Certainly the biggest social media story of the week has been that of Karen Huff Klein, the 68-year-old bus monitor working for the Athena Middle School District in Greece, New York, who was so brutally harassed by 7th-grade students on their second to last day of school. Apparently doing nothing but her job, sitting quietly and watchfully on the bus, Mrs. Klein became the target of horrific verbal abuse from four, 13-year-old students on their ride home. A student sitting nearby captured it all on his cell phone and then uploaded it to his Facebook page, from which it made its way to YouTube.
Through posts on social media and the user-generated news site Reddit.com, word spread geometrically, leading to a fund drive created by Redditor, Max Sidorov, on the independent fundraising site indiegogo.com that began with a modest goal of $5,000 to help Klein take a nice vacation and scrub the foul memories of the last days of school from her mind.
Sidorov, a 25-year-old Toronto nutritionist and graduate of York University, who had experienced bullying himself when he first moved to Canada as a young boy from Ukraine, wrote:
His efforts have paid off in spades. Klein, a grandmother of eight, who only makes $15,506/year, now has $628,233 waiting for her that has been contributed by over 29,000 people, as of this writing on Saturday evening, June 23, 2012, at 8:50 pm. The fund has been growing exponentially ever since it was first established three days ago and the collection site will be up until Friday, July 20, 2012, at 11:59 PM PST.
Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project and author of "Networked: The New Social Operating System," calls the sheer volume of response to the Klein video "head-scratching." He comments:
I, for one, am glad that the boundaries to "this stuff" don't exist in Klein's case and that the fund raising efforts in response to the above video have gone viral across the world. I would like nothing better than to see Karen Klein become an Internet millionaire, while her tormentors are riding their bicycles to and from school because they've lost their privilege to ride the bus.
I'm normally a passive consumer of Internet news -- reading, watching and listening, but not acting; what I saw in that 10-minute video, however, spurred me into action. I've emailed the superintendent of public schools in Greece, New York, along with the principal of the Athena Middle School District from which these disgraceful kids hail, as well as the president of the Greece Central School District Board of Education. And, of course, I've contributed to Karen's fund.
In my last post, I asked "Who are we now?" when we're connected all the time. This is a question a lot of people are thinking about, perhaps none more so than science writer Michael Chorost, in his 2011 book World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet. In this wide-ranging study, he examines how the opportunity for increasingly dense connection with others provided to us through the Internet is radically changing our notions of self. As our technology progresses, we will become even more intimately connected with others, with a futuristic version of our now hand-held devices possibly moving inside our brains, providing us with a world of connection to others only psychics could once dream of.
But what will this mean for who we are? How we have always perceived of ourselves as individuals? It looks as those this concept is in for a radical overhaul as we come to accept that we are more a part of a "hive mind" rather than disconnected beings.
Chorost cites the work of Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, and James H. Fowler, PhD, who, in their book, Connected: How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do, show that we are already profoundly connected with others in far-reaching ways we can barely understand.
Chorost quotes Christakis and Fowler (p. 116) as saying, "A smoker may have as much control over quitting as a bird has to stop a flock from flying in a particular direction," because of who we are connected to through our far-flung social networks -- connections, in many cases, to people we don't even know exist. True autonomy, maintains Chorost, has always been an illusion. He believes the World Wide Mind will only make this fact more obvious (p. 202).
As we become more integrated with the Internet, Chorost posits that our concept of individuality itself will have to be radically reconfigured. He writes, "Once assumed to reside in a single human body, a personality may become distributed over multiple bodies. Most of it will reside within an individual body, but not all of it" (pp. 201-202).
Time magazine writer, Lev Grossman, hypothesizes in his Feb. 10, 2011, article, "2045: The year man becomes immortal", that we might "scan our consciousness into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually" (p. 44). And, he then asks, "If I scan my consciousness into a computer, am I still me?" (p. 48).
