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Since the induction of the the new administration, brands have quickly realized that a single tweet from the commander-in-chief can impact their stock. General Motors, Lockheed Martinand now Nordstrom have all been subject to criticism and for better or worse, their share value fell for a time.

Weve watched several companies over the last few months learn this lesson the hard way. When the new immigration restrictions were announced, Uber learned its lesson through a series of missteps and communication lags,whereas main competitor Lyft donated $100 million to the ACLU and became a media darling. There is bad publicity in not taking action fast enough. In Ubers case, it led to a loss of customers and its CEOs leave from the presidents advisory council.

Uber made efforts to tell the public and its customers that it would support employees who were potentially subject to the travel ban, but it was too late.

Related: What Businesses Can Learn from #DeleteUber

Our point? Silence or poor communication timing can cost your brand more than just customers; it can cost you your reputation and image.

Leaders (thats you) must prepare for a new kind of market, where your brand will be scrutinized on everything, including your associations. This is why brands and their leaders must have a go-to strategy prepared in their back pockets in the event that customers and the community raise any concerns.

Luckily, there are two cornerstones of your business that can play an integral part here: public relations and social media marketing.While distinctions between the two are far reaching, they are also complementary. These combined platforms play a major supporting role in the time of a crisis.

Related: 7 Steps for Maintaining Your Composure in Times of Crisis

With activism burgeoning at the forefront of company priorities, consumers are looking to brands to ensure they follow a similar set of ethos. As of late, organizations are stepping forward and stating where they stand on divisive issues, putting a stake in the ground around topics of company policy and corporate responsibility. Why? Because customers base their buying behavior on what a company supports or doesnt support -- not on silence.

This is where social media helps companies tap into those vital conversations and connect with their existing and potential customers in a meaningful way. Since social media interactions typically occur in a public forum, your followers are the first to know about what you are backing and how exactly this is done. Whether its through an announcement to support a cause, a donation to a particular charityor a campaign to raise awareness for a particular organization, your audience will respect your brands active stance on key issues.

However, while this kind of goodwill is welcome,its not enough for a PR team to work with. Saying, Hey! We are doing this fantastic thing, appears self-serving, tackyand can backfire. Instead, work with your PR team to iron out specific messaging and a narrative on the topic. Should questions come up, both teams will have aligned answers for their customers and for the media.

Related: 4 Hallmarks of Leadership in a Time of Crisis

It is also important to be aware of and eliminate blind spots. If your company has vulnerabilities, inform PR so they can support you by determining how to discuss the issue. If your PR team has been working hard on maintaining your relationship with reporters then those reporters will be your lifeline when you need to manage public perception. On the other hand, if they are working in the dark, unaware of your vulnerabilities, then when a problem comes up they may not be able to react as quickly as you need, which will only hurt your company.

Once your messaging is in place, you can use social media to help your customers better understand your position. By leveraging the ability to have real-time conversations with your community, you can mitigate issues early on by addressing it through individual interactions (e.g. comments and DMs) and through posted public announcements on your social platforms. This way, you maintain control of your message, address customer concerns as they come inand foster vital conversations among your community that will enable them to advocate for your brand.

If the issue can potentially move beyond your customer universe and into mainstream media, it is time to consider PR and decide the next step. You will need to be agile and switch directions as fast as the news cycle.Public relations will serve as a lifeline, to clarify or explain things to your customers and the public. For instance, if you messed up, acknowledge it and disclose how you are working to solve the issue.

Business leaders should always be prepared to manage a crisis, so when it emerges there is a swift and deliberate action plan in place. During a crisis, reaction speed and tactics can run as the principal decision-makers for patrons.

Related: Why Big Businesses Must Proactively Manage Their Online Reputations

A companys reaction time increases when you have a proactive PR plan working to establish your message with customers and the public.

In order for brands to mitigate potential negative public sentiment and sooth any push back from customers, it is vital to have a well-balanced, collaborative crisis communications strategy. PR and social media must work in tandem in order to cultivate a 360-degree plan of action thatll help insulate your brand and maintain control over your brand message. By combining forces across all of your media channels, you will ensure that your business will ready to tackle anything that may arise.

Andrea Holland and Sarah Elder help solopreneurs, consultants and small business owners utilize PR to get leads and sales, without the five-figure a month PR firm price tag. http://www.prtraction.com.

