Social media and the election: Guest Mark Story

This week, Media Bullseye Radio was pleased to welcome Mark Story back to the Roundtable, along with Chip Griffin, founder and CEO of CustomScoop, and host Jen Zingsheim. Mark is a frequent Media Bullseye contributor, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and authors the blog The Intersection of Online and Offline.

Mark joined the Roundtable this week to discuss the “first” Internet election, the importance of personal online reputation management, and the brave new world we’ve entered in which employers blog pending layoffs.

Click here to listen to the 32 minute discussion.


Was this the first Internet election? While we’re a few days away from real hard number-crunching, the Roundtable discusses a recent article from the Wall Street Journal that covered what the candidates—and more importantly what the voters—did on social media networks during this election cycle. Mark agrees that this is the first real Internet election, and Chip agrees—to a point. Jen asks about the role of supporter-generated video, and the impact it has on the role of traditional political advertising.

Personal online reputation management and culture clashes — Using Mark Story’s recently published Media Bullseye piece as a springboard for discussion, the Roundtable examines how the characteristics of social media (transparency, openness, and saying whatever is on your mind no matter how odd/rude/distasteful) are bumping up against cultural factors in other parts of the world. While there certainly is a dark side to reputation management, is South Korea’s possible move to regulate a good idea?

Blogging the Layoffs — The Roundtable wraps up this week by looking at a fairly recent trend: employers blogging the news of layoffs. Mark starts off the discussion by agreeing with the language used in the NYT piece, and states that the public nature of blogs makes him uncomfortable when thinking of something so highly personal—and private—as a layoff. Chip points out that the size of the institution involved makes a big difference in whether this is an effective method of communicating this news.

Click here to listen to the 32 minute discussion.