Monday, June 29, 2015

Social media in government: 23 to 29 June

Summary


Just a note - I’m off for a few weeks. Exploring some personal and professional changes, including this blog. I'll stay active on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. 

The UK launched a site to help  users stop online abuse and raided several illegal “stores” advertised on Facebook. Germany hosted an event that looked at social media and terrorism (and Brussels held a similar event online). France protested Uber while also supporting the French citizens dealing with yet another terrorist attack. 

Tunisians and families of tourists in Tunisia - as well as Kuwait - are reeling from more IS-inspired murder. US President Obama plans to visit Ethiopia, despite human rights activists online complaints. Ghana’s President likes his party’s social media a lot more than his official social media. Burundi’s journalists are using Facebook and Soundcloud to get around censorship. Zimbabwe’s President kicked out a Cabinet member allegedly due to his infamous Tweets. 

Saudis are exposing corruption in the health system using cell phones and social media - and they are getting results. A journalist and a data analyst look at an Iranian-Saudi dust-up on social media. Syria’s regime makes a big social media mistake that allows netizens to point out - yet again - how bad things are in the country. Turkish students are trying to provide objective real-time news since the mainstream news is, well,  not doing that. Armenians are protesting electric bills online and offline, despite official attempts to dissuade them. South Korea’s netizens tried to use social media to fill the gap left by their Health officials. Indian politicians are getting into serious trouble online - but is it enough to clean up corruption or is it a bit silly? North Korea has (un)officially banned Instagram. Malaysians are debating 24-hour cafe closures on social media while officials are asking them to be more careful about what they believe on social media. A Thai university is refusing a potential professor as a result of her social media protests - or is it her gender identification? An Australian state Premier welcomes asylum seekers via Twitter.  

Another  Canadian official loses his upward mobility after a poorly-conceived Facebook post. The USA has another GOP Presidential candidate who is…so white? Then several studies and interviews out about how to combat terrorism online - plus another report on how privacy seems to not matter at all to the average American Millennial. And Snapchat wants to get into politics for 2016. 

Then some nice summaries on Ecuador and Venezuela’s online and offline protests. 

Europe

The European Communication Summit for 2015 was held the 25th and 26th of June in Brussels, Belgium. Discussion can be found online using the hashtag #ecs15.

Themes included:

45,000 to 50,000 IS-affiliated social media accounts churn out an estimated 100,000 tweets a day, sources suggest, and a new pan-European unit at Europol is set to find and delete these accounts. The team starts work the first of July. "We will have to combine what we see online, with our own intelligence and that that is shared with us by European police services, so we can be a bit more targeted and identify who the key user accounts are... and concentrate on closing them down," Europol's director, Rob Wainwright, told the BBC. Listen to a BBC documentary on the Islamic State's social media work here. 

Sources: +BBC News


On June 29th, Counter Extremism Project Europe (CEP Europe) launched its Brussels/Berlin operations to fight online extremism through working with both governments and the private sector. At 3 pm Brussels time, CEP Europe will host a Twitter Q&A with the group’s European leaders. Tweeters will include  “Dr. August Hanning, decorated diplomat and former head of the German intelligence service who will head CEP operations in Berlin; Jiri Schneider (@JiriSchneider), former First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Czech Republic and a member of the CEP Europe Advisory board; former U.S. Senator, Democratic nominee for vice-president in 2000 and CEP Advisory Board member Joseph Lieberman ( @JoeLieberman); and Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, the CEO of CEP and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management Reform.” Follow @FightExtremism and the hashtag #CVE  #CEPEurope to read the comments. 



Sources: @FightExtremism


The Guardian captured the negotiations on the Euro-crisis live. Check out their Tweet-infused coverage, curated by @graemewearden, here. Journalists from Brussels and Athens contributed to the coverage, quoting politicians and protestors and translating Greek concerns both literally and figuratively into 140 characters. 

Sources: @graemewearden, +The Guardian 

The United Kingdom

The UK Government has launched The Stop Online Abuse site (@OnlineAbuseUK) last week to help users identify and report online trolling to the proper authorities. The site “offers help to people facing online harassment, revenge porn, hate speech, sexual harassment and blackmail.”  The site also aims to help identify what constitutes online abuse:  “it is often obvious that someone is behaving in an abusive way, but it’s not always clear where the boundary falls between expressing a point of view and being abusive…one person’s right to expression is limited by a balance with another person’s right not to be threatened or abused”.

