Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The Times and NPR distance themselves from freelancers accused of getting too close to protests.

Conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic — targeting journalists.

The criticisms are a kind of conservative twofer, allowing them to hit old targets like NPR and The New York Times by raising questions about their objectivity, while at the same time undermining the grass-roots claims of the new protest movement by suggesting it has professional help — or at least professional cheerleaders....

A study of the social network behind the Occupy movement shows that the most vocal participants were highly connected before the protests began but have now largely lost interest, say social network researchers....

The Occupy Wall Street movement began in September 2011 as a grass roots protest against the inequality, greed and corruption associated with the financial sector of the economy. The movement adopted the slogan: ”We are the 99%” which refers to the distribution of wealth in the US between the richest 1 per cent and the rest.

What was extraordinary about this movement was the speed with which it spread, passing rapidly between communities via social media and Twitter in particular.So an interesting question is how this movement became so big, so quickly and what has happened since to the most active participants....