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Social Media, Free Speech and How Tattling Led to Governor Brownback’s Apology

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Instead of writing an apology letter to Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas per the request of her high school principal, 18 year old Emma Sullivan was commentating on first amendment rights and social media to CNN.

Twitter, the social media platform, shed light on Sullivan’s comments regarding the governor last week when he spoke to [...]

The Culture of Spanking

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“Warning,” the morning anchor intoned. “The video you are about to see is graphic, and may be hard to watch.”

Which ensured that we all would watch, of course. And I did watch — in discomfort and then growing  horror –  as a Texas judge whaled away at his then 16-year-old daughter with a leather [...]

Does Twitter Make the AP Nervous?

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Earlier this month Andrew Overton, one of our bloggers, discussed whether the AP understands Twitter after updating its social media guidelines, stating that retweets with no comment can be seen as expressing an opinion and that must be avoided. Now an internal memo from the AP reprimanding staffers for tweeting about Occupy Wall Street (OWS) arrests [...]

A Timely Communications Litmus Test...Courtesy of Google

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Google recently announced changes to their search algorithm that could have dramatic effects on search results. The changes mostly have to do with improving the timeliness of results, giving “brand new” items, such as recently published articles, web pages and press releases greater weight in search results. So, what does this mean for professional communicators? It’s probably a [...]

Does the AP Get It? New Twitter Rules Are Too Limiting

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When the Associated Press updated its social media guidelines yesterday, it became very apparent to me and many other Twitter users that the AP fails to fully comprehend this important communications platform. Let’s take a look at the new Twitter guidelines for AP staffers:

RETWEETING

Retweets, like tweets, should not be written in a way that [...]