More than a quarter of Japanese citizens were exposed to rumours or falsehoods on social media following natural disasters, according to a new survey, with some admitting they inadvertently hampered emergency responses by sharing the misinformation.
The study was conducted by the Japanese Red Cross Society in the run-up to Disaster Prevention Day on Monday. The annual event commemorates the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, a magnitude-8 tremor that struck some 60km southwest of Tokyo and caused widespread devastation across the region. As many as 140,000 people died in the disaster.
The Red Cross survey indicated that 25.5 per cent of the 1,200 people quizzed across Japan had received deliberately false information through their social media feeds in the aftermath of previous disasters. Of that total, more than 45 per cent said they sought to verify the information through other sources, while 7.5 per cent said they flagged the report as inaccurate.
Nearly 5 per cent, however, said they acted on reports that they later realised were false and more than 8 per cent said they shared the erroneous information with other people.
The power of unchecked claims on the internet to influence people was demonstrated as recently as January 2024, when a massive earthquake tsunami struck the Noto peninsula on the Sea of Japan. Within hours, the first social media posts appeared claiming that criminal gangs were roaming the devastated area looting damaged houses.
Elsewhere, individuals posted false claims that they were trapped under debris and needed help, diverting rescue teams, while others messaged that the damage was far more severe in some areas than it actually was, causing panic. At least one website was unmasked for claiming to have been set up by a survivor of the disaster and appealing for donations.
There were even 250,000 rumours posted on social media that the quake was man-made, including that it was the result of a nuclear test by North Korea.
