Let’s assume you are too young to remember (or to have heard about) the 1938 infamous broadcast by Orson Wells based on the novel by H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. Although the radio broadcast took place on Halloween, it could have easily been an April Fool’s Day prank. What made the broadcast so believable was the format; it involved a series of news bulletins detailing the invasion of planet Earth by Martians.  The broadcast led to varying degrees of public panic during the transmission followed by even more uproar afterwards. It took several days to debunk the prank since we didn’t have Twitter or newsfeeds to instantly clarify what was real and what was not. Orson Well’s prank could be viewed as an early example of a social media virus run amuck. Read more...