Social Media-rologists
The advent of social media has revolutionized society. It is now possible to share information with many people in a short amount of time. Prior to social media platforms, it could sometimes take hours to get the top news stories of the day (with the exception of special reports and wall-to-wall coverage). Now, millions of people can be aware of major breaking news stories within a matter of minutes. Of course, this also includes the many "social media influencers" who have large followings and regularly post updates for their audience. Some of these influencers are weather enthusiasts that post their own forecasts and do their own wall-to-wall coverage of ongoing severe weather. Unfortunately, a lot of the publicly available information is unjustified hyperbole.
More often than not, the primary motivation for creating an account on a social media platform is to accumulate likes, shares, comments, and followers. This is evident in the fact that many (but not all) storm chasers are engaging in extremely risky behavior to capture dramatic footage, which then goes viral and grows their audience. And, because there is competition between these storm chasers, there's an (unfortunate) incentive to take bigger risks than "the other guys". As if that weren't enough, many storm chasers also attempt to grow their following by regularly posting excessive hyperbole to get "panic shares" (i.e., posts that make people think they would be grossly negligent if they didn't share the post with others).
That's the main point of this article, to draw attention to this growing problem and to offer up a solution on how to deal with it.
First things first, it's arguably worth reiterating the golden rule of the Internet: anyone can post anything at any time, so keep that in mind whenever you read an article (including this one) or watch a video. And, it's especially important to keep that in mind whenever you encounter something that brings about urges to panic. If you see something that makes you freak out, it is imperative to keep a level head and think about things objectively. Not only will this help you identify misinformation, but it will also help you resist phishing scams and online fraud.
This rule becomes murkier when dealing with hyperbolic weather forecasts. For example, a prediction that 100 tornadoes will occur tomorrow isn't necessarily wrong. It might be extremely unlikely, but the probability is not necessarily 0. Because of this, it's harder to reliably identify the bad apples, especially since these outrageous predictions will come true (at least to some degree) every once in a blue moon.
A lot of people will learn about these "social media-rologists" (a term used by James Spann) from an acquaintance (be it a coworker, friend, or family member). Usually, someone will find a fear-mongering post and will share it with you to "make sure that you're aware of what's happening". If you receive a message like this, check the post history of the account. If they post things frequently and most of their posts are hyperbolic, they're probably just fishing for clicks, likes, shares, and comments. In which case, check with other sources that you trust. Most meteorologists at local television and radio stations are pretty level-headed (though there are exceptions to this rule), but the National Weather Service is usually the best source of information. Why? Because they have 0 incentive to create unnecessary hyperbole. They will get their salary no matter how much attention their social media posts get. For these social media influencers, they need the high degree of interactions in order to get paid, so there is incentive to generate hyperbole at every opportunity.
There are also red flags that routinely show up in a lot of "social media-rology" accounts. Some accounts will take a observations from a past weather event, change things up a little, and then post it while claiming it was their prediction from some time ago. Always check the timestamp of every post and make sure the forecast was actually posted before the event in question. If their posts exclude any information needed to evaluate their forecasts or they only let you to see their most accurate forecasts, it's probably not a source to trust.
Other red flags include unofficial terminology or categories, such as "EF6 tornado" or "category 6 hurricane". Sometimes, you'll also see people start off with something factual or reasonable and then mix in falsehoods and hyperbole. This can be harder to recognize, so it's best to seek out additional information from other sources to corroborate or disprove what someone is claiming. Sometimes, pasting each individual sentence into a Google search can help you sort out the accuracies from the inaccuracies.
Another big (and common) red flag involves the posting of weather model outputs that are for something 100+ hours into the future. Often times, the most outrageous claims are made for something 200+ hours into the future, and that's because weather model results become increasingly ludicrous as you get deeper into the future. On a good day, a meteorologist can realistically tell you what will happen up to 7 days into the future. On an average day, it is possible to realistically determine what will happen up to 4 days in the future. The atmosphere is a very complicated system, which is constantly interacting with everything else on this planet (including the bodies of water, plants, deserts, animals, land masses, and urban landscapes). Compound this with the fact that we can't readily measure the atmosphere at every location on the planet and every point in time. More discussion of this in Meteorology Ain't Easy.
With that in mind, if you see someone claiming an apocalyptic weather event is going to happen 8 or more days in the future, they're almost certainly going to be wrong. If they're making a prediction up to 7 days into the future, the data they're using might be realistic to an extent, but it's practically impossible to predict the occurrence of extreme weather at this range. By "extreme weather", I mean things like "tornado outbreaks", "major hurricanes", "ice (freezing rain) storms", "blizzards", "major floods", etc.
Another thing that sometimes happens is these social media-rologists will take photos, videos, or data from a past weather event and claim that it is tied to the nonsensical prediction(s) that they've made. For example, they might predict a major tornado outbreak tomorrow and then use footage or maps of the April 27th, 2011 super outbreak to convince you that their prediction was correct, when, in actuality, one or two weak and short-lived tornadoes may have occurred.
Unfortunately, some (but not all) news outlets have engaged in this unnecessary hyperbole for the same reasons as a social media influencer (likes, clicks, shares, comments, and revenue). I'm not going to name specifics, but you'll probably recognize them by their habitually wild predictions that rarely come true. In fact, many of the red flags discussed for social media posts also apply to news articles.
Usually, the best way to identify an untrustworthy "social media-rologist" is if they consistently hype up everything or close to everything. If you're following such a social media account and they display this habit, it might be best to simply unfollow them (unless you're looking for something to laugh at). Just remember: if an acquaintance sends you a link to a hyperbolic post, check the poster's history. If they've been consistently making similar posts on a frequent basis (i.e. every day or every week), they're probably not trustworthy.
All that said, you shouldn't just automatically ignore anything perceived as hyperbolic. Obviously, catastrophic weather events do happen, but they don't happen nearly as often as these hype train conductors would have you believe. If you see a National Weather Service post that comes across hyperbolic, it's something you should take seriously, because most National Weather Service meteorologists hate sounding false alarms. They realize that this erodes trust and can lead to apathy when something serious really does happen. Sure, they'll get things wrong too, but they won't post a prediction for something catastrophic without some degree of justification.
Furthermore, this is not to say that every social media-rologist is untrustworthy. Some of them share information from the National Weather Service and explain the significance of it. Others will produce their own independent forecasts that are based on valid reasoning and not a desire to accrue a massive online following. And, a few of them are actual meteorologists who just do the public posting on the side to help combat this problem and/or to help spread the message about a potentially dangerous weather situation.
It might be tempting to just ban the irresponsible hyperbole, but this is not something that can actually be enforced. After all, who is to say what is necessary hyperbole and what is unnecessary hyperbole? The best way to deal with this problem is to educate people on how to identify red flags and remind them that what they see on the Internet isn't necessarily truthful. Like anything else on the Internet, it's best to cross-check claims with other sources and other perspectives to determine what is actually going on.