Archives for December 2011

Strategic or Scary? Public Diplomacy Commission Cut

After Tripoli fell to anti-Gaddafi forces last August, I remembered a particularly clairvoyant blog post/radio interview I ran across a couple of months earlier. The blog post/radio interview gave a spot on analysis of how information could be used to empower Libyans to take back their own country. When I went back to the blog to find out if its author had any new predictions, I found out the Mountain Runner blog was on hiatus because its author had recently … [Read more...]

Did No Social Media Policy Lead to Racist Remarks?

A dozen or more New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers could get dooced for posting offensive comments on Facebook calling West Indian Day parade-goers in Brooklyn “savages,” "filth," and “animals." (Dooced, in case you don't know, means fired from one's job as a result of one's actions on the Internet.) The New York Times reported last week at least 20 comments maligning parade-goers on a “No More West Indian Day Detail” Facebook page were from NYPD … [Read more...]

Video Clip of the Month: Teenager’s Snipe Goes Viral

A teenager's snarky, potty-mouthed tweet about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback contains important Web 2.0 lessons for us all: Anything you write on social media, no matter how small your audience, has the potential to go viral. Trying to control your message behind the scenes is not only futile, it could backfire in a big way. Check out the CNN video below, my pick for December 2011 video clip of the month, on the latest most-famous tweet in the United States. To … [Read more...]