On July 7, the CCTV news channel's "Common Concern" column published an article titled "The Truth is Coming, Internet Rumors Start with Their Routines!" The Truth Behind the "Car Accident of Three Children" Is ......" reported a typical case of online rumors by the Shanghai public security organs, and the relevant disposal has achieved good legal and social effects.
In May this year, the Shanghai Pudong police found that some netizens posted a short video of a local car accident during an online inspection, and marked the text "There was a car accident on Yonghui Road, Datuan Town, Pudong New Area, Shanghai, and three children died", which was released on May 12 this year. The Shanghai Pudong police attached great importance to it and immediately launched a verification of the content of the short video.
After the traffic police accident system verification and the relevant responsible police, there has been no such accident in Datuan Town, Pudong New Area, Shanghai recently. After careful analysis of the video, it was found that the video was stitched together from three different scenes of the car accident, and the lane information on the pictures and the seasonal attire of the video characters did not match the reality.
Based on the above clues, the Shanghai Pudong police immediately launched further investigations, and soon found the online blogger Yu who posted the rumor, and took her to the local police station for investigation and interrogation.
According to the police investigation, in early May, Internet blogger Yu saw a video of a car accident, in which several children were knocked down, because she herself lives in Datuan Town, Pudong New Area, in order to increase the authenticity of the video, without verification, fabricated false information that "three children died in a car accident on Yonghui Road, Datuan Town, Pudong New Area, Shanghai".
Yu's purpose in doing this is to gain attention and try to profit from this increase in followers. The fake video attracted more than 7,500 views as soon as it was released, causing a bad social impact.
In response to Yu's illegal act of fabricating and spreading online rumors, the Shanghai Pudong police imposed an administrative penalty on online blogger Yu in accordance with Article 25 of the "People's Republic of China Public Security Administration Punishment Law". In addition, due to the timely handling by the police, the online rumor video involved in the case did not cause widespread dissemination and forwarding.
After analysis, it was found that the rumor-mongering routine of online blogger Yu was roughly divided into the following steps:
1. Enhance the topicality
Choose "3 children killed in a car accident" as the theme of the video to attract the public's attention
2. Increase credibility
Label the video as the real location of "Datuan Town" to add credibility to the rumored video
3. Earn empathy
fabricated the logic of "adults work for life, and children go home from school alone", which caused the logic of being hit in a car accident, so as to win the sympathy and attention of netizens
Eventually, a video of a rumor, unsubstantiated, was fabricated and posted online.
The public security organs will continue to crack down on illegal and criminal acts that disrupt public order by spreading rumors in accordance with the law, and ask netizens to go online in a civilized manner in accordance with laws and regulations, consciously resist online rumors, and jointly create a clear and orderly cyberspace.
Source: Cyber Security Bureau, Ministry of Public Security