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The gradual radicalization of Douglas McAuthur McCain, we're told, is reflected in his social-media timelines. This week, NBC News reported that McCain, a 33-year-old from Minneapolis and San Diego, had become the first American to die in Syria while fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), in clashes with other rebel fighters.
(On Thursday, Fox News reported that a second American from Minneapolis may have been killed while fighting for ISIS in the same battle.)
"Until early last year, a Twitter account linked to McCain included mostly mundane messages to friends about basketball—how the Lakers suck, comments about the Chicago Bulls—with only a few messages about Allah or Islam," NBC noted. "Then the account went silent for more than a year."
McCain, who converted to Islam in 2004 and also appears to have used networks like Facebook and MySpace, fired up his feed again in mid-May—around the time that ISIS was publicizing its control over the Syrian city of Raqqa with public executions, and just weeks before the group launched its military offensive in northern Iraq....
How do you get news and ideas into the hands of already-well-informed opinion leaders in public office? And how do you add substantively to the public discourse while avoiding the trap of becoming "just more noise"?
These were some of the challenges General Electric faced in designing its ground-breaking #Pressing campaign. Linda Boff, GE's Executive Director, Global Brand Marketing, sat down with us to discuss the campaign and how partnering with RebelMouse provided her team with the end-to-end platform they needed to deliver high-quality curated content to their audience...
If you're going to launch a "War on Fox News" -- and decide to appear on the Fox News Channel anyway -- you should have been prepared better than this.
...The first lesson is this, as stated by Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard: “Pro tip: If you’re running for Congress and pledging a “war on Fox News” then it’s probably best not to appear on Fox News.”
But I only agree with that partially. Appearing on Fox News while pledging a war on the network could have turned this local Democratic candidate into a popular national Democratic hero—if he was a skilled debater who could have held his own against an experienced host....
But the greatest heat in this affair has emanated not from the American public but from the private conference rooms of Ketchum Public Relations, the U.S. agency that actually wrote it for Putin’s team. No original text in Russian has surfaced, most likely because it never existed. The few Russian publications that have picked up the story quote sparingly from the English version.It is naïve to believe that Vladimir Putin sat down one night at his Kremlin desk and, pen in hand, dashed off this heartfelt opener reminiscent of FDR, “Recent events in Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people …”One wants to say, “Oh puh-leeeeze.”...
Test your knowledge of prominent people and major events in the news, by taking our short 13-question quiz. Then see how you did in comparison with 1,052 randomly sampled adults asked the same questions in a national survey conducted online August 7-14 by the Pew Research Center. The new survey includes a mixture of multiple-choice questions using photographs, maps, charts, and text.
When you finish, you will be able to compare your News IQ with the average American, as well as with the scores of college graduates and those who didn’t attend college; with men and women; and with people your age as well as other ages.
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....
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald broke the NSA surveillance scandal wide open, and at least one member of Congress wants him arrested for it. Congressman Peter King has been very clear that he wants Greenwald prosecuted for the information he’s revealed and for threatening to reveal the identities of CIA agents. However, Greenwald has said no such thing, and responded on CNN tonight, telling Anderson Cooper that King is targeting him for “the crime of doing journalism.”...
Get ready for some “greenwashing”, folks. TheNational Confectioners Association — which counts among its members the makers of Snickers, Mars Bars, NesQuick and pretty much every other sugary treat you continue to enjoy (in secret) as a responsible adult — wants a bit of a makeover. More specifically, the organization plans to hire an unnamed PR firm to help it gently convince the American public to stop associating the word “sugar” with the word “obesity” as if one could somehow lead to the other. Come on! So these guys want to spend $2 million on a social/digital media campaign targeting those moms who think, for whatever crazy reason, that eating too much sugar could give their kids type two diabetes — which would then leave them considerably more likely to suffer from obesity and all related health problems later in life. I mean, where do they get these ridiculous ideas? Oh, right…
...While national political attention was dominated by the fiscal cliff and a new Congress, environmental activists continued gearing up for what they believe to be the fight of the century. Rather than lick their wounds after the high-profile defeats of the last month, they leveraged them into outreach and engagement opportunities that are swelling their ranks.
