Fighting Social Media Outage Misinformation
As I’m sure you know, when the lights go out, outage misinformation has a way of running rampant across social media. This is extremely problematic, because it could undermine all the good restoration work that is being done and negatively impact customer perceptions. An added downside of taking a social-triggered reputation hit is that it could spur regulators to become more active. No one wants that.
There are many examples of this. For today’s post I’m going to provide a few categorical examples of various types of outage misinformation that has been seen floating around on the internet.
Examples of Social Media Outage Misinformation
My friends at TD World compiled a nice list of social media-related outage mistruths. Here are 3 of the more troublesome examples:
- During the Feb. 2021 ERCOT outage in Texas (Winter Storm Uri), many social media users pontificated that it was caused because wind turbines froze. Photos of frozen turbine blades in Sweden were even circulated in an attempt to prove the point. This is false because very little of the required electricity at that time was planned or needed from wind energy.
- Another common theme is people moaning because they see office buildings illuminated while their own houses are blacked out, often sharing photos of lit buildings in downtown areas to prove their point. Um, backup power, anyone?
- Finally, some social media users like to complain that their utility company has insufficient power sources, and that this is the reason why there are “so many outages.” Generally, this is not a true statement, as there are many, many factors that impact reliability, irrespective of the sufficiency of the sources.
All of this outage misinformation requires utilities to continually monitor social media during storms and be proactive with all storm communications. By communicating the facts early and often, it is possible to have a little more control over the narrative. Although a “communication on steroids” philosophy won’t eliminate the problem, it should at least help control the impact. Good luck!
