I thought these two items from the Chronicle of Higher Education were particularly interesting:
Virginia Tech Student's Facebook Group Offers a Way to Grieve
and this:
Students Turn to Facebook for Information on Their Friends
If anybody still needed convincing of how fluid and how open the world of communications and public relations has become, in a crisis or in everyday efforts, look no further. Students turned to the medium they use the most, online social networking sites, to look for friends, get updates, and then share their grief and confusion over Monday's tragedy.
This is all happening beyond anything the web crew or administrators are doing at Virginia Tech.
As content managers we need to shape and control the message as best we can, knowing full well that others probably are already doing that, in ways that we can't control. That's why immediate action often is required.
Gone is the luxury of fine-tuning an "official" message over days and days among various administrators using track-it on Word documents. It's just not always possible, and lengthy delays can have significant, and negative, repercussions.
Comments (1)
Tim,
The idea of leaving online sympathy for the family and friends of the deceased has been around for some time, but the Facebook sites are serving a couple of different purposes.
1) They provided a quick and, by some accounts, very accurate resource to track the condition of thousands of students, and
2) They put a different kind of "face" on this tragedy. By that, I mean that some people in the Chicago area (where I live and work) have expressed a "numb" or "unattached" feeling about the killings. Not that they weren't sympathetic; but they didn't feel a personal connection. Anyone reading the Facebook entries will be touched deeper than those who have only been exposed to media reports. The voice of the students and faculty is being heard in a compelling way.
Posted by Tom Keefe | April 19, 2007 2:52 PM
Posted on April 19, 2007 14:52