Read more from the original source:
In a Brand Crisis, Should You Turn to Social Media Marketing or PR? - Entrepreneur

Twitter introduced new safety measures this week meant to crack down on online harassment and protect people from viewing offensive material, but some free-speech advocates are concerned the changes could lead to censorship of unpopular ideas.

The social media company announced Wednesday that it would start hiding potentially menacing tweets, even if the tweets or accounts in question hadn't been reported as abusive.

"We're working to identify accounts as they're engaging in abusive behavior, even if this behavior hasn't been reported to us," the company said in a statement announcing the changes. "Then, we're taking action by limiting certain account functionality for a set amount of time, such as allowing only their followers to see their Tweets."

The so-called stealth bans could be placed on accounts, the company's statement said, if a Twitter user sent unsolicited messages to another user who was not following the sender.

Twitter said it would "act on accounts" only when it was confident abuse had taken place, based on the algorithms it uses to identify illicit posts.

This new automated stealth ban capability became a cause of consternation for Suzanne Nossel, executive director of the free-speech advocacy group PEN America, because she said it could easily become a solution "where there is really no problem that needs to be solved."

FILE - A Twitter app on an iPhone screen is shown.

'Mistaken' moves?

"To take action when there hasn't been a complaint raises the concern of whether there will be mistaken blocking of accounts or suspending of accounts," she said. "That raises a risk."

Twitter has been under pressure to address abusive speech and trolling on its platform in recent months after celebrities and others complained of sustained, coordinated abuse campaigns.

Actress Leslie Jones notably swore off the social media service for a brief time last year after she was targeted by online trolls and harassed with racism and death threats. The incident led to a personal meeting between Jones and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and several months later the company began introducing new tools to address online abuse.

Twitter expanded its "mute" feature to allow users to block specific words or phrases from showing up in their notifications. It expanded users' ability to report hateful conduct. And it retrained its support teams on dealing with online abuse.

These types of changes that allow users to have more control over what content they see and whom they interact with are positive steps, Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told VOA.

FILE - Twitter's Jack Dorsey is interviewed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Nov. 19, 2015. The chief executive apologized Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, after the service let through an ad promoting a white supremacist group.

Control for users

The ACLU encourages companies to focus less on a top-down approach to censorship and more "on tools that allow users to control their experience on the platform," she said.

"Attempts to put the thumb on the scale on the censorship side are prone to error and prone to human biases," Bhandari said.

Newer tools introduced by Twitter, though, give the company a far greater role in controlling what content gets seen.

In February, Twitter began pre-emptively hiding what it called "potentially abusive or low-quality tweets" from conversations on the website. The tweets will still be visible to users, but only to "those who seek them out."

"Our team has also been working on identifying and collapsing potentially abusive and low-quality replies so the most relevant conversations are brought forward," Twitter said in a February statement.

VOA contacted Twitter multiple times for clarification on guidelines used to identify "low-quality" tweets but received no response.

Twitter also introduced a "safe search" feature in February that automatically removes tweets that contain "potentially sensitive content" from search results. A request for clarification on how this content is identified was not returned.

Being a private company, Twitter has no real obligation to preserve free speech on its website. But Twitter has billed itself as a platform for free expression, and on the Twitter rules page, it says it believes in "speaking truth to power."

FILE - The Twitter symbol appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, July 27, 2016. Twitter, long criticized as a hotbed for online harassment, has been expanding ways to curb the amount of abuse users see.

Global town square

This is a role both PEN America and the ACLU take seriously. Both Nossel and Bhandari referred to the website as a sort of global town square, where everyone's voice has equal weight.

"As a practical matter, decisions made by Twitter have a huge impact on the messages that we receive, and I hope that Twitter and other companies take those responsibilities seriously," Bhandari said.

Nossel noted that Twitter has a financial incentive to be cautious on issues involving the balance between allowing free expression and stopping abuse.

"The power and influence of their platform depends on the free flow of ideas, so I think there are commercial reasons why they would not want to limit [free speech]," she said. "And I think for their users, they do have a kind of softer, implicit contract that they are going to be a platform in which you can express things freely."

Bhandari said it's important to find that balance, because if Twitter "allows a heckler's veto to take over," it will have a chilling effect on speech that's similar to pre-emptively hiding content.

