In an Australian first, a columnist for the Murdoch press has successfully identified a Twitter parody account. The Daily Telegraph’s Jacob Willis was adding the final touches to his weekly column “Willis and Won’ts” when a colleague emailed him a tweet ostensibly posted by ABC Managing Director Mark Scott.

Willis had initially intended to reference the tweet in his column as the tweet appeared to support his general thesis alleging waste and profligacy at the ABC, but after making further inquiries he came to question its legitimacy.

“I logged on to view Mr Scott’s Twitter page myself in case he’d written anything else which might be useful and I noticed he appeared to be swearing rather profusely at Chaser troupe member Chas Licciardello. I thought this seemed a bit out of character for him, so I made a few more inquiries and it turned out the account was a fake.”

The dearth of evidence in support of Willis suppositions following his discovery of the fake Twitter account did not induce him to revise his conclusions.

Nathan Lentern

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Categories: Media, Social Media

Tags: Nathan Lentern, News Corp, Twitter