Grossman goes on to say that this is an idea that's "radical and ancient at the same time. In "Sailng to Byzantium," W.B. Yeats describes mankind's fleshly predicament as a soul fastened to a dying animal. Grossman then asks, "Why not unfasten it and fasten it to an immortal robot instead?" (p. 48). Who knows what possibilities exist for us?
But exist they do and the futures of those who follow us will look very different from our own. Chorost quotes author Joel Garreau from his book Radical Evolution, when he writes, "Can we picture devotions marking the great significance of a young person getting her first cognition piercing -- awakening her mind directly to the Web of all meaning?" (Garreau, p. 265, in Chorost, p. 138).
I love to travel and I love to keep track of where I've been. For the longest time, I've recorded my State-side travels on a Dover stick-on map (see below) that allows you to paste a sticky of each state onto an outline map of the United States, but this has been limited, and I've been searching for something that would allow me to do this for the world.
Travel Maps and Games in the right-hand column of the site, which will have the following icon underneath it.
Clicking on this icon brings you to a long list of countries, which are broken down into states, provinces and territories for the United States, Australia, and Canada. You can click off the places where you've been, or, in the case of the above countries and countries in Europe, simply choose to have the entire land mass or country colored in, if you have visited any part of it.
Once you've selected all of the places you've been, you then click on "Create Your Travel Map" in the yellow rectangle at the bottom of the page and a personalized map like the one that introduced this blog will appear for you. It's free, it's easy, and you can even link it to Facebook.
So how does TravBuddy make its money? Although the site is set up as an information exchange among other travelers, its creators seem to be very eager to have you share your "future travel plans" on the site. I can only imagine that this is so their advertisers can begin peppering you with emails about places to stay, things to do, restaurants, flights, car rentals, etc., although I can't really say for sure.
All in all, it looks like a fun, useful site, which also has the coolest travel app running!
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook delivering a keynote address at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich, January 2012.
Or so proclaimed Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's second most powerful executive, in her keynote address to the prestigious Digital Life Design (DLD) technology conference, held this year in Munich. Even though she made this statement in the context of explaining that we are no longer anonymous on the Internet and that
I still take exception to this statement. Anyone can create any kind of identity online. "Sophie" could be "Samuel" in real life, but no one would know the difference until they met him. We may no longer be anonymous, but we're not necessarily "real," either.
The conference's other keynote speaker, Viviane Reding, the European Commission's vice president for justice, is not as sanguine about the use of social media. She is trying to find a way for consumers to control their own data. She firmly believes that the great threat to individual liberty in the digital age comes from companies that use our data to enrich themselves by buying and selling our most intimate details for their own corporate benefit.
Reding believes that individual privacy in today's networked age can only be protected by tighter legislation on what companies are allowed to do with our data and by more agrressive data-protection officers and agencies. To this end, Reding is introducing legislation that will give consumers the
on online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. It is her belief that people should have the right "to withdraw their consent to the processing of the personal data they have given out themselves."
Reding is also very concerned about how personal data "collected in Berlin" may cross international boundaries to be "processed in Bangalore." She regards our personal data as the "currency of today's digital market" and is looking for ways to inbue it with "stability and trust." She feels this can be done in three ways: by creating legal certainty, simplifying the regulatory environment, and providing clear rules for international data transfers.
What both speakers agree upon is that personal data has become
And just as contentious politics over real oil shaped our 20th century industrial economy, commentator Andrew Keen believes that "the politics of data will shape the 21st century digital economy."
So much is at stake here. Small fragments of information about an individual can remain online forever, casting a long shadow over the "real" self of the person who first posted it, a self which may have changed radically since its early adolescent postings. But when do you know to remove something or leave it for posterity? Our technology has given us fabulous new tools, but the questions that have arisen about how to manage them are equally as daunting.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is the nation's leading sexual and reproductive health care provider and advocate (plannedparenthood.org). It is a branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and one of its largest members.
Contraception accounts for 35 percent of PPFA's total services and abortions account for 3 percent. PPFA conducts roughly 300,000 abortions each year, among 3 million people served. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Inc., (PPAF) is a related organization, which lobbies for pro-choice legislation, comprehensive sex education, and access to affordable health care in the United States.
