The Political Power of Social Media

Ok, I stole this great title from an article Clay Shirky wrote in Foreign Policy that I thought was both insightful and innovative - he took a fresh look at what social media's role is in politics and made some recommendations to governments, particularly the U.S. government, on how it can use social media to foster democratic change and transition.

This article was written in 2010 - but it came in handy just in time for the unprecedented Arab Spring revolutions spreading across the Middle East in the early part of 2011. Also lucky timing for me, since I am in the process of writing my masters thesis on social media's role in this revolution. Did you hear that an Egyptian man named his newborn daughter "Facebook" in deference to the role Facebook played in helping to organize the revolutions that ousted Hosni Mubarak?

While we know that social media had SOMETHING to do with these revolutions - everybody is talking about it, including the media - we don't actually have any evidence to prove its impact. This is the challenge I am encountering as I write my thesis. Nobody has yet qualitatively or quantitatively looked at the impact of social media on political events, on civic action, or political change. There is scant research on the power and in the influence of the Internet as a new form of communication, and other research available on the similarities between traditional media and new media in terms of their agenda-setting effect and their power to shape public perception and opinion, but nothing on how, or most importantly WHY social media has the power to influence politics. Is it because humans understand that information on social media is peer to peer and not filitered by gatekeepers or other forms of state, government or corporate controls as social media is? Is it because the Internet and digital world has increased our consumption of information and social media provides a way to aggregate a lot of information quickly, and tailored to one's needs?

All very interesting and the current analysis and research are just the tip of the iceberg....

Online Journalism: Foreign Policy Magazine and Syria

I've been involved in somewhat of a blog war that is taking place on FP Passport - a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy magazine. One of their editors, Blake Hounshell, recently posted two blog entries about Syria that were rather unsubstantiated. Frankly, I was really surprised to see this type of "journalism" on such a prestigious magazine's blog site.

The first article, "The Dumbest Country in the Middle East," was really quite infuriating. Here's what I posted in response to the article's headline:

****

A "Dumb" Decision

As a Syrian American who is an avid reader of FP, and who also works at a prestigious Washington, DC think tank, I am bewildered at the title and unsubstantiated nature of your blog post. Not only is your headline unacceptable by any journalistic standards, it's simply untrue. You may argue that because this is a blog, you are entitled to your opinion in both title and content. However, because you carry a prestigious name known for its journalistic excellence, you also carry the responsibility to convey accurate information to your readers, even in a blog.

***

The word "dumb" was removed from my vocabulary at a young age. It carries demeaning connotations. Besides the fact that it's simply untrue, I don't think it should be acceptable in any type of responsible reporting. And that's not to say that it's a pretty childish way to describe a country that is at a crucial diplomatic point with the United States; the U.S. is sending its first ambassador back to Syria after a five year.

A day later, Mr Hounshell posted the article, "Is Syria smart?," in response to another commentator's post. Clever title (ha!), but flawed argument. In reviewing Syria's "poor" economic growth and its refusal to "join the West's camp," I pointed out to Hounshell that he conveniently forgot to factor in the strain of 1 million+ Iraqi refugees on Syria's economy:

***

What about the refugees?

Let's also not forget the 1 million+ Iraqi refugees that Syria is so graciously housing from the mess the U.S. left in Iraq. The unbelievable amount of strain this has placed on the already fragile Syrian economy is often overlooked when "reporting" the factors that contribute to Syria's economy. A 2010 report from the International Rescue Committee (http://www.theirc.org/special-reports/iraqi-refugees) says "The U.S. has spent approximately $650 billion for military operations in Iraq and a disproportionate $29 billion for diplomacy and aid. More resources must be allocated to help the displaced in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and other host countries." How many Iraqi refugees has the United States admitted?

So rather than acknowledge the impossible strain that Syria is bearing on its economy, the U.S. has decided to continue to impose economic sanctions and provide disproportionate amounts of aid to a mess that Syria wasn't involved in to begin with. In light of this, sounds to me like the Syrians are doing pretty well.

