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DJ\'s in Royal Hoax Flee Social Media After Nurse Dies

Step one of crisis management in the social media age: delete the Twitter account. At least for a while.

On Friday, many Twitter users around the world found their feeds filled with outrage over the apparent suicide of a nurse at a London hospital that was caring for Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

The nurse, who was identified by officials at King Edward VII Hospital as Jacintha Saldanha, 46, a married mother of two, had been duped by two Australian radio D.J.'s making a prank call.

Another nurse to whom Ms. Saldanha transferred the call revealed private medical information about Ms. Middleton, who was being treated for morning sickness related to her pregnancy.

Anger was quickly directed at the D.J.'s, Mel Greig and Michael Christian of the Sydney station 2Day FM. The station apologized for the prank on Wednesday, but according to the London newspaper The Daily Mail, the D.J.'s continued to boast about it online.

Among several Twitter messages that the Web site of The Mail said had been posted today, Mr. Christian wrote: “If you'd said to me ‘MC this week will finish with you making international headlines' I would have punched you in the face. #RoyalPrank”

By midday Friday, the D.J.'s accounts had disappeared from Twitter and Facebook, and a Facebook post from the station about the pranks had apparently also been taken down, giving critics on Twitter even more fodder for their complaints:

But the accounts could always return.

In what has become a familiar pattern, public figures who find themselves under social-media fire quickly disable their accounts, seemingly to wait out the damage, only to reactivate them once the controversy cools down.

The R&B singer Chris Brown, for example, has quit Twitter at least twice, most recently last month after making rude comments to a female comedian who had ridiculed him. But he returned within a few days.

Ms. Greig is a semi-celebrity in Australia who had appeared on an Australian version of the reality TV show “The Amazing Race” before joining the station earlier this year. According to The Daily Beast, Mr. Christian joined the radio show “just a few days ago, after laboring for several years in relative obscurity presenting a breakfast show on a  local Melbourne channel.”