Social Media And Its Role In The Panic-demic

As former member of the fourth estate, I feel quite elegiac about the sound of the presses slowing towards an inevitable stop. Ever since I saw His Girl Friday as a very small child, I wanted to be a reporter. [And who wouldn't - Roz Russell was gorgeous, bantered beautifully with even more beautiful Cary Grant and got to do good through the power of the word!]

Today, however, I find myself in the surprising  and uncomfortable position of being more than a little miffed at my paper- and broadcast-based journalistic brethren. Their eagerness to point the finger at social media as panic-mongers of DOOM as the Swine Flu crisis develops.

REACTIONARY REACTIONS?

An example of the digi-pointing can be found in a blog by Milo Yiannopolous of the UK’s Telegraph who notes:

Twitterers are saturating the Twitterverse with scaremongering and nonsense about swine flu via the #swineflu hashtag. Let us be clear: swine flu aint some hot internet meme. It’s not a lolcat or a great flash game. It is a serious disease.

The speed with which idle chatter about swine flu is propagating, at the hands of those (it seems almost wilfully) ignorant of the facts, is terrifying and may cost lives. It has now become impossible to separate hysteria from vital news. For perhaps the first time, Twitter has become a hindrance and not a help to newsgathering and to the public seeking information.

And closer to home, the usually level-headed and excellent news source NPR has also chimed in, with  Evgeny Morozov noting that

despite all the recent Twitter-enthusiasm about this platform’s unique power to alert millions of people in decentralized and previously unavailable ways, there are quite a few reasons to be concerned about Twitter’s role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about swine flu.

You’ll forgive me if I state that this sounds a bit like sour grapes. True, one of the justifiable concerns about social media is that there is a dearth of fact-checking. And yes, there are idiots out there who will play the Web 2.0 version of the game of telephone, terror edition.  But has there never been a panic caused by a broadcast network or a newspaper? Truly? Rumours never have flown because of a hyperbolic headline or an over-emphatic piece on a 24 hour news network?

ANOTHER LOOK AT SOCIAL MEDIA IN RELATION TO SWINE FLU

No one is downplaying the fact that this is a potentially deadly illness and that people have been tested positive for it on several continents. The threat is real and frightening.

However, it is also true that almost nobody has looked at the positive ways social media has been used in the course of this porcine pandemic.

Just to offer a few examples:

The Centre for Disease Control has been offering updates on Twitter such as

“20 confirmed cases of swine flu in U.S. 1 hospitalized. All have fully recovered. http://bit.ly/uycgL #swineflu”

And over on FriendFeed, one of its users has created a Swine Flu room which aggregates “various real-time information streams on swine flu from across the web,” making it a reliable and timely source of information.

The CDC has also used YouTube to present a video by Dr. Joe Bresee of its Influenza Division dealing with the signs, symptoms, transmission and treatment of Swine Flu.

So, in fact, social media has been a means for calming the public and providing it with a stream of accurate and useful information – which is not a story you are likely to see in your local paper, if in fact you still have one.

“Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Friends!” Viral Marketing for True Blood

Sometimes, if done well, a viral marketing campaign can build real anticipation for the product that it represents. The online websites and ARGs (alternate reality games) for J. J. Abrams-related projects like Lost and Cloverfield are especially complex and intriguing. [Please note that these are only a few links to those ARGs, provided by TV Squad and IGN.com respectively because each campaign involves quite a few sites.]

Combine them with The Dark Knight viral campaign and you have some prime examples of how the technique has been taken to near artform.

But It’s a tricky balance because sometimes the viral campaign turns out to be much better than the actual product that it represents (I’m looking at you The Blair Witch Project.

(And you might want to look at a really good article from Salon.com about the marketing of that film which has a different take on the phenomenon of viral marketing.)

What is Viral Marketing?

For anyone who doesn’t know about viral marketing, it is a word-of-mouth strategy that moves much more rapidly due to the speed of technology- spreads as fast as germs if not faster. Wikipedia, though admittedly not the most reliable source, has a very good explanation of the phenomenon:

“Viral marketing…refer[s] to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses….Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily…. [It] may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.”

Why It Works

It’s a very clever way to reach out to people because usually good viral marketing involves some sort of mystery or riddle that piques a person’s curiosity. Once intrigued, people will eagerly hunt down further information.

Often communities spring up around the more detailed ARG’s – sometimes people band together trying to find hidden clues and solutions.

Other times friends come together to try to crack the puzzle. But it is a technique that gets people invested — and talking about the campaign and the film/tv show/product that it is trying to promote.

True Blood: The Show

As many rabid Six Feet Under fans already undoubtedly know, its mastermind Alan Ball is back with a new HBO series set in the American South just after “Undead Americans” have revealed their existence.

True Blood is based on the smart, funny and sometimes sexy Southern Vampire novels authored by Charlaine Harris. They are fun and offer satisfying twists on the lore of the supernatural and the south.

True Blood: The Viral Marketing Campaign

The viral campaign focuses on “Tru Blood” the synthetic Japanese-created blood-substitute that allowed vampires to reveal their existence among the humans.

There’s a website here for that particular (fictitious) product.

And according to Cynthia Littleton at Variety.com, the folks behind the show even took out a full page ad in Daily Variety about vampires drinking responsibly: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Friends.”

There’s also BloodCopy, a site supposedly covering the vampire revelation and integration into the general populace. It has video, textual and pictorial elements as well as a skype connection I haven’t yet tried….

Does It Work?

Is this intriguing?

For me, the answer is yes but I was already inclined to watch True Blood by virtue of the fact I love Alan Ball, I loved the books on which the show is based and I’m generally willing to give anything HBO develops a chance- they’ve had an excellent track record in terms of producing quality dramas.