Sources: @ameliagentleman, @OnlineAbuseUK

The National Trading Standards eCrime Team and the National Markets Group implemented Operation Jasper, conducting 12 raids on locations selling counterfeit items advertised via Facebook. The social network has provided authorities with plenty of information about the users indulging in illegal sales, and over 2000 letters of warning have been delivered with 22 investigations still ongoing. Meanwhile, over 4000 Facebook listings and 20 Facebook profiles have been forcibly removed. “Operation Jasper has struck an important psychological blow against criminals who believe they can operate with impunity on social media platforms without getting caught,” Lord Toby Harris, Chair of National Trading Standards, commented in an official statement. “It shows we can track them down, enter their homes, seize their goods and computers and arrest and prosecute them, even if they are operating anonymously online.”

Sources: @rsmirke

Germany

At the DW's Global Media Forum 2015 (#dw_gmf) last week, speakers discussed the ways in which terrorists use social media to research and target victims of their propaganda. Gulmina Bilal (@GulminaBilal), executive director of Individualland (@individualland), an NGO in Pakistan, noted that many terrorists lure netizens through “fun” posts expertly crafted for the age and interests of their desired audience. Maria Ressa (@maria_ressa), CEO of Rappler (@rapplerdotcom), a social news network, cited a Stanford University study which said social media users are more susceptible to such content, “when you're on social media, you have elevated levels of certain chemicals like Dopamine... Oxytocin, the love hormone.” Terrorist also use promises of a job and money in places like Somalia and Afghanistan. "They try to recruit through trying to offer financial packages. There are lot of unemployed people who go and join them," explained Lotfullah Najafizadah (@LNajafizada), Director of Afghanistan's Tolo News (@TOLOnews.) Bakari Machumu (@bmachumu) cautioned that the need to fight online terrorism should not be used to justify general censorship in media. Machumu noted that in Tanzania, cybercrime laws have been used to justify confiscating journalists’ computers. 






Sources: @DeutscheWelle

France

After the terrorist attack in France last week, the mayor of Bordeaux took to Twitter to calm his citizens and denounce the violence.
Meanwhile, taxis in Paris continue to protest the social networking and ride service Uber. After the protests turned violent last week, Parisian authorities took two of the bosses of Uber in France "into custody over an investigation into alleged 'illicit activity' linked to the company’s low-budget UberPOP app."

Sources: +FRANCE 24


Africa

Tunisia

The terrible terrorist attacks in #Sousse were, unfortunately captured widely on social media. At the same time, acts of bravery by hotel staff were also filmed and covered in Twitter and Facebook. While the country struggles to save its tourism industry (already in jeopardy after the attack in Bardo earlier this year, despite an online campaign encouraging tourists to visit the country), stories like the ones below are being shared online.


Sources: +The Fold from The Washington Post

Ethiopia

President Obama plans to visit Addis Ababa in late July to meet with African Union leaders and the Ethiopian Government. Social media has used the occasion to highlight human rights abuses and the oppression of journalists online and off by the Ethiopian Government, suggesting Obama maybe shouldn’t honour Ethiopia with an official visit. 

Sources: @ndesanjo

Ghana

In Ghana, rumour has it that President John Dramani Mahama (@JDMahama) is unsatisfied with his official communication unit and has been unfavourably comparing the government officers with his political party’s social media volunteers. President Mahama wants the government officials to do a better job of praising the Government’s successes, and he has allegedly threatened to make changes inside the official unit. President Mahama Tweets and uses Facebook - he signs Facebook posts that he writes himself on his official page with his initials. On both social networks, he favours the hashtags ‪#‎ChangingLives‬  and ‪#‎TransformingGhana‬. Mahama also promotes two applications: Improve your neighbourhood on Facebook, which allows Ghanaians to share what they most need in their region with the President, and another app currently offline. As covered earlier in this blog, the President has come under criticism as recent power cuts have spurred celebrity-endorsed online and offline protests using the hashtag #dumsormuststop. “Part of the difficulty this government has faced so far as information management and dissemination is concerned could be blamed on the merger of the Information Ministry with the Communication Ministry. The Communication Ministry is a huge entity on its own so adding Information to it, makes the job there very difficult. You know ICT is the in-thing today, so therefore, the main function of the Communication Ministry has automatically dwarf the information aspect of it, and you know, the head of that Ministry and also as official presidential spokesperson is creating problems,” a source allegedly told a Ghanaian website. Ghana will hold elections in 2016. 

