Often, a Facebook page with no Fans can drive greater visibility with $500 of investment than a page can achieve organically with 90 Million+ Fans. This Facebook campaign reaches 1.3 Million people and achieves 42,000 clicks through to a website for $643. Despite the declining ROI of organic content, surprisingly few brands actually promote their social posts regularly. And by ignoring this paid investment they waste time and money creating imagery and copy that will be seen by very few people.

To fully explain how viral content – and viruses – spread, we need to move away from the idea that outbreaks involve simple clockwork infections, passing along a chain from person to person to person until large numbers have been exposed. During the 2015 outbreak of the Mers coronavirus in South Korea, 82 out of 186 infections came from a single “superspreading event” in a hospital where an infected person was being treated. It’s not yet clear how common such superspreading is in the current outbreak, but we do know that these kinds of events are how information goes viral online; most outbreaks on Twitter are dominated by a handful of individuals or media outlets, which are responsible for a large proportion of transmission. If you heard about snake flu, you might have told a couple of friends; meanwhile, newspaper headlines were telling millions. When tackling disease outbreaks, health agencies often work to identify potential superspreading events, isolating infected individuals to prevent further transmission. However, this isn’t the only way to stop an outbreak. As well as tracking down people who are infectious, it’s possible to target broader social interactions that might amplify transmission. For example, many cities in China have recently closed schools, which can be hotspots for respiratory infections.

I’ve been working on a model to help explain the stages of peer health connection and I’d love to get feedback on it.

good example of an advocacy microsite/social media toolkit

A Field Guide to “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders explores the use of digital methods to study false viral news, political memes, trolling practices and their social life online. It responds to an increasing demand for understanding the interplay between digital platforms, misleading information, propaganda and viral content practices, and their influence on politics and public life in democratic societies.

In part four, we looked at the difference between hierarchical and collaborative conversations. Now we bring it all together and ask, “What can we do?” The answer is, a lot. There are, as it turns out, many solutions to how we can do a better job of talking to each other, and any one of these are approaches you can try in your own lives or organizations.

It was a fun presentation mixing the good and the bad. A chance to groan, cringe, shake one’s head in disapproval but also to smile and laugh. The goal was to learn from the mistakes and successes of others. Below is a brief roundup of the presentation, with some of the components of modern day storytelling. At the end of this post you’ll find a “cheat sheet” of do’s and dont’s when posting publicly which you can download, print and keep handy.

This guidebook helps media professionals of small media houses develop a better understanding of how to use data for improving their social media performance. Also includes worksheets and templates.

In 2018, LSE Arena, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera analysed the engagement of Corriere readers with content touching on the controversial and polarising topic of migration in Italy. The purpose was to address one of the most difficult problems in journalism today, which can be summed up in four related questions: • Which types of journalism intensify polarisation, and which reduce it? • How can one best communicate facts? • How can we foster constructive engagement? • Are there ways to avoid playing into the media strategies of “anti-establishment” politicians who make purposefully controversial statements in order to dominate the national debate, and then attack media who criticise them as “enemies of the people” or purveyors of “fake news”?

Our results indicated that 99.6% of the variability in adolescent girls’ satisfaction with life had nothing to do with how much they used social media.