"One of the really important parts of that has to be transparency," she said.

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Could Twitter's New Abuse Crackdown Lead to Censorship? - Voice of America

The official Sina Weibo account of prominent Chinese feminist group Feminist Voice () has been temporarily banned for 30 days after the group posted a Guardian article on a womens strike planned in the U.S. on March 8, which allegedly violated the states laws and regulations. Netizens response to the ban has been mixed, with some criticizing the group and others expressing support. At The Diplomat, Lotus Ruan looks at why everyone should support the group, arguing that the it is ultimately about standing up to Chinas arbitrary system of censorship andinformation control.

The gag order, screenshot by Feminist Voice and shared widely by many activists, soon caught the attention of Chinese internet users. While many have joined the campaign to voice support for Feminist Voice, others had mixed reactions to the news. Under a thread asking how to evaluate Feminist Voices being banned from posting on Sina Weibo for 30 days on Zhihu, Chinas Quora-platform dominated by male, well-educated, urban middle class users expressed disapproval of the group. Seventy-three people liked a comment that says they deserved it.

This does not come as a surprise as feminism has to some extent been stigmatized or is at least faced with complicated public opinionin Chinese society. However, there is a profound reason why everyone should support Feminist Voice on this particular matter to fight back against Sina Weibos decision even if you do not agree with the groups stance. Feminist Voice has initiated a much-needed effort to question company processes for censoring content.

In the past couple days, many supporters have been challenging Sinas decision and simply asked: why, how, and what Feminist Voice offended.This is a badly needed step to push for the overall transparency of Chinas information control mechanisms.

[]As one Weibo user said, I dont agree with many things [said by] Feminist Voice and Chen Yaya [a gender equality researcher critical of letting governmental or government-approved organizations dominate the course of feminism in China]. Sometimes I even find them quite stupid. But I strongly oppose censoring them. Debates would bring us closer to the truth. Only those who pay dirty tricks would stab someone in the back. Joining Feminist Voice and others to question Sina Weibos gag order could be an opportunity to push forward a more transparent and less arbitrary information control mechanism. [Source]

From Leta Hong Fincher on Twitter:

At Sixth Tone, Zheng Jiawen explores the phenomenon of online prejudice against feminist groups in China, with a look at the use of derogatoryterms like grassroots feminist and the negative impact that such discourse has had on the progress that feminists are making in the country.

Gus article exemplifies online debate over gender issues in China. It also touches on a particularly highly charged issue among Chinas feminist community namely, the pejorative usage of the term grassroots feminists. While tianyuan, which I have translated here as grassroots, originally referred to something rural or rustic, in this case it derogatorily refers to dyed-in-the-wool, stubborn, militant feminists who refuse to countenance alternative viewpoints. To add insult to injury, the character quan in the word for feminism is often replaced with a homophone meaning dog.

In recent years, variations of these terms have been applied by Chinese netizens as a means to disparage the feminist community. Some have used the terms to describe radicals who combine fervent calls for female empowerment with a contemptuous attitude toward men. In this sense, grassroots feminists can be compared with the English term feminazi.

[]These days, the internet gives women more opportunities to participate in the discussion on gender issues and provides a larger space for feminist organizations to advocate their ideals and values. However, our prolonged neglectof feminist perspectives in both media and education has deprived the average person of the appropriate terminology that feminists tend to use. As a result, feminist discourse either appears convoluted, incomprehensible, and pretentious, or leaves itself open to being co-opted by individuals in a half-baked way, without their understanding the full force of feminist issues.

Yet the most concerning aspect of the emergence of pejorative labels like grassroots feminist is that they divert public attention away from policy-oriented debates and direct it toward the mindless mudslinging of feminists supposed radicalism or moral deficiency. The depiction of feminists and their practices as fundamentally confrontational may also prevent those who aspire toward realizing gender equality from recognizing the common ground they share with Chinese feminist activists. Even worse, stigmatizing the sometimes-unconventional practices of Chinese feminists such as advocating the occupation of mens toilets by Guangzhous female university students in 2012 weakens the power of feminist organizations at a time when they are trying to influence government policy. [Source]

Also at Sixth Tone, Earlham Colleges Yu Peng explores the question of what we can learn about the womens marches in the U.S. through the lens of Chinese philosophy, offering a Taoist interpretation of the movement that focuses on body citizenship.