Sources: +Ghana web 

Burundi

Since the political unrest over Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza (@PierreNkurunziz) running for an un-Constitutional third term, authorities have cracked down on independent media, shutting down radio stations and news centers across the country. Fifty reporters have even fled Burundi's borders. But SOS Media (@SOSMediasBDI), a group of anonymous journalists, have opened up a Facebook and a Soundcloud account to post articles and radio reports online. According to Quartz, "[t]he ten-person team formed after May 13th when a coup attempt announced on independent radio led to stricter media repression." Given that 68% of Burundians live under the poverty line, there is not a lot of Internet penetration outside of the capital Bujumbura, limiting the users who can hear the independent updates. “Right now SOS Medias is very limited to certain people, mostly the intellectuals in Bujumbura, who can access it,” an SOS reporter told Quartz. “So we’re trying to also post written reports on Facebook because more people use it.”


#Bujumbura - Vendredi 26 juin 2015 -Les préparatifs pour les cérémonies de célébration des 53 ans de l'indépendance du...
Posted by SOS Médias Burundi on Friday, June 26, 2015


Sources: @SOSMediasBDI, @cegoldbaum, +Quartz


Zimbabwe


President Robert Mugabe kicked Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) out of his Cabinet last week. Moyo has been an active and angry Twitter user, and rumour has it Moyo’s Tweets were causing the Government more headache and popularity. Moyo regularly justified his rants by saying he gave what he got, but media expert and lawyer Chris Mhike disagreed, stating,  “As Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services (assuming that he still holds that portfolio), Prof. Moyo would also do well to lead by example through respecting the ethics of mass communication and therefore refraining from venomous language.” In addition to potentially provoking a diplomatic incident with his incendiary Tweets, Mhike notes Moyo also regularly broke the law in Zimbabwe. “While he commendably objects to the existence of criminal defamation in Zimbabwe, that law is still officially valid, according to the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe and in terms of the Criminal Law [Codification and Reform] Act. The recent conviction of Tatenda Machingauta who had insulted Hon. Joseph Chinotimba on Whatsapp is a clear example of the applicability of criminal law to those who use offensive language on social media platforms,” Mhike explained. 

Sources: @thestandardzim

Middle East

Saudi Arabia


The director of King Fahd Hospital, a major Saudi hospital in Jeddah, and the “director of nurses and maintenance and cleaning supervisors were also removed from their positions” after a video of cockroaches in a patient’s room went viral in Saudi social media. Health Minister Khalid al-Falih ordered that the hospital be shut down and operations moved to another building pending an investigation into the situation. (Former health minister Ahmed Khatib lost his job after an angry argument he had with a patient’s father was caught on a cell phone and shared to YouTube. In another viral video titled  “Head of Najran health [department] expels a female citizen out of his office,” a health official yells as he expels a woman and her mother from a hospital - this also prompted an official Tweet that authorities are looking into the situation. The head of royal protocol Mohammad al-Tibaishi was also replaced after being caught on camera phone slapping a photojournalist. 
In short, Saudi leaders better be careful of what they say, or at least which devices are out when they say something. 




Sources: @Aj_asma

Iran

As covered by this blog in May, BBC Trending covered how a Kurdish woman's suicide in Iran led to an Iran-Saudi Arabia feud in social media as Saudis (who speak Arabic) co-opted an Iranian (Iranians speak Persian) hashtag and shared images online that suggested an offline protest was larger than it actually was. A good data-driven review of the entire online episode can be found here, compiled by Amir Rashidi (@Ammir) and Simin Kargar (@SiminK_).

Sources: @Ammir, @SiminK_

Syria

The current Syrian leadership attempted to generate a bit of positive social media coverage with the hashtag #SummerInSyria. "Now that #summer is upon us, snap us your moments of summer in #Syria using the hashtag #SummerInSyria,” the country’s news agency posted. The replies are dark as Syrians share images of the bloody civil war that has destroyed the country. Even the US Embassy participated in pointing out how devestating Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been for Syrians. The UK’s Telegraph notes, “According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, there has been 56 major massacres to date, 49 of which were carried out by government forces or allied militia.”  



