Social Media feed items simulate real-time public conversation during a crisis — surfacing rumours, sentiment, and misinformation to add reputational pressure and urgency to the simulation.
What are Social Media feed items?
Social Media feed items simulate how information spreads publicly during a crisis — the rumours, reactions, and speculation that appear on social platforms before, during, and after an incident becomes official news. They let you surface sentiment from individual users, influencers, journalists, or communities as the scenario unfolds.
Used well, social media items add urgency and reputational pressure. They force participants to factor public perception and communication strategy into their response — not just the technical or operational details of the incident itself.
Configuring a Social Media item
Add a Social Media Post item type to the feed. The default configuration looks like this:
Name
The display name of the account posting the content. Use realistic names that reflect different types of social media users — individual members of the public, employees, industry commentators, or journalists. The name helps participants assess credibility and intent at a glance.
Handle (optional)
The social media username shown alongside the post. Handles can hint at authenticity or influence. For example:
- @orchidcorpIT
- @cyberwatcher
- @techjournalist
A recognisable or authoritative-looking handle increases the perceived impact of a post.
Content
The text of the post. Hashtags are optional. Keep posts short, informal, and realistic — they should read like something you'd actually see on social media. Content might raise questions or suspicions, share rumours or partial facts, express frustration, or hint at insider knowledge. Hashtags can signal trending topics and amplify the sense of spread (for example, #ransomware or #databreach).
Popularity
A scale from 0–5 that controls how much engagement the post appears to receive. Rather than setting likes or reposts manually, you pick a level that represents how widely the post is spreading:
- 0 — very low visibility, largely ignored
- 1 — limited engagement, small audience
- 2 — moderate attention, starting to circulate
- 3 — high engagement, gaining traction
- 4 — very high engagement, viral within relevant communities
- 5 — extreme reach, mainstream attention
Use popularity to signal reputational pressure and narrative momentum — even when the information in the post is incomplete or unverified.
Deliver after X seconds
The delay before the post appears once the scenario reaches this inject. Use timing deliberately: surface rumours before official communication goes out, escalate sentiment if the team's response is slow, or show how narratives shift over time. Early social posts often arrive before any news coverage — and that's exactly the kind of pressure worth recreating.