***

I wonder what journalism has come to these days. Subjective writing, spotty reporting. While the Internet should be a facilitator of communication through blogs and discussion forums, and citizen journalism is on the rise, I still expect to see quality reporting from respected publications like Foreign Policy.

Why Engaging Audiences on Twitter Isn't Always the Right Thing...

Someone in my office proposed the idea this week of using our organization's Twitter account to host a "Tweet Contest" to see if we can better engage our audiences with our mission. I found myself quickly saying NO to an idea that normally would strike me as a good one -- after all, any type of activity encouraging interactivity and engagement with an audience on a social network should be a good thing! It's generally proven to be a recipe for success. Taco Bell and Dunkin' Donuts launched successful contests on Twitter, as did the State Department.

However, in a comparison of our Twitter feed and Mashable's 10 Twitter Best Practices for Brands, I believe that my organization is far from ready to host a Twitter contest. Here are a few of the points:

Be authentic and believable - Mashable says that you'll become believable only after you've established trust among your audience. Our Twitter feed currently is operated via an automatic RSS feed that pushes headlines from our website. There is no human behind the feed responding to followers, following people back, or talking with our audience.

Do your research before engaging customers - Mashable suggests "knowing how your customers use Twitter." This can be accomplished easily and for free using a few simple search tools, including Twitter's own search engine, search.twitter.com to see the conversations already happening around your brand and issue. Because we haven't been active on our feed, we really don't have an idea of what conversations are happening about us and around us.

Track metrics and conversation trends - Tracking metrics, also using free tools available online like www.tweetvolume.com, is an easy way to get an idea of how your popular your brand/issue is, how many people click on the links that you push out, etc. Metrics help guide your Twitter strategy going forward because they give you an overall snapshot of your presence on the social media scene. We currently do not have a strategy in place to track metrics or trends.

So, my recommendation to my organization was that we hold off on the contest until we've established the fundamentals outlined in Mashable's guide above.

Do you think I was right in my recommendation?

Google vs China: Damaging Diplomacy

The Western media continues to portray Google as somewhat of a hero for abandoning its facilities in mainland China and moving its services offshore. Washington Post op-ed columnist Richard Cohen praised the search giant in his March 30 article for walking away from China’s Internet censorship policies and its egregious human rights record. The BBC also chided China, reporting on March 23 that Google’s move “is a major blow to China’s international image.” While Google’s move might have highlighted its tough stance against censored search results, its undiplomatic handling of this event threatens to alter world affairs and U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations.

Google, a corporation that benefits from significant global popularity and enjoys widespread brand recognition, carries with it the responsibility to represent the United States and its values across the globe. Google’s worldwide reputation is among the likes of McDonald’s and Starbucks and it has become a symbol associated with Western modernism, liberalism, and capitalism. American businesses that operate on foreign soil are essentially unofficial diplomats of the United States. Google’s presence in China should help improve diplomatic and economic relations with that country, and not inflame sensitive ties.

Instead, Google has mired itself in a he-said-she-said conflict, angering and isolating both the Chinese people and the Chinese government. Google recently publicly announced its frustration with the relentless Internet security breaches and its irritation with China’s Internet censorship laws. While Google did not explicitly accuse the Chinese government of the recent hacks into journalists’ and democracy advocates’ e-mail accounts, its action clearly pointed the finger at Beijing. Such implications could potentially damage U.S.-China relations in a diplomatic arena where cooperation on key issues is crucial. After all, China is a major holder of the U.S. national debt, has the world’s third largest economy, and some scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predict that China is poised to takeover as the world’s next superpower.

China adamantly defended itself repeatedly against accusations, most recently on March 31 when the google.cn site became temporarily unavailable. Chinese government officials called Google “totally wrong,” and blamed the company for “politicizing” the event. Now, according to a Los Angeles Times report, China could potentially block the search engine permanently, which would deliver a huge economic blow to Google.