Sources: @leloveluck

Asia

Turkey

In Turkey, university students have begun 140journos-- a crowd-sourced, independent citizen journalism network sharing real-time, on the spot and verified news. “We had to create our own alternative media because mainstream channels were all acting in favor of the government; seeing no evil, hearing no evil, speaking no evil,” Melda Şener, an editor explained in an interview. “The content we share is always explained in plain neutral language, which is one of the unique features of 140journos. This way, politically polarized groups can have actual information about each other because we cover every piece of their news and stories, so no one can be furious about us taking a particular side.”

Sources: +Todays Zaman

Armenia

Armenians are protesting “a 17 June decision by the state utilities commission to increase electricity tariffs from the beginning of August by more than 16%.” Police tried to disperse protestors with water cannons, arresting 200 demonstrators, and this only spurred increase interest in the protests. Demonstrators have remained onsite, outside Government buildings, around the clock since June seventeenth. Social media - particularly the hashtag #ElectricYerevan - has been used to promote and organise the protests, especially in light of what many see as Russian media’s attempt to suggest the protests are in some way violent or malicious. 
Sources: +BBC News


South Korea

The  Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak last month has prompted a flurry of social media throughout the globe. But in South Korea, netizens felt the Government was less than forthcoming with useful MERS-related information, so citizens took to social media to find the information that they felt they needed. Daumsoft (@Daumsoft), a big data company located in the country, noted that  “patient,” “hospital” and “contraction” and “MERs” led social media conversation topics last month. Park Soon-young, the head of the IT company Datasquare, and Lee Doo-hee, the CEO of the IT company likeLion, created a map of where MERs cases were being treated that users could access via Facebook. The map was remarkably similar to the official figures, finally released by authorities. After the Government shared the information, Lee and Park took their map down. Korean officials fear many Korean netizens may trust social media messages about the virus more than they should. Kang Sin-myung, who heads the National Police Agency, noted, “We will strictly punish those individuals who disturb public order by publicizing incorrect information.”  

Sources: @Daumsoft,  @JoongAngDaily

India

Indrajit Hazra of The Economic Times gave a summary in this article of all the gaffes and gains accumulated by well-known Indian politicians due to social media. A quick list:
  • Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu), Minister for Railways, Government of India, New Delhi, fell asleep during a yoga pose on World Yoga Day, 21 June. (Yoga is very important to the current Hindu President of India, so much so he has made moves to make Yoga in school mandatory.) Prabhu’s impromptu nap was caught by a camera phone and uploaded to YouTube, and Indians debated whether Prabhu was tired, lacked appropriate gravitas when it came to Yoga, was maybe overworked….
  • Tamil actor-turned-politician and  current Leader of the Official Opposition of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, Vijaykanth became a humorous celebrity with his off-kilter Yoga moves, also caught on camera-phone and shared via social media. The video clip has introduced his name to voters nationwide. 
  • A leader in India’s ruling BJP party Ram Madhav (@rammadhavbjp) initiated another Twitter controversy on Yoga Day. Madhav Tweeted that Vice-President Hamid Ansari was noticeably absent at a Yoga Event hosted in his city. Madhav deleted the Tweet and apologised, but not before Ansari’s office released a statement noting that Ansari had in fact not been invited to the event in the first place. 
  • When Minister of State Niranjan Jyoti spoke at a rally far from Delhi, she used an abusive slur when referring to non-Hindus. A camera phone caught the slip and major controversy followed. The Prime Minister let Jyoti keep her job, stirring up additional online criticism. 
  • Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Tapas Pal said the following in a speech at a small town in West Bengal last year, "If you insult the mothers and daughters of Trinamool workers, I won't spare you. I will let loose my boys in your homes and they will commit rape." A cell phone caught the statement and uploaded the clip for national derision. 
  • Trinamool MP and nephew of the Chief Minister of West Bengal Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) gave a violent speech in which he threatened to "chop off hands and gouge out eyes" of opposition - and a party member slapped him. Another clip for YouTube and a new topic for Indian social media. 

Sources: +The Economic Times

The murder of Jagendra Singh, a social media journalist, who was set ablaze allegedly by agents of a Government official Singh was criticising on his Facebook page, was covered in this blog in mid-June. Since then, little has been done by the authorities to punish the culprits. The online video of Singh’s final moments, shared widely in Indian social media, caused a lot of discussion about the safety of Indian journalists and inspired a petition: “On 1 June, according to his family members, a group of policemen and goons came in two cars in late afternoon and barged into his house in Shahjahanpur,” the petition says. “Initially, they had an argument with him reminding him he had been repeatedly told not to write anything about Verma; then they pinned him down, poured petrol on him and set him on fire.” The Supreme Court of India received the petition and last Monday asked for a reply with regard to the investigation into the journalist’s death from the Centre and Uttar Pradesh government.


