FBI Investigating NBC Twitter Hack
This past weekend, 9/11 chatter online was almost inescapable. The memories were on everyone’s minds, and the Internet became a common space to share experiences. But NBC had a different issue on their mind. Their Twitter account was hacked Friday and was falsely reporting attacks at ground zero.
The group responsible for the hacking, The Script Kiddies, is an offshoot of hacker group Anonymous and this is not their first offense. The “Kiddies” are also responsible for the Fox News hacking in July, which falsely reported President Obama’s death. The FBI is now investigating the case but with the nation’s increased attention to news last week, the hack was very widely publicized. It caused panic and confusion when it first happened, and in turn, anger and shock when uncovered as a hack. It has also brought up the issue of crisis management in social media yet again. Shortly after the hack occurred, the NBC News account was deactivated by Twitter, as was The Script Kiddies.
Crisis management in social media is a widely discussed issue, because frankly, every community moderator has dealt with it. Every community can get a little sticky at times. On the smallest level, a moderator must jump to action to appease an upset community member at any time. On the largest scale, it’s important to know what to do if your account were to get hacked like NBC.
Because of the nature of the Tweet, and the target being NBC News, Twitter was able to catch the hack and deactivate the account within eight minutes of finding out about it. A great job on Twitters end, but what about when it comes to NBCs crisis management? How do you address a community that, earlier in the day, was being told of fake terrorist attacks through your Twitter account. NBC decided on this tweet:
“Our account is secure and under control. Apologize for the scare. We value your trust.” They also thanked people for spreading the word and not sharing bad information.”
NBC also gained 40,000 followers due to the hack. Of course there is potential that most of these new followers were curious to see the hacked messages, but part of it was undoubtedly due to the way NBC handled itself post-hack. By thanking their followers and addressing the issue head on, they were transparent enough that their followers felt loyalty to the news station. When dealing with crisis management in social media, being transparent is one of the most important things to remember. While it might be difficult at times, it’s important that the community member feels that they understand what is going on and that they feel comfortable about it.
What do you guys think? Do you think NBC handled this situation well? Or could it have gone better?
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