Planned Parenthood has its roots in Brooklyn, New York, where Margaret Sanger opened the country's first birth-control clinic. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which in 1942, became part of the Planned Federation of America. Since that time, Planned Parenthood has grown and now has over 820 clinic locations in the United States, with a total budget of US $1 billion.
In the Line of Fire Although Planned Parenthood provides many basic health care services to millions of women in need,
Monique Benoit tells her story
it frequently falls under attack for a variety of reasons and is largely seen as an abortion mill by members of the Christian Right.
(Gary Stelzer - Associated Press)
Most recently, the withdrawal of funds for mammogram screening by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced on January 31st raised a huge controversy about Planned Parenthood's mission and stirred the dust on always contentious issues, which played out loud and clear in social media.
(Jan. 25 - Mar. 25)
Posts per day = 44.40 Average % = 0.0097 Total posts = 2,664
_______________________________
(Jan. 15 - Mar. 14)
Posts per day = 114.28 Average % = 0.0241 Total posts = 6,857
An announcement about Komen's action on Planned Parenthood's Facebook page that same day generated 1,248 comments.
On February 2, more social media buzz was generated when NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg offered to match every gift made to Planned Parenthood up to $250K in an effort to replace funds that had been expected from the Komen Foundation. All of this is evident in the pronounced spike in blog activity in the Ice Rocket graph above.
This event was followed by the flap raised by Rush Limbaugh on February 29th over Sandra Fluke's testimony before a congressional committee about women's need for access to birth control for reasons other than the prevention of pregnancy, such as the treatment of ovarian cysts, endometriosis, and other general health issues. For her efforts to represent the rights of women, Limbaugh labeled her a "slut" and Planned Parenthood was once again indirectly under fire.
A tremendous amount of passion has been generated over these issues. Supporters of Planned Parenthood posted links for their "Planned Parenthood Saved My Life" blogs on the organization's Facebook page, whereas supporters of the Komen Foundation talked more about the sacredness of unborn life, often quoting Bible chapter and verse. Almost all posts were in one camp or the other. New York Times columnist Gail Collins noticed this as well, writing:
"This week we had a huge political fight about
breast cancer. Clearly, we have now hit the point where there’s nothing that can’t be divided into red-state-blue-state."
-- The Politics of Absolutely Everything
Interestingly, however, this distinction does not seem to manifest itself in the statistics in socialmention with regard to Planned Parenthood on the "Sentiment" dimension. No matter when I've looked at these metrics, "sentiment" has always been overwhelmingly neutral. Surprisingly, the same has been true of the Komen Foundation.
Below are the stats from socialmention for the last day (Tues., 3/13/12), last week (from Wed., 3/07/12 - Tues., 3/13/12), and last month (2/13/12 - 3/14/12).
The Effects of the Groundswell. . .
A rally in support of Planned Parenthood on the National Mall in Washington, April 7, 2011.
"I've never seen anything
catch fire like this."
-- Cecile Richards, CEO, Planned Parenthood
Within three days of the announcement by the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure that it was going to withdraw funding for breast cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood, because the latter organization was under investigation by Congress for illegal use of government monies to provide abortions, Planned Parenthood raised nearly $3 million from more than 10,000 donors over three days. These donations are at least six times the amount that the Komen Foundation gave to Planned Parenthood last year. Planned Parenthood's CEO, Cecile Richards, stated that her group would use the donations exclusively to maintain and build the organization's breast-examination centers.
By contrast, two more top executives have resigned from the Komen Foundation and that organization has postponed its annual fundraising galabecause executives "were not certain about our ability to fundraise in the near term," spokesperson Vern Calhoun said in a statement. In addition, a number of Komen affiliates are reporting lower than usual revenues, including the Baton Rouge, La., Greater Fort Worth, Texas, and Southern Arizona chapters, and participation in Race For The Cure, Komen's signature fundraising event, is down.