Sources: +neha sharma 

The India Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP)  is looking for a new advertising agency to continue to promote the “Make in India” lion logo. Private ad designers created the logo in September of last year. They noted the logo was inspired by the emblem of the Ashoka Empire which ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 69 BCE to 232 BCE. Critics claimed the logo too closely resembled that of a Swiss Bank. However, India’s Government is choosing to keep the logo in its push to promote the country as the home of the second industrial revolution. "The agency will be responsible for build-up of social media followers and widespread public output. It will undertake 360 degree international and domestic media campaigns, participate in international and domestic events and continue production of creative and publicity material under the brand line," an official said. 


Sources: +The Economic Times


The political party Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) in the state of Jharkhand has accused the current state Government  led by Raghubar Das of endorsing corrupt government contracts and being a “Whatsapp” Government. Former Chief Minister and leader of Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) Babulal Marandi (@babulalmarandi) declared, “The [current] state government issues notification on transfer posting after getting WhatsApp messages from Delhi." 

Sources: +NDTV 

The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will use about 150 000 US dollars worth of social media and traditional advertising to fight female foeticide - when parents use genetic testing to determine the gender of an unborn baby and then abort the baby if she is a girl. In India, the sex ratio in the country is 940 females per 1000 males with even more dramatic differences in the Indian states of Haryana (857), Punjab (863), Uttar Pradesh (874), Delhi (884), Rajasthan (893), Jammu and Kashmir (895) and Maharashtra (896). Indian legal authorities have said "female foeticide is the worst type of dehumanisation of the human race.”




North Korea

North Korea continues to warn foreigners based in the country not to use Instagram via a message that pops up when users try to access the site. The ban came about after images of a fire at a luxury hotel in the capital Pyongyang were distributed via Instagram. However, the North Korean Government has not officially explained nor has it even mentioned the ban or the reason for it. Only foreigners in North Korea have easy access to the Internet and social networking sites like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. The North Korean 3G operator Koryolink has stated is is not aware of any official change in policy towards Instagram. Foreigners in North Korea have normally had access to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for the last two years via a Government-approved sim card that costs individual users 80 US dollars.



Sources: @erictalmadge, @everydaydprk , @nidhiprakash

Malaysia


In Malaysia, online rumours that the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), a strategic development company owned by the Government, was weak caused a bit of panic. It was recently revealed that the rumours were allegedly fabricated by a former PetroSaudi Information executive recently arrested by Thai authorities. Datuk Ahmad Maslan, the head of information for the national Parliament or Umno, told reporters, “As Umno information chief, I ask Umno members to think three or four times before believing the news spread on social media, on which questions are now being raised about the allegations against 1MDB.”  That said, Maslan will work with the Communications and Multimedia Ministry and the police to investigate the leaks that led to the rumours. 

Sources: +The Malaysian Insider
In Kuala Lumper, netizens are debating plans to shut down 24-hour mamak stalls and hawker centres. “There are concerns that the young spend too much idle time in such places and get involved in unhealthy activities,” a member of the Prime Minister’s office,  Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim, answered in response to an official question. “This effort (curbing social ills) requires the cooperation of the Tourism and Culture Minister, local authorities like Kuala Lumpur City Hall and other parties.”

Sources: @staronline

Thailand

Thammasat, "one of the most renowned and liberal universities in Thailand," has rejected a former graduate and famous LGBT activist as a lecturer because her social media posts do not follow the “ethical principles of Thammasat lecturer.” Kath Khangpiboon (@kathnong) is a a transgender individual who is fully supported by the university's faculty and alumni and who has worked for the university as an external lecturer. Ms. Khangpiboon believes she has been rejected due to her transgender status; however the university - in its first-ever use of social media as a criteria - has cited, among other things, Ms. Khangpiboon's Instagram post of lipstick in the shape of a penis as a reason for excluding her from the position. “I believe it is about my gender, as I am the first openly transgender person to apply for a position of lecturer at Thammasat,” Ms. Khangpiboon has said. “I have information that some conservative people from my faculty and university have collected the data from my private Instagram account as evidence against me.”