What’s interesting is that Google did not seem to have a problem with Internet censorship in 2006, when it launched its google.cn site and quietly obliged to China’s censorship restrictions. Let’s think about this. The population of China is 1.3 billion.It has 360 million Internet users. Google reports that 97% of its revenue comes from advertising. From a business standpoint, China is practically a goldmine for advertising and marketing. It’s not hard to see that Google’s executives had their eyes set on advertising and marketing dollars and were less concerned with upholding their mission to protect the free flow of information on the Internet.

Google is both an ambassador of the United States and a multi-national corporation operating with profit in mind. Reconciling both identities requires a delicate balancing act. Respecting and appreciating the laws, culture, and values of its host country should be an inherent mission in each American business abroad, and not just to be observed when it’s convenient. Google’s withdrawal from China did not have to be as abrupt, considering its history. An ambassador should always remember that diplomacy is the first option.

What Happens When You Avoid the Groundswell

Janet was good at representing Exxon Mobil Corp on Twitter. She responded to people's inquiries, provided interesting facts about the company, and even talked about the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The problem, though, was that Janet was not an Exxon employee. Nor was she affiliated with Exxon in any way, shape or form!

As you can imagine, this scared the pants off of corporate giant Exxon, who takes great care in controlling the messages they send out to the public. They've designated only a handful of employees to deliver such messages. When the story broke in 2008, "Janet" was using http://twitter.com/exxonmobilcorp to falsely portray Exxon, even using a background picture of Exxon gas stations. Exxon reps commented at the time that they were not using Twitter or any other social networking tool, and clearly weren't monitoring the buzz about their company online, avoiding the groundswell completely.

Brand jacking is not something new to the web - because it's so easy to set up a profile, anyone can be pretend to be an employee from a company in just minutes. (See a list of official Twitter brands here.) Rather than following the steps outlined in Groundswell to listen, talk, energize, support, and embrace their online constituents, Exxon chose to deal with the situation behind closed doors - contacting Twitter to have the false feed removed because of copyright infringement of the photos and immediately talking to and responding to questions from the press.

What they should have done is participate in the groundswell from the beginning. Large corporations should invest the resources and budget to hire someone to maintain their online presences and snatch up corporate names like "exxon mobil corp" on Twitter and Facebook before brand-jackers do. They should think of a strategy for their online presence, engage their audiences, and participate in discussion. This incident cost Exxon its brand identity, called attention to their non-engagement online, and fooled the Twittersphere, costing them the precious trust of the online community.

As of today, it appears that Exxon has set up an official Twitter feed. Like Groundswell says, you cannot ignore this trend.

It Really is a Small World

"Trusted and loyal ASW members who meet certain criteria have the privilege of inviting a limited number of their friends to the network. If you know someone with this privilege, you can ask them to invite you. If not, please be patient and continue to ask around in your own personal and professional circles.”

Ouch? That’s the message on one of the opening pages of A Small World (ASW), a self-described “private international community of culturally influential people who are connected by three degrees.” This exclusive social network seems to contradict much of what we think when we hear “social networking sites,” which are generally described as huge, open networks that generate a lot of "noise" like Facebook or Twitter. It also contradicts Emmanuel Rosen’s faith in the six degrees of separation theory, which ASW has now tightened to only three degrees. But, this site has generated a lot of attention and highlights an interesting genre of social networking: niche networking sites. While other niche sites like Linked In, which caters to professionals, or Classmates.com which connects classmates together, or even Tripadvisor.com which brings together people based on travel experiences, this type of exclusivity is new to the online social networking model and has proven to be a contributor, generator, and facilitator of buzz.

So perhaps we’re on to something here – can a closed, tight-knit community catering to a specific demographic be a marketer's dream? ASW's strategy has proven to be wildly successful. A huge benefit of these types of networks is that they generate appeal to advertisers who want to target a specific group of people in one place (in ASW’s case, advertisers include high-end luxury brands such as Mercedes and Cartier). It also can serve as a breeding ground for word of mouth marketing among like-minded individuals who are interested in the same products.