But what about you?

Do viral sites such as these get your blood racing? Do they make you more eager to see something like True Blood or are they merely a fun distraction? Are they helping you hone in on a signal or are they just more bothersome noise?

[A special thanks to Ironic for motivating me to write this post with a comment he left on this blog in relation to the difference between splogs and ARGs. He's a wise man. Though he's not posting on this, he's posting some intriguing, thought-provoking and well-written stuff. Go see his blog HERE.]

Pregnant Pause

The situation at Massachusetts’s Gloucester High School – 18 young girls pregnant, with some allegedly having made a pact to achieve that status together – gives one pause.

As a parent, it’s heartbreaking whether they are your children or not.

As a PR professional working for the school- it’s likely ulcer-inducing. (Yesterday morning on CNN a commentator actually used the words that make a practitioner’s heart sink to their knees: “a PR nightmare.”)

Trying to Manage the Crisis

No doubt it’s been a hideous challenge for the mayor, Carolyn Kirk. At her first press conference as mayor yesterday- a genuine trial by fire – she tried to dispel rumours of the pact by dismissing Principal Joseph Sullivan’s previous comment to Time magazine that “They made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.”

Refuting the story, Mayor Kirk was quoted in The New York Times as stating that Sullivan was “foggy in his memory of how he heard this information….When pressed, his memory failed.”

And Sullivan is apparently not returning media calls at the moment. The Boston Globe noted that he “could not be reached for comment. An administrative assistant in the Principal’s office took a message but said that Sullivan already had a stack of unreturned messages from reporters – and Oprah’s people- piled on his desk.”

As crisis management strategies go, it is not a particularly bad one. Except that it seems as if very few in the media or the public are buying into this version of events as of yet.

Did They Manage to Manage the Crisis?

The Boston Herald noted that high school students, who know the girls in question, “were equally skeptical of the mayor’s denial, with several naming those involved and telling the Herald the alleged pact was common knowledge around school.”

Of course, there really is no way to know what actually happened without talking to these girls- which is unlikely at this point. Now they are being protected. Now it’s a little late.

The Blame Game

What’s really interesting is how many folks are pointing fingers at the media and PR- it’s because of Juno! It’s because of Jaime Lyn Spears’s pregnancy!

Well…not exactly. Admittedly it is possible that the positive spin the star’s “people” put on her unexpected pregnancy and the charming nature of the low-key comedy made some girls more curious about the experience. But you can’t really say it’s all Diablo Cody’s fault, can you?

Will Anyone Ever Really Know What Happened?

Again, without these girls telling their stories in their own voices, it is really hard to know where the truth lies. But if the allegations of a pregnancy pact is true, isn’t it possible that they wanted to build their own sense of connection and community – and went about it in the wrong way? Isn’t it possible that they felt lost in terms of what they wanted to do with their lives so they chose to take on the role of “mother”- without knowing what it really meant or entailed?

There seems to be a kernel of truth in that, particularly when you zero in on a portion of a statement in Time by Amanda Ireland, ar recent graduate of the school who herself became a mother her freshman year.

“`They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,’ Ireland says.”

Is that what caused this surge in teen pregnancy? And was there actually a pact as alleged?

Ultimately, whether it was misguided peer pressure, misinterpretation of media or just a desperate expression of a desire to be loved probably doesn’t matter. What matters now is what is going to happen to these girls and their children.

And how the school will manage this crisis both in terms of its reputation and its students’s futures?

It’s EVERYWHERE So Why Not Here Too: Sex and the City

First, a confession: I put “sex” in the title of my blog in the hopes it might get a few more hits. (Sad but true- see, PR people can be honest and forthright.)

Second, a disclosure: I was living in NYC near the meatpacking district at the time Sex and the City fever was peaking. And even though I loved the show, it did get annoying to try to walk to my laundromat on Saturdays and find myself knee-deep in Carrie-wannabees stumbling around the neighbourhood in heels they could not handle and wading through the excessively long lines for the Magnolia Bakery.

Does anyone else feel like whomever did the PR/Marketing (Marcom is the term) for the film sequel to the series must have sold their soul to the devil? I ask because mention of the movie is absolutely EVERYWHERE – I’ve never seen quite so much hype.

Here’s just a small sampling:

Entertainment Weekly had a whole issue dedicated to it.

Facebook allowed users to gift a pair of fabulous SATC virtual Jimmy Choos to friends. (And, more disclosure, I did give a pair to the most Carrie Bradshaw-esque of my friends- the woman can write, has great style, is very witty but thankfully lacks her fictional counterpart’s utter self-absorption.)

Even industry-related publications have gotten into the act: The Public Relations Society of America has an article in its online publication about the effect the show had on women’s office attire.

However, there is indication that the media has reached its levels of hype-tolerance for SATC. There have been backlash articles running in the New York press, including this now-infamous TimeOut New York cover which has received quite a bit of press itself.

Why do you think this movie has captured the imagination (and covers) of North America? And how did their publicity machine manage this feat? I’d love to know what you all think.

[One caveat- please don't bash Sarah Jessica Parker- firstly, the press has been ridiculously mean about her appearance already (I'm looking at you Maxim and no, I won't dignify you with a link.) Secondly, everyone who lives in NYC has a celebrity-sighting story and my best one involved her. Once when I walked into the hotel Plaza Athenee carrying my baby daughter, we literally ran into Sarah Jessica Parker who was there doing a photo shoot. She was very sweet, surprisingly tiny and she cooed adoringly and genuinely over my daughter. So be nice. She was.]