Sources: @ascorrespondent, @kathnong


Thai social media is referring the the "Magnificent Seven” when chatting about a group of Thai students staging peaceful anti-coup rallies last week. The students have been arrested by Thai authorities, but social media seems to agree that the students do not deserve to be incarcerated. 

Sources: @ChannelNewsAsia


Australia


In Australia, New South Wales Premier Mike Baird (@mikebairdMP) announced via Twitter that as of January 1st, 2016, all asylum seekers in the state will be permitted to travel across the state using public transport for the capped amount of $2.50. "They arrive here with nothing, looking to get on their feet, escaping conditions and circumstances none of us can imagine and we are very proud to provide some support at the time they need it most," Baird said in a video posted to Twitter. TThe Australian federal leaders refuted the concept that Baird’s move was in contrast to their own approach to asylum seekers.
Sources: @mikebairdMP, @sarahgerathy

The New South Wales Department of Planning discovered that the Australia China Theme Park was using its logo illegally due to a promotional WeChat post including the logo. The Department has threatened legal action if the theme park does not “cease and desist.” 


Sources: @newcastleherald
 

North America


Canada


Another public figure in Canada has lost a shot at higher public office due to a Facebook post. Ray Fox “was the nominated federal Liberal candidate for Battlefords-Lloydminster for the upcoming fall election.” Fox was a four-term city councillor, winner of Battleford’s Citizen of the Year award and an Excellence in Public Service award for his work with the Battlefords Domestic Violence Treatment Option Court, and currently serves as Deputy Mayor. He was also one of 12 indigenous candidates that planned to run as a Liberal in the federal elections. When his hometown team won the Stanley Cup against the Tampa Bay team, Fox posted a photo of a white woman and a white man with a black baby to Facebook with the statement “My sincere condolences to all the Tampa Bay fans… I think I might know how you’re feeling.” The woman had a black eye - referencing an expression in which one hockey team gives the other a black eye (by winning.) Traditional and social media erupted, accusing Fox of undermining the horror of domestic abuse.  “Mr. Fox posted a photo that he looked at very briefly without recognizing the implications, on an evening he was jubilant about his team having just won the Stanley Cup,” Battlefords-Lloydminster Liberal Association president Jane Shury explained in a statement. Meanwhile, Fox was dropped as a candidate for the federal elections.


Sources: @BrianZinchuk

The USA


Recorded Future, a social media data mining firm funded by the CIA's venture capital arm, found the log-ins and passwords for 47 federal agencies easily accessible online. “According to the company, at least 12 agencies don't require authentication beyond passwords to access their networks, so those agencies are vulnerable to espionage and cyberattacks.” 

Sources: @KenDilanianAP

Is privacy a concern for either users  of social media or the social media companies themselves? Apparently not, Jeff Clark (@Jeff_Clark) notes in a new article for The Data Center Journal (@DataCtrJournal). He notes that the business model of social media rests on collecting user data, yet recent studies from the USA Network and the Pew Center suggest that users, particularly Millennials, are more conscious of the value of personal privacy. Yet actions speak louder than words, and Facebook has grown steadily despite the Snowden revelations and Facebook's sometimes sly use of users in studies and psychological experiments. Plus, Clark notes, American Millennials, while well-educated compared to some other American generations, still under-perform internationally when it comes to basic literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills in technology-rich environments. So, Clark asserts, we'll see more of the same despite lip service paid to privacy - at least in North America.

Sources:@Jeff_Clark, +The Data Center Journal


The social network Snapchat, which allows users to post videos and images that have an expiration date pre-selected by whoever posts the content, is hiring a "Content Analyst - Politics & News." The Analyst will cover the 2016 Presidential race using the Our Stories feature of Snapchat. Snapchat has also hired Google's former political ad sales expert Rob Saliterman (@RobSaliterman) and posted its first campaign ad. The 10-second ad is paid for by The American Action Network, which is "closely associated with the House Republican leadership." It urges users to ask Congress to promote the Trade Promotion Authority.




