THE ATMOSPHERE was a tense one as I fired up the car and headed into High Park. Word was that the riots, which had already taken their toll on Liverpool a night earlier, had reached Southport.

This was, of course, via Twitter, and in the end of not one of the places in the resort alleged to have been "kicking off" saw any sort of public disorder, looting or general criminality on Tuesday night. The thing with rumours on Twitter is that they are usually just that... rumours.

Twitter's response to the riots was one of the weirdest social media phenomena I've ever encountered, with millions of individuals tweeting en-masse about riots that weren't happening. In Southport's case several users got in touch with us via our @champnews account to report disturbances in the suburb of High Park, at the Central 12 shopping centre and in Marshside. We investigated further and found none of them to be true, so it won't be something you'll be reading about in next week's Champion.

What particularly amazed me was that - by asking fellow tweeters what they'd heard - we got accused of "fueling the fire".

Writing on the social networking site, David Stanbrook asked us:

"Why are you fueling the fire ? Another rumour that'll spread and lead to people on the streets."

A very good point, but the last thing we'd want to do is spread rumours. As a local newspaper, it's our job to find out what is - or isn't - happening locally, which is why we investigated further to discover the truth behind the rumours. It's a just a shame that in trying to find out more, our online appeal for more information got misinterpreted as rumours themselves.

There were, on what was a tense night for Twitter and for the north west, just two Twitter users you wanted to follow for genuine information; @lancspolice and @merseypolice, the official accounts for the two police forces covering our circulation area. That's why we pointed our 550 followers in their direction for the facts - and not the fiction - about the riots.

The Twitter rumours about riots in Southport were, like so many others, completely untrue. Something I'm glad about, to be honest.

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