Jackson Effect

The Jackson effect is an Internet phenomenon where a dramatic news event is initially indistinguishable from a coordinated denial of service attack.
Origin
The Jackson effect originated from the 2009 death of Michael Jackson where the Google search engine mistook the spike in search traffic for a coordinated denial of service attack . High volumes of traffic surrounding the death of Michael Jackson overloaded servers and internet service providers causing service to be very slow or stop completely. Google originally believed it was under attack by a virus attempting such a DoS attack replacing any searches for Jackson with, 'Your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.' Twitter reported that its servers crashed due to users posting so many "Tweets" at one time which they say equated to 'more than 100,000 posts an hour.'
Consequences
The consequences of the Jackson effect are generally short-lived. Google displayed an error page on some searches for twenty-five minutes in the aftermath of Michael Jackon's death, before service resumed as normal. Others have used the term to refer to public opinion, with Ami Isseroff noting that, 'An important lesson of the Michael Jackson effect for Middle East policy makers is that public opinion is a short term phenomenon.'

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