Observing events from a Taoist angle sheds light on this unique political tactic and engenders a form of citizenship something I call body citizenship. Body citizenship is an innovative way of engaging with politics through dissidence rather than compliance. Borrowing insights from the fourth century B.C. Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi, body citizenship hinges upon continual processes of political engagement that keep disrupting the established social order imposed upon womens bodies.

[]Zhuangzis citizenship is thus defined by its extraordinary potential to overcome the supposed superiority of one type of body over another. Whether we speak of homosexuals or heterosexuals, black people or white people, the disabled or the able-bodied, men or women, the Zhuangzian body questions the dualistic relationships between these groups. By abolishing boundaries between them, it bespeaks a oneness that binds everyone together. Zhuangzis ideal form of citizenship, then, is one that challenges restrictive definitions and embraces us all, regardless of social status. It is a forceful refutation of social segregation of any kind, and is constantly vigilant against any attempt to isolate one body from another.

[]The womens marches allow us to transcend the confines of our own bodies. We are more than ourselves when we are the bodies of others as well. Streets become new political sites in which notions of, for example, male, gay, Hispanic, or old are not only unimportant, but also nonexistent. Momentarily, at least, we become womens bodies and in doing so, we turn ourselves from prescriptive sexual objects into objects of patriarchy-challenging power.

This, in essence, is the beauty of the Zhuangzian body. Zhuangzi probably would have surmised that by claiming Pussy Grabs Back, citizens are translating their bodies into new forms of political resistance. Against the backdrop of a magnificent protest scene, citizenship is no longer something granted and controlled by law; instead, it is something won by the dissident body, something that disrupts old rules and constantly hankers for the new. [Source]

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Feminist Group Gains Support, Detractors After Censorship - China Digital Times

My God, you are an idiot! Those people [who share your political perspective] are vile and despicable and should be ashamed of themselves! Thats an actual quote from a Facebook conversation I participated in last week. Despite the easy access social media gives us to each other, the communication doesnt seem to be moving us toward greater understanding. Why is that, considering that Facebook and Twitter conversations share some things in common with transformative mediation sessions? In both situations, the participants are free to choose whether they speak, what they say, when they say it and how they say it. Theres no one with judicial authority involved; and theres no third party who sees it as their job to move the conversation toward agreement. So why do transformative mediations usually work out so much better than internet conversations?

It turns out that the presence of someone who is committed to and skilled at being supportive of all participants makes a big difference. Imagine a transformative mediator helping with the above conversation (assuming they were invited to do so by all the participants). The transformative mediator, when appropriate, would reflect what a party said, so Dan is an idiot, and that whole group are vile, despicable and should be ashamed. That intervention alone could have a big impact on the speaker. Just hearing, from another human being, exactly what youve just said, tends to lead to progress in your thinking. One possible direction might be that the speaker says, yes, well, Dan is sure talking like an idiot, Already, progress. The speaker has shifted to suggesting that I might not be a full-time idiot, but that I might be just very mistaken about this issue. A series of shifts along those lines and we could wind up having an intelligent policy discussion where we both learn something, including that neither of us is all that bad a person.

The presence of the transformative mediator usually allows everyone to think more clearly about the precise point they want to make. When they hear themselves reflected, they make progress in their own thinking. When they hear the other person reflected, theyre able to listen again while feeling less threatened and defensive, but while also facing up to the reality of what the other party said. The mediators ability to remain non-judgmental of both the other party and of oneself suggests that its possible for both sides to be tolerated.

So is it possible to apply the practices of the transformative mediator in ones own online discussions? Not exactly. Taking the role of mediator when one is also a party just doesnt work. But somehow, the above internet conversation ended with the following exchange: I truly enjoyed our talkIt is very nice talking to someone that doesnt cuss at you, try and tell you that you are a racist, etc..Feel free to jump in at any time that you might see a post of mine on here..Good luck, stay safe. Likewise, Brother.

So maybe theres hope?

Dan Simon writes the blog for the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. He is a national leader in the field of transformative mediation. He practices and teaches it in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He's trained mediators throughout the country for the U.S. Postal Service, the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation, and as an Adjunct Professor at the Hofstra University School of Law. He serves on the Minnesota Supreme Court's ADR Ethics Board, is the Immediate Past Chair of the Minnesota State Bar Association's ADR Section; and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. He hasbeen the director of Twin Cities Mediation since he founded it in 1998. He helps with divorces, parenting differences, real estate issues, employment cases, business disputes, and neighbor to neighbor conflicts.