Niche social networking sites eliminate the daunting complexity of social networks that Rosen describes. On this site, particularly, marketers can be sure that a person’s “friends” are actually a direct friend of the person, or a friend of a friend – only separated by a maximum of three degrees. Unlike larger social networks that cater to the general population, such as Facebook, ASW actually shows “tie strength,” a concept Rosen says social networks lacks. On ASW, you can click on someone’s friend and a map showing how they know each other and through who appears. It's always a close connection.

However, ASW does reinforce Rosen’s principle that people who have similar interests and likes and are generally similar to each other are more likely to link together. ASW is a perfect example of this. It’s a forum where people with similar cultural interests can gather and discuss travel, entertainment and nightlife in discussion forums. Users can gain new information from people that they are not directly connected to, but are still in the same network, which Rosen describes as important criteria for buzz to spread. The forums on ASW are brimming with comments, questions, experiences, suggestions, and advice. In addition, people on ASW also take their relationships offline, forming small gatherings. and real-life “clusters” to network with each other, share information, meet new people, etc.

Perhaps such niche social networking sites are the wave of the future?

I'm taking two classes this semester at Johns Hopkins - International Public Diplomacy and Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence. This weekend, I've been immersed in Emanuel Rosen's book, "The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited," in what seems like the first moment of quiet I've had to just read and think in ages (thanks, blizzard!). I realized that a concept was beginning to emerge that was important, if not vital, to success in both public diplomacy and social media strategies: listening. Yep, listening.

A concept that seems so native to us is so difficult to put into practice. Listening is the silver lining of the successful case-studies that Rosen presents; the companies that listened to what their audiences wanted, whether it was to solve their grievances, answer questions, or even just to provide a way to easily contact the organization, were successful in their attempts to control the message they wanted to deliver to their audiences. Listening is the elusive task that any corporation wanting to make the most of word of mouth marketing or take advantage of the social media groundswell needs to master in order to craft a successful marketing strategy. But no one really does it.

My organization is a prime example of this. We set up both Facebook and Twitter pages just to be "involved" in the social media groundswell, without really listening to what our users wanted from us on these networks. How were these networks different from our website? Would they offer new, original content, or would they simply serve to expand the reach of the content on our website? Did our users expect us to talk to them, to engage them, to interact act with them, or to just pump out information? What did they want to know about us? Was social media important enough for us to allocate staff time and resources to it? Not having the answers to these questions is costing us to miss a prime opportunity to generate buzz around our organization using these incredibly powerful tools, especially in light of our new headquarters project that is beginning to become a visible part of the national mall's landscape.

Because of this, we can't quite call our presence on these sites a success yet, because we haven't even begun to do the initial listening and research. Stephen Colbert, the host of this year's Grammy's, asked his daughter several times during the show, "am I cool now?" She kept shaking her head. And I keep shaking mine because just having a presence on these sites, just like being present at the Grammy's, does in no way make us "cool." We have to actually do something - interact, become part of the the community, and give our users what they're looking for, just like how an artist at the Grammy's who performs something or wins something engages audiences and gives them something to talk about, to have a successful presence.

Similarly, listening is a vital, yet underused tool in public diplomacy. So many campaigns fail because they don't address what people want, or don't answer the questions people are looking for. Take the State Department's failed Shared Values campaign, for example. The undersecretary of public diplomacy commissioned a series of videos showing Muslims happily living in America. The videos were shown to Muslim audiences abroad in an effort to help combat growing anti-American sentiment. In the end, the campaign was deemed a failure. Anti-American sentiment was growing out of a dislike of U.S. foreign policies, and not out of a dislike of American culture or Muslims living in America. State department officials had failed to listen, and therefore, failed to address the root of a growing international problem.

Listening is essential to any marketing strategy. And because the Internet is identified as an important facilitator of buzz, companies and organizations should use the myriad of tools available to them online - RSS readers, search engines, newsletters, forums, etc - to listen to what their audiences are discussing and how they are doing it before attempting a strategy. Listening will help organizations identify what triggers conversation, what people are reacting to positively and negatively, and what the best ways are to engage audiences online and will help ensure an organization's success. We also shouldn't forget what Rosen points out in his book: listening is just the first part of a process. It must be in tandem with some type of action for it to be successful.