Likes on the “Stop the Keystone Pipeline” Facebook page have grown to four times the number on the “Support the Keystone Pipeline Page.” YouTube is now teeming withvideos expressing personal and emotional appeals against the pipeline. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) now owns the top result for a Google search on “Keystone Pipeline, Nebraska.” The National Wildlife Federation claims the top spot for searches on “Keystone Pipeline, Danger.” A search for “Tar Sands” returns no fewer than five first-page results maintained by pipeline opposition groups. All the while, activists are leveraging relationships with high-profile bloggers to further sway public opinion and demonstrate compelling third-party support. As it has so many times in the past, the activist community is asserting its digital dominance. All of that online activity is translating into grassroots action. Protests are being carried out across the country. Petitions are being delivered to the White House in droves. And to keep the momentum building, 18 top climate scientists recently penned a letter to the president in strong opposition to the pipeline, writing that “the administration would be actively supporting and encouraging the growth of an industry which has demonstrably serious effects on climate.”...
...The first 90 seconds of the spot were fantastic. As a viewer, I learned some of the steps the nation’s leading beverage company is taking to provide us with healthier drinking options. It has more than 180 low- and no-calorie options, many of which have replaced higher-calorie offerings in school vending machines. It has created smaller, portion-controlled sizes as well as boldly stated the calorie count of each drink on its cans. It supports initiatives like the Boys & Girls Clubs that encourage kids and young adults to get active. These efforts have helped reduce the average calories per serving across the soda industry’s products in the United States by about 22 percent. That’s a fantastic story, if it stopped there. If Coca-Cola had admitted that overconsumption of its higher-calorie beverages has led to greater numbers of obese individuals while emphasizing its efforts to offer healthier beverage options, portion control and transparency in calorie counts, I’d applaud it (though would wonder why its message warranted a 90-second spot). But it didn’t admit the truth, and the ad didn’t stop there. At about the 90-second mark, Coca-Cola’s storytelling machine went off the rails. Instead of coming clean and admitting that it’s a source of the problem, it proclaimed that “all calories count, no matter where they come from.” The line was made intentionally vague because it implies something that is not true. While it’s true that all calories count, it’s untrue that they’re created equal, and that’s indisputable....
The world of social media provides a clear road map for how to bridge the 'Advocacy Gap'. Will the advocacy technology world follow it? What capabilities would an advocacy platform need to provide to make effective advocate storytelling a reality? Last week on the blog, I began focusing on the concept of the advocacy gap. Research, compiled in a report titled “The Advocacy Gap: Research for Better Advocacy,” notes that for the better part of the past 20 years, Capitol Hill offices have faced an ever-increasing crush of online constituent communication. The world of social media has followed much the same path. And, as social media has continued to evolve, some clear trends have developed on how to cut through the communications clutter...
American International Group is launching an ad campaign that will air during post-season football games, awards shows and morning news programs and thanks taxpayers for coming to the insurer’s rescue during the financial crisis. American International Group is launching an ad campaign that will air during post-season football games, awards shows and morning news programs and thanks taxpayers for coming to the insurer’s rescue during the financial crisis. The “Thank You America” campaign will highlight AIG’s recovery and the repayment of the federal government’s bailout, which at its peak in 2009 consisted of a $182.3 billion commitment from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.... The campaign follows Treasury’s announcement earlier this month that it sold its final shares of AIG. The ads will highlight the calculation that the government made a $22.7 billion profit on the bailout....
