  The transmission of news stories in global culture has changed fundamentally
in the last three decades. The general public are alerted to breaking stories
on increasingly rapid timescales, and the discussion/distortion of facts by
writers, bloggers, commenters and Internet users can also be extremely fast.
The narrative of a news item no longer belongs to a small cadre of conventional
media outlets, but is instead synthesised to some level by the public as they
select where and how they consume news.
  The IAA Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) post-detection
protocols, initially drafted in 1989 and updated in 2010, were written to guide
SETI scientists in the event of detecting evidence of extraterrestrial
intelligence, but do not give guidance as to how scientists should prepare to
navigate this media maelstrom. The protocols assume communications channels
between scientists and the public still resemble those of 1989, which were
specifically one-way with a narrative controlled by a select few media outlets.
  Modern SETI researchers must consider this modern paradigm for consumption of
news by the public, using social media and other non-traditional outlets, when
planning and executing searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. We propose
additions to the post-detection protocols as they pertain to the use of
internet and social media, as well as pre-search protocols. It is our belief
that such protocols are necessary if there is to be a well-informed, sane
global conversation amongst the world's citizens following the discovery of
intelligent life beyond the Earth.
