Case Analysis : When The Twitterverse Turns On You

In “ How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life”, an extract from Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Shamed, Jon Ronson uses interviews of people, appeals such as pathos and logos, and language from both sides of a situation in order to get answers to the question of how social media got to the point of causing such serious consequences. Both interviewees, “Hank” (in quotes for privacy purposes) and Adria ended up losing their jobs. The interviews show the emotions and thoughts from both people. “Hank” one day at work said a joke to his friend, “It was about a fictitious piece of hardware that has a really big dongle - a ridiculous dongle.” which was overheard by Adria.

The article in The New York Times, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life”, by Jon Ronson seeks to persuade and inform people developing good narratives of just how people’s lives are being changed by the effects of social media. Showing us that everyone can be broken down in the eye of the public but is this the right thing to do? Ronson goes on to discuss his eye-opening experience as he interviews people that have gone through social media rejection.

Social Media: It's a blessing and a curse to embrace social media. It builds reputation and trust while encouraging interaction. Likewise, an image slip or a non-carefully worded sentence could create misinterpretation among followers. Since news travels fast on social media, the wrong information spreads quickly

We are successfully utilizing social media as a powerful way to gain positive exposure and connect with our internet-savvy customers in a global and local level. We rely heavily in word-of-mouth advocacy”. (John Mackey, 2012)

Social media never forgets and can be unforgiving. It does not matter if the situation involves celebrities, athletes, or international corporations, no one is immune from the court of public

Social media has become one of the main methods for public shaming. Many activists have used it as a way of getting attention with the media, but others have used it as a form of entertainment to watch people’s lives get burned to the ground. Though public shaming can be very entertaining it can also be hurtful and can even cause people to lose their jobs along with their self respect. The article How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life, written by Jon Ronson, describes how the punishment for using social media inappropriately can be detrimental to your future

Another example of a modern witch hunt would be a “social media” witch hunt. Social media witch hunts are “witch hunts on steroids”. They spread quicker, bigger and reach more people than the world witch hunts do. Instead of having dozens of angry voices wanting your blood, you may have tens of thousands of people out for you I recently witnessed a social media witch hunt. Social media witch hunts sometimes leads to people either taking their own life or taking others lives. This happens because someone says something that they have no real facts to back up and others join in, eventually making the situation

When I was a manager at a company, I had to administer many policies as they related to my employees. On of these policies was called the Social Media Policy. This policy was meant to protect the company from malicious posts regardless of the intent. To summarize this policy stated that if you in anyway identified yourself as an employee. So if an employee wanted to they could rant about the company or other employees as long as they did not identify the company, list the company as an employer or list the names of employees that are know to work for the company. This policy was created solely because of individually that lacked a filter or the common sense to think about what they were posting.

Professional and personal utilization of social media at Cameron’s Coffee should not compromise effectiveness at work, bring disrepute to Cameron’s Coffee or imply one individual personal view as a representation of the entire organization.

On the rainy Wednesday I learned that when there is bad weather the park has three options for running operations. Option #1 is that Tweetsie is run as normal and the show goes on as usual. Option #2 is running at half capacity, which means that only Main Street and the train will operate. All of the rides stop running and none of the shows take place during operating hours. Finally, Tweetsie has the option of just running train rides and closing all other aspects of the park. If this happens we let people in for free because all they would be able to do is ride the train. In the recent history of Tweetsie they’ve only closed twice and run a half-day once, so it’s common to keep the park open despite nasty weather. I also learned not to get my hopes up that I wouldn’t have to go into work if it’s raining in the morning!

The story Getting the Skinny on Twitter’s “Cisco Fatty” shows how one decision can create a conflict for an individual or organization. Getting the Skinny on Twitter’s “Cisco Fatty” is about Connor Riley, and the Twitter message she decide to post about her potential employer that created a major conflict for her when it was posted to the entire world. The message was "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." After posing this message there was an instant back lash from the Twitter community, and possible negative ramifications from this message.

In Zupek’s article, “How social media can hurt your career” she shows how business and corporations are becoming more apparent on social media. With the uprising of more companies being on social media, there is also an increase in monitoring on employees Facebook and twitter pages. Zupek gives direct tweets exchanged between employer and employee and tells the story of Kimberly Swanson. Swanson was an employee at Ivell Marketing and Logistic and worked in Clacton, U.K. and posted a status on Facebook expressing how boring she thought her job was. Days after this post was made, Swanson was called into her manager's office and fired for what she said on Facebook. Zupek concludes the article by giving tips on what not to do on social media and also claims that posts showing negative feelings towards one job should not be posted to be seen by the

Social media is the use of websites or applications that enable users to create or share content. The influence of social media has grown in the past decade to the extent that some people consider it a source of reliable information. It is taken from what they heard and shared between family, friends, and strangers. The information that is posted on social networks are not checked and instead are taken as fact and then are given to someone else as news. This cycle continues until the truth is no longer known unless accessed by the news. The problem with this is giving information that even the writer is not sure of, will only lead to confusion and controversy.

To the average technologically advanced American, Twitter is one of the most visited social media sites. From a popularity contest standpoint, Twitter would be amongst the top winners; however, when evaluating Twitter from a business analytical aspect it might not be a lucrative business venture. The attractive attribute to Twitter Inc. is the fact the sites does not make any of its users pay. Twitter is designed to allow users to voice multiple thoughts, ideas, or share different information amongst the site’s visitor. Unlike Facebook, Twitters does not have multi-million dollar corporations using the site on a regular basis to market more potential users. Therefore, with a low revenue base and poor strategic development implementation

Social media provide benefit and good effort to PR practitioner, journalist and organization in many circumstances, the researcher want to investigate the negative outcome from the social media, and how the social media impact the organization to damage rather than build a relationship with their publics.