The polling firm complains operations like FiveThirtyEight could spoil polling for everyone... Did Gallup just blame Nate Silver for ruining the art and science of polling? You don’t have to read too far between the lines of a statement from Gallup’s editor in chief, Frank Newport, published on Friday, to get that impression. Newport first attempts the formidable task of defending Gallup’s polling accuracy during the 2012 campaign. Perhaps he was anticipating Silver’s Saturday column, which labeled Gallup the most inaccurate pollster of all the firms that measured voter sentiment this year. But Silver was hardly alone in wondering why Gallup regularly reported numbers much more favorable to Romney than anyone else in 2012. We deserve an explanation a little less lame than Newport’s: what’s the big fuss? Gallup wasn’t really off by that much.... [Suck it up Gallup and do a better job. ~ Jeff]
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Last week, Gawker uncovered a hapless tie-up between genetically modified seed/pesticide giant Monsanto and Condé Nast Media—publisher of The New Yorker, Bon Appetit, GQ, Self, Details, and other magazines—to produce "an exciting video series" on the "topics of food, food chains and sustainability."
Marion Nestle was offered $5,000 to participate for a single afternoon. Since then, I've learned that Condé Nast's Strategic Partnerships division dangled cash before several high-profile food politics writers, in an unsuccessful attempt to convince them to participate....
Hidden in plain sight, the controversial oil fields are an industrial expanse where forests once stood....
...Even when you round a certain bend and see some of the view, it’s hard to grasp the scale: This is a place where trucks are literally the size of houses, storage tanks are the size of football fields, and machines for processing the oil are the size of small office buildings. When the oil fields are fully developed, they'll cover an area the size of the state of Florida....
Previous NewsBusters posts (here and here) have noted how Piers Morgan promoted the idea that Alexis bought and used an AR-15 in the Navy Yard killings, even though his own network CNN ultimately reported that Alexis did neither. Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com notes that several of Morgan's tweets concerning his AR-15 claims have been sent down the memory hole....
On Thursday, Ketchum scored another public-relations coup: It helped place a Putin commentary in opinion pages of The New York Times, just as representatives from Russia and the United States were beginning to meet in Geneva to negotiate a plan for Syria to give up its chemical weapons.
The article made quite a splash in Washington. Putin painted himself as a peacemaker and lectured the United States for what he said was a tendency to use "brute force" in world disputes. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said he was "insulted" by the article, while the White House noted that Putin was taking advantage of press freedoms unavailable in Russia.
Ketchum, a division of the Omnicom Group Inc., has earned more than $25 million working for Russia, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice. It also has been paid more than $26 million since 2007 to promote Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas company....
Why are social networks powerful tools for causes and campaigns? Many times, people begin to engage in activism only after they’ve been attracted by the fun stuff in a campaign — connecting with old friends and sharing photos, for example. When they witness others participating, they’ll be more likely to join the cause. With socializing as the primary draw, it’s become easier for organizers to attract more and more unlikely activists through social media.
But once a campaign reaches its critical mass, activists might think about moving to other platforms made with their needs — especially digital security — in mind. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter will remain standard fare for online activism. But the time is right for niche-oriented startups to create tools that can supplement these platforms. Here are a few worth investigating....
Reports on traditional news outlets, such as print and broadcast struggling to be financially viable. are nothing new. In a previous blog post, I quoted a statistic from IBM that claimed 90 per cent of all data has been created in the last two years alone.
With the rise of social media and the ability for anyone with access to a computer to create a blog, the supply of possible news sources has exploded since the web gained mainstream acceptance years ago. The public’s demand for content and news has dramatically increased. However, the exponential growth in supply of news sources such as social media, 24-hour news channels, and everything in between, has created a glut of information effectively driving down the value of real news. This is essentially a supply-and-demand problem. Combined with disruptive technology and better methodologies for advertising, traditional media outlets have been forced to make changes to the ways in which they report and monetize news content....