Meanwhile, on March 12, Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem, co-founders of the Women's Media Center, castigated Rush Limbaugh for his "racist, sexist, homophobic remarks," most recently regarding Sandra Fluke, and urged the FCC to remove him from the air for his "hate speech." Pro-choice Democratic women in Congress like Gwendolyn Moore and Jackie Speier, along with thousands of progressive activists, added their voices to this protest and urged his advertisers to cancel their ads. On March 21, I received an email from Democrats.com announcing that
"140 key advertisershave now cancelled"
and that "without ad revenues, local stations are cancelling his show altogether."
The Fight Against Komen
When it came to defending itself against the withdrawal of funds for breast cancer screenings that Susan G. Komen for the Cure had initiated, Planned Parenthood wasted no time in creating a groundswell of its own. This is somewhat antithetical to what we normally think of as a groundswell, which is a spontaneous uprising of the people in response to a social injustice or other major issue. In this case, Planned Parenthood cleverly harnessed the power of social media to make it look as though a groundswell was happening, when, in fact, its inception was orchestrated from the top.
The Timeline
•Mid-December 2011-- Planned Parenthood CEO, Cecile Richards, receives a call from Susan G. Komen for the Cure saying that it is withdrawing its funding for breast cancer screenings, because Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress for misappropriation of funds.
-- Richards tries to set up a meeting with the Komen Board, but is rebuffed.
-- Planned Parenthood quietly declares war and takes six weeks to put together a counter offensive, beginning with an "exclusive" to the Associated Press, which is published on
•January 31, 2012 -- Planned Parenthood's online and social media team was standing by when the story broke.
-- They immediately blasted news releases via email and Twitter and posted the information on Planned Parenthood's Facebook wall.
-- More than 2,000 supporters shared that post with their own friends on the social network.
-- On Twitter, Planned Parenthood wrote:
"ALERT: Susan G. Komen caves under
anti-choice pressure, ends funding for breast cancer screenings at PP health centers."
-- More than 500 Twitter users reposted that message.
-- Planned Parenthood added more than 32,000 fans to its Facebook page that day.
In response to the Komen decision, Planned Parenthood had a simple strategy for Facebook and Twitter:
"We gave people things to do,"
such as suggesting they donate, sign an online petition, Tweet about the issue, and post a Planned Parenthood badge on Facebook.
In an analysis of Tweets, blog posts, and comments on Facebook, it's clear that Planned Parenthood draws either passionately committed supporters, as personified by Monique Benoit above, or the deepest ire, as expressed in the Tweet below:
RT @chainsawabortion: I nicknamed my closet
"Planned Parenthood" because, you know,
the hangers.
-- From Twitter Search on addictomatic.com -- 2/27/12
There is really no in between and I believe this constitutes Planned Parenthood's greatest public relations challenge. People are certainly entitled to their opinions and religious beliefs, but they should at least have accurate facts about the organization. To many people, primarily women, Planned Parenthood is just an abortion mill that is totally antithetical to their moral and religious values. And whereas Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of abortions in America, it is also the nation's largest provider of family planning and birth control that makes those abortions avoidable.
There is a tremendous amount of misinformation out there about Planned Parenthood, coming from seemingly reputable sources. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican Whip, was forced to retract a false assertion he made on the floor of the Senate that abortion accounts for "well over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's work. (The correct figure is three percent.) In a statement to CNN, Sen. Kyl's office claimed that "his remark was not intended to be a factual statement."
-- Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Although most of Planned Parenthood's opponents have pretty well made up their minds, it's important to try to reach them with accurate information, and hopefully real-life stories of people they can relate to, that will show them the important social and medical needs Planned Parenthood fills for a wide swath of our population, many of whom are underserved.
Conclusion
Richards is delighted with the results of the latest controversy, because it not only benefited Planned Parenthood financially, but raised awareness of its mission. She claims, "We heard from tens of thousands of people.
"It was a fabulous opportunity
to frankly educate a lot of people in America about the preventive care we do."