Sources:

“The State Department employs a staff of a few dozen to battle ISIS' virtual online army, which is posting videos and messages constantly, from as many as 90,000 twitter accounts around the world. The group has used the web effectively to draw in more than 20,000 foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria for its cause….CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan recently interviewed Ambassador Alberto Fernandez (@VPAFernandez), who ran the State Department group tasked with fighting ISIS online,the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), from March 2012 until he retired last month.” Fernandez identified several areas for concern and improvement. "There is a fantasy which exists in Washington, which is this: That somehow if you put magic social media or public diplomacy pixie dust on a problem, it will go away…It's not that ISIS is so great. It is that the response against ISIS is both limited, and weak,” Fernandez noted. In particular:
  • The budget to fight ISIS propaganda. "You look at it compared to the military budget. It's miniscule. And if you look at it in terms of the capabilities that the U.S. government has brought to bear, [it is] rather minimal and meek.”
  • A disjointed approach to banning IS-related accounts online. "The disruption is relatively minimal or short lived…”
  • Identifying IS’s audience (and thus the audience for any online counter narrative.) "You've got very hard-core members, so it's going to be very hard to pull them back or to convince them that ISIS is not the group to follow. But then you've got fence sitters and you've got young people out there that are looking at the environment and trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives and how they define themselves. I think our messaging has to try to address all of that…”
  • Addressing what will be said to potential audience members, and by whom. "The challenge has been we haven't done it very well, we haven't figured out how to amplify the credible voices that are out there, particularly in Muslim communities."


Fernandez has been replaced with former White House adviser Rashad Hussain (@Rashad_Hussain), himself a Muslim. Hussain plans to "expose the reality of what terrorists are doing, including the damage they are inflicting on the Muslim communities they claim to defend." The most recent videos the State Department has uploaded to social media include interviews with former IS recruits who quickly became disillusioned with IS. The former recruits recount their experiences in an attempt to dissuade future recruits. 


Sources: +CBS Evening News, @margbrennan


Researchers at the Center of National Security at Fordham Law studied the average profile of an IS-sympathiser and potential terrorist from the USA. The profile is a 26-year-old male (though women are increasingly targeted - as are those younger than 21). And 80% of the cases studied involved social media - because the user expressed sympathy for IS online or were recruited or tried to recruit others via a social network. 

Sources: @susanzalkind, +The Daily Beast 

President Obama plans to visit Addis Ababa in late July to meet with African Union leaders and the Ethiopian Government. Social media has used the occasion to highlight human rights abuses and the oppression of journalists online and off by the Ethiopian Government, suggesting Obama maybe shouldn’t honour Ethiopia with an official visit. 

Sources: @ndesanjo

In case you missed last week’s post, remember to check out “Who Has Your Back? Protecting Your Data From Government Requests” from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  “We think it’s time to expect more from Silicon Valley,” the authors wrote at the beginning of their fifth annual report.  LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Slack, and Snapchat got three or four out of five stars. Amazon and Facebook got three stars. AT&T and WhatsApp (belonging to Facebook with  700 million monthly active users) got only one star - despite having been given a year to prepare for the report along with special recommendations directly from the EFF. 

Sources: @amyxwang, @FutureTenseNow

Louisiana governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (@BobbyJindal) has declared that he will also be seeking the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. "And I'm done with all this talk about hyphenated Americans. We are not Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, rich Americans, or poor Americans - we are all Americans," Jindal declared in his announcement.

I’m not just asking you to join my campaign, I’m asking you to join a cause, and to believe in America again.
Posted by Bobby Jindal on Thursday, June 25, 2015
Jindal, whose parents immigrated to the USA from India, spurred the popular hashtag #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite as people with Indian heritage made fun of what some perceived as Jindal’s attempt to distance himself from his Indian heritage. 


Sources: +The Economic Times 


Remember, if you want to keep up with the USA Presidential candidates on Twitter, you can subscribe to this 2016 Presidential Twitter list or check out the Tweets below.



Alternatively, you can follow this Facebook list.

The Federal Trade Commission has updated its marketing guidelines for the first time since 2010 - largely for social media companies and marketers using social media. “The FTC recommends that marketers have a proper disclosure check up to make sure that their social media marketing campaigns fall within FTC guidelines. The FTC updated its “What People Are Asking” page last month to include more specific information on how social media marketing messages need to be handled, including a clear disclosure of the relationship between the product and the celebrity endorser..” So let users known when a celebrity has been paid to include products and brands in their social media - let’s be honest, when aren’t they paid for that? In addition, non-celebrity users that are incentivised to post certain products or brands to their social network feeds - say, as part of a contest, need to be clear that they are posting the products to win, not because they genuinely love them. 