... There's something more current, like the GOP hiring a PR strategist to educate America that it is not the "stupid party." Perhaps you remember the infamous case study of "Big Tobacco" hiring top-dog lobbyists to tell Congress that smoking doesn't kill people...stupid people jonesin' for a cigarette kill themselves. And now there's this, brought to us by the National Confectioners' Association. This is the proud D.C.-based organization that is breaking open its big piggy bank to the tune of $2 million (put your pinky up to your mouth when you say that) to tell D.C. — wait for it — that candy doesn't make you fat. ...
The National Confectioners' Association — the lobby group representing candymakers such as Mars, Mondelez International, Nestle, and Hershey — is preparing a $2 million PR budget to fight the idea that candy has played a role in the American obesity crisis, according to Ad Age. The immediate threat they're hoping to stave off is FDA regulation of sugar: ... the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a petition asking the FDA to establishing a recommended safe level of added sugars, particularly in beverages. While the FDA has recommended daily allowances for sodium and fat, it has no such measure for sugar. More broadly, Big Candy has encouraged an interesting effort to persuade companies to move the calorie count label to the front of candy packaging. That seems like a good thing — consumers should get more info about the food they're eating. But what Ad Age doesn't mention is that the calorie labels are printed in green, and — by amazing coincidence! — consumers have a tendency to believe that green food labeling means the food is healthier....
For starters, it’s trying way too hard to have it every which way, and trots out too much corporate blather and jibber-jabber. All that lawyer-approved disingenuousness shuts my circuits down. Most people watching would find it interesting to know that Coca-Cola owns over 600 brands, including teas, waters, sports drinks, health drinks, and the sweetener Truvia. I love the design of the tiny cans, and the big graphic calorie counts on the front labels of the sugared drinks. All good information. But you can’t have it both ways. Exactly how deeply concerned iscitizen Coca-Cola about "playing an important role" in addressing obesity, when clearly it is also using this very same message to lobby voraciously on behalf of high-fructose-syrupy, supersized drinks (which Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is threatening to kill) and against higher soda taxes? This will take “continued effort from all of us,” says the announcer, evenly. But speak for yourself, lady. It’s a bit presumptuous to ask your customers to exert any effort in your direction. The root causes of obesity are so complicated, with so many possible angles (never mind Coke’s role in that epidemic)...
...I want to share some of their [Edelman Trust Barometer] findings here because understanding them will help everyone build and grow better companies. This isn’t just a PR topic. It affects everything: Brand management, communications, operations, retail, customer service… everything. First, the checklist. Below is a graphic that shows 16-trust building attributes every organization needs to be aware of (and gauge). It looks like this year, Edelman added categories (what they call trust performance clusters): Engagement, Integrity, Products & Services, Purpose, and Operations. I can’t poke a hole into this. It’s solid....
Voter trust in political information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media services is now on par with that in traditional news sources, according to a new survey shared with POLITICO.
Recent years have seen candidates increasingly devoting time and resources to developing their social media presences, with President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign widely admired by experts in both parties for its massive data and analytics operation.... “There needs to be an authentic commitment in social media” by candidates,” said David Rehr, a professor at the school. “They’ve got to take it very seriously.” Social media “is an information source that has to be reckoned with.” The survey finds that nearly two-thirds of voters reported that political information on social media was either higher quality or on par with traditional media outlets. For users younger than 25, 71 percent put the same or greater level of trust in content....
So farewell then, Newsweek magazine, which published its last print issue this week. After 79 years — 15 of them as my employer — the venerable old rag is to disappear into an uncertain, web-only future. Many newspapers and magazines have folded as advertising shrinks and readers go online but Newsweek is perhaps the first of the titans to fall. Its demise is all the more resonant because it was one side of one of the great twin peaks of the press: Time andNewsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Times and the Daily Telegraph. In its heyday Newsweek was an essential part of America’s national conversation. It was controversial, liberal, usually half a step ahead of Middle America....
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The Atlantic looks at how the extremist group turns social networks into propaganda echo chambers.