggi emerged. They were two journalists who focused on freedom of speech and uncovering the truth, and who both died under extraordinary circumstances. In order to better understand Khashoggi’s death, learning about Galizia would make sense, right?

The second article was about the US joining Iraq and Saudi Arabia in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning the death penalty as a punishment for gay sex. At the time of the vote in October 2017, the US ambassador to the UN was Nikki Haley – and when she resigned from her position this year-old article was the one people wanted to post on their timelines and groups.

Particularly on Facebook and Twitter, these articles were presented as breaking news or developing stories, despite the articles having very obvious publish times. Taking these stories out of context only serves to dull their importance and their authority. It’s the social media equivalent of picking up an 18-month-old newspaper and having your first reaction to the news.

If we take anything away from these two examples, it should be a continued awareness of what exists out in the ether. We as social media users should feel obligated to share content that furthers conversation – but we should always process what is presented to us before absentmindedly punching the retweet button.