{"id":40387,"date":"2020-04-30T09:49:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T08:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/?p=40387"},"modified":"2020-04-30T14:39:42","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T13:39:42","slug":"fake-animal-news-on-social-media-amid-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travindy.com\/news\/2020\/04\/fake-animal-news-on-social-media-amid-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake animal news on social media amid pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Photo<\/p>\n

S<\/span>cattered amid a relentless barrage of news about COVID-19 case surges, quarantine orders, and medical supply shortages on Twitter this week, some happy stories softened the blows: Swans had returned to deserted Venetian canals. Dolphins too. And a group of elephants had sauntered through a village in Yunnan, China, gotten drunk off corn wine, and passed out in a tea garden.<\/p>\n

These reports of wildlife triumphs in countries hard-hit by the novel coronavirus got hundreds of thousands of retweets. They went viral on Instagram and Tik Tok. They made news headlines. If there\u2019s a silver lining of the pandemic, people said, this was it – animals were bouncing back, running free in a humanless world.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n

The swans in the viral posts regularly appear<\/a> in the canals of Burano, a small island in the greater Venice metropolitan area, where the photos were taken. The \u201cVenetian\u201d dolphins<\/a> were filmed at a port in Sardinia<\/a>, in the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds of miles away. No one has figured out where the drunken elephant photos<\/a> came from, but a Chinese news report<\/a> debunked the viral posts: While elephants did recently come through a village in Yunnan Province, China, their presence isn\u2019t out of the norm, they aren\u2019t the elephants in the viral photos, and they didn\u2019t get drunk and pass out in a tea field.<\/p>\n

The phenomenon highlights how quickly eye-popping, too-good-to-be-true rumors can spread in times of crisis. People are compelled to share posts that make them emotional<\/a>. When we\u2019re feeling stressed, joyous animal footage can be an irresistible salve. The spread of social phenomena is so powerful, 2016 research shows<\/a>, that it can follow same models that trace the contagion of epidemics.<\/p>\n

This is an excerpt from an article by Natasha Daly, originally published on <\/strong>National Geographic<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports of wildlife triumps have gone viral over the past month, as we desperately search for silver linings and light-hearted animal pictures and stories to cheer us up. But unfortunately, many of the animal stories that have been shared thousands of times on social media, just aren’t true. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,534,140],"tags":[3563],"yoast_head":"\nFake animal news on social media amid pandemic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Reports of wildlife triumps have gone viral over the past month, as we desperately search for silver linings and light-hearted animal pictures and stories to cheer us up. 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