What's Good for the Fortson is Good for the Guth

The debate over David Guth's tweet and Kansas' reaction swings quickly to the First Amendment.  A passionate defense of Guth's right in today's Chroncle.

I wonder if we see a growing trend of acceptance of/tolerance for bad behavior in the social world.

Take Courtney Fortson's case.  The former Razorback point guard made the following tweet:

He was punished for violating team rules (perhaps other issues weighed in beyond the tweet) and missed a large number of games -- publicly for his bad tweet.  For those unfamiliar, some of Fortson's teammates were accused of a sexual assault, thus the significance of the "drunk girl" reference.

This was 2009.  And he still makes SI's top 20 and another digital publication's top 15 for worst all-time athlete tweets.

Here in 2013, Guth made this tweet:

If we believe that Fortson -- as a university representative -- is held to a higher standard, does Guth not have the same responsibility?  Or have both men been cruelly wronged?

I believe this to be a First Amendment issue.

As in, rights of association, the extension the courts have made of the right of assembly.  A group can choose who it will or will not associate with.  Does Guth or Fortson's individual ability to say whatever they want in whatever format they choose trump the right of the assembly to remove them from the group for their speech they find offensive?

Discuss.

J-School Prof Disciplined for Tweet

Remember the name David Guth -- even money says he's the next battleground for First Amendment.

Guth stirred the ire of the NRA with a tweet after the Washington Naval Yard shootings, and in turn, University of Kansas has put Guth on administrative leave.

This post is not to take a side on the tweet.  It's to ponder the point: can you discipline an associate professor for their point of view.

The Chronicle gave the first note, and here's the link to the Kansas City Star story referenced.

And, for the curious, here's the link to KU's social media policy.  Clearly, KU is taking the path I've advocated for many an athletic department.  To quote from the KU PDF:

Social media is included in speech, so the same rules apply regarding hate speech

and other similar issue

Guth didn't violate a social media policy as much as he violated existing speech guidelines (or, to use my athletic analogy, "team rules" which cover general conduct regardless to whether it was online or in person).

Pixar's 22 Rules

The best "here click on this web link" advice I've received in months.

Especially #2 and #22.

Seriously, no explanation needed -- trust me this is not a waste of your time.

To Each Platform According to its Needs

Perhaps a little Marx to start the day, but while reading over some recent Facebook versus Twitter comparisons the basic concept of creating the right message on the right platform remains true.

Hashtags, in particular.

That's a genuinely Twitter function.  When Facebook emulated, many wondered what the impact would be.  At least one report out now says, it's a "zero" impact.

Digging into the numbers, I'm more struck by the small base numbers.  Sure, that's some dramatic differences -- 1.3 to 0.8 against on Facebook and .0069 to .004 for on Twitter.

Personally, Facebook is a prose composition.  Twitter is a hip text world.  I've been concerned that bringing the hashtag into FB looks a little "desperate" to be cool.  Sort of like more than two hashtags gets annoying on Twitter or multiple exclamations on FB.

Look at the numbers again.  The Facebook forwarding is next to the decimal point.  Twitter?  Not so much.

Reminds me of a similar look by Facebook claiming how they had as much, if not more, raw traffic related to second/third screen interaction with television shows.

Well sure.  There are simply more people on Facebook.  We see that here at Arkansas State (15K-plus on FB to 9.5K on Twitter), but they are different audiences.  Same was true when I left Northwestern State (12K to 1.5K).  Only place we saw opposite was the early years running UA athletics where Twitter dominated . . . but only until we got serious and launched Facebook.

Facebook Important in Crisis

No surprise to this space what being on top of social commentary means in "crisis" modes -- either real or perceived.  Nice to have to research now to back it up.  Missouri School of Journalism weighs in with a new study.

Tip of the hat to the Bulldog Reporter email feed for the story.

The two researchers pulled out one interesting fact in the BR story:

Hong also found that Facebook posts written in a narrative style were more effective than posts written in a non-narrative format. Narrative style is chronological and focuses more on story-telling rather than fact listing.

 I find this another reinforcing fact that you need to create content and write for the platform, not in a single "dashboard" and send to all at once.

Your Other Data

One of my favorite presentation lines is to remind people the real reason for Facebook is it is the world's largest data mining and marketing operation.  And you volunteered for it.

Now, one of the world's largest data companies you DIDN'T opt into is opening up its data to show you what it knows about you.  Little Rock based Acxiom launched its aboutthedata.com website today.

Log on and see if they have you profiled.  The paranoid among us will say that just verified your personal data.

Acxiom's info comes from years and years of mundane data -- your voting records, your public records (driving, taxes, etc), your credit records, your bread crumbs left will purchasing on line.

Big Data crunches all that and tells marketing (or others) exactly what you've done and a reasonable prediction of what you'll do next.

Now, if I could just see the files from NSA on my phone calls also . . .

(FYI - when I tried it, it returned an error.  Some in the media are saying the data base is having troubles, and Acxiom is listing this as a "beta" on the webpages).