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Social Networking Ain't Transformative Mediation - Mediate.com

The White House wants Congress to reauthorize two of the NSAs largest surveillance programs before they expire at the end of the year.

One of them scans the traffic that passes through the massive internet cables going in and out of the U.S. and ends upcatching a vast number of American communications in its dragnet.

But how many? Lawmakers have been asking for years, and the intelligence community has consistently refused provide even a ballpark figure.

At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, several members expressed frustration that intelligence chiefs first under Obama, and now under Trump have failed to provide any kind of estimate, even in classified briefings.

The members of this committee and the public at large require that estimate to engage in a meaningful debate, said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the leading Democrat on the committee. We will not simply take the governments word on the size of the so-called incidental collection.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which lapses at the end of the year, allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of domestic internet traffic as long as it maintains it is only targeting foreigners.Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden described two huge surveillance programs that operate under that authority. One program, PRISM, allows the NSA to collect data in bulk from tech companies like Google, Facebook and Apple. The other program Upstream allows the NSA to tap the massive internet cables that carry information in and out of the U.S. and search for communications involving certain foreign targets or selectors.

As the NSA scans the cables for information on its targets, it also collects information on the Americans those targets are communicating with, as well as entirely unrelated information, such as communications from people who happened to be in the same chat room as a target. Furthermore, the targets can be selected for anyforeign intelligence purpose not just counterterrorism.

As a result,the NSA ends up collecting information on a huge number of U.S. persons without getting a warrant collection they describe as incidental, but which is really inevitable. And using what critics call the backdoor loophole, law enforcement officials then search through that material for information on Americans.

That collection on Americans is part of how thelaw was designed, according to Elizabeth Goitein, a lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice. Incidentally, is the terminology used by the government, Goitein testified at Wednesdays hearing. But it is part of the design of the program to acquire communications of foreign targets with Americans.

The issue of incidental collection has come into the spotlight in the weeks since Trumps inauguration. Last month, anonymous members of the intelligence community leaked information about phone calls between the Russian ambassador who was understandably targeted for surveillance and Trumps former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Flynns resignation spooked some Republicanswho worried about that ability being used improperly.Whatever your political persuasion is, for me it had a chilling effect, said Rep. Ral Labrador, R-Idaho. My political opponents could use my personal information, that they maybe gathered in some private information, against me in the future. That should be quite terrifying to anybody, whether youre a Republican or Democrat.

Conyers, along with a bipartisan group of 14 Democrats and Republicans, sent a letter to the director of national intelligence in April last year, asking simply for a rough estimate of how many Americans had their communications collected.

Conyers sent a follow-up letter in December. The intelligence community has not so much as responded to our December letter, Conyers said Wednesday. I had hoped for better.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., first requested an estimate in2011 even before the Snowden disclosures demonstrated the reach of the surveillance programs. The federal Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight board recommended in 2014 that the NSA start keeping track of the number. In 2015, more than 30 civil liberties organizations wrote a letter to the Intelligence Communitys Civil Liberties Protection Office, demanding the same thing, and got an unresponsive reply.

The intelligence community insists that it doesnt keep track, in part because doing so would require it to identify which phone numbers and computer IP addresses belong to American citizens.April Doss, a former NSA lawyer, told the committee that it would require the NSA to de-anonymize everyone in their communications. In my view, the collection and maintenance of that reference information would itself pose significant impacts to privacy, she said.

But Goitein noted that the NSA already uses computer IP addresses to approximate who is a U.S. citizen for other purposes, so it would be easy for them to estimate how many Americans communications they collect.

The NSA has determined that the IP address is an accurate enough indicator of a persons status to use it to filter out the wholly domestic communications that the NSA is prohibited from acquiring, she testified. If its accurate enough to enable the NSA to comply with that constitutional obligation, then its certainly accurate enough for the estimate.

Top photo: A man looks at his cellphone as he walks on the street in Madrid in 2013.

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Trump Wants NSA Program Reauthorized But Won't Tell Congress How Many Americans It Spies On - The Intercept