Sources: @MartinBeck, +Marketing Land 


On June 26th at the Best of Texas awards, the Texas Comptroller’s Office took home the prize in best use of social media. “While most parts of government seek to gain greater efficiencies and pull in more money for operations, the Texas Comptroller’s Office is to get rid of as much money as it can. The office oversees $3.4 billion in unclaimed property, and the agency is charged with returning that property to its rightful owners, which it has done with increasing success thanks to a social media campaign. In 2014, the office returned more than $2 million in property and the numbers are growing in 2015, with $3.6 million returned since January 1. The campaign, which targets geographic regions to attain higher success rates in returning property, earned the office an award for the Most Innovative Use of Social Media.”

Sources: +Colin Wood 


South America


Ecuador

More protests in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, were organised and promoted via social media. The main target of the protests this time was President Correa’s tax policies.

Venezuela

In a short but illuminating article, Maria Luz Moraleda (@luzmoraleda) describes the divisiveness in Venezuela that is often enhanced in Twitter. She covers a lot of the main online movements in Venezuela and highlights the hashtags that are pro-Government as well as pro-Opposition. Some quick highlights:

  • #30MVenezuelaHora0 - initiated by political prisoner Leopoldo López to encourage protests on May 30th. However, the hashtag continues as Leopoldo López posted a recent YouTube video from jail. 
  •  #QuecaigaelCabello, initiated by the wife of Daniel Ceballos, ex-Mayor of the San Cristóbal municipality, detained in March last year. Venezuelan Speaker Diosdado Cabello’s last name is close to the word for “hair,” so Ceballos’ wife and her supporters cut their hair to call for the fall of Cabello. 
  • Liliana Tintori, the wife of Leopoldo López, had her Twitter account hacked to post the pro-Government message “Even at the cost of thousands of Venezuelan lives!!! We will continue the struggle for a #Venezuela of wellbeing and progress.”
  • #MaduroEsPuroPueblo (#MaduroIsThePeople) - a pro-Government hashtag.
  •  #JornadasACieloAbierto (@JournalsofOpenSky) - a pro-Government hashtag.
Sources: @luzmoraleda


Tools

HeyOrca


HeyOrca is a Canadian start-up with a platform that lets marketers and other creators collaborate more easily with clients - particularly government. “If you’re marketing for government or for high-value brands, you have to go through the communications department and several layers of management for approvals,” Founder Joseph Teo said in an interview. “Our system has an audit trail to see who has given approval; it saves a lot of time.”


Welcome Aboard HeyOrca! from HeyOrca on Vimeo.


Reports

USA Network Survey on social media and privacy

USA Network is an "American basic cable and satellite television channel that is owned by the NBC Universal Cable division of NBC Universal, itself a subsidiary of Comcast." USA Network published a survey last week suggesting that "more than half of Americans say if they could start fresh they wouldn't join social media at all and 75% may go off the grid if major digital security breaches continue." (Good luck them - off the grid is quickly becoming impossible.) The survey included a nationally representative sample of 1000 18 to 49-year-olds in May 2015. The survey was followed up with focus groups.

The stats according to USA Network:
  • Millennials/ Generation Y (18 to 34 in 2015; projected to number 75.3 million)
    • 55% of young people say that if they could start fresh, they wouldn't join social media at all
    • 75% somewhat likely to deactivate social media accounts if major digital security breaches continue.
    • 29% likely to deactivate social media accounts if major digital security breaches continue.
    • 23% highly likely to deactivate social media accounts if major digital security breaches continue.
    • 32% store information in physical phones and boxes 
    • 19% store information in cloud-based systems
  • 18-to 49-year-olds
    • 86% think the next world-changing terrorist attack will be digital
    • 53% feel cyber warfare is a bigger threat in America than physical warfare

Sources: @USA_Network

Beyond Frontal Faces: Improving Person Recognition Using Multiple Cues - Facebook can recognise you even if you avoid facing the camera

According to New Scientist and the blog Ars Technica, “Facebook researchers have unveiled new research that allows for faces to be more easily recognized based on other contextual information, such as hair style, clothing, and body shape.” The system, Pose Invariant PErson Recognition (PIPER), is 83% accurate when recognising individuals in photographs online. "This is so far, experimental, long-term research," a Facebook spokesman explained to Ars Technica. "I don't think this is something that we would see any time soon." The blog also recalled that a Texas-based man sued Facebook for using facial recognition technology to identify him without his permission in April 2015, and Germany has banned such software due to privacy concerns. 


Sources: @cfarivar




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