Kenneth Griggs and Rosemary Wild
• Stakeholder values – High; supported by content( the diplomatic position of the U. S. government and commercial and consular operations)
• Information value retention rate – Medium; most information has high value retention since the site is largely a focus for consular operations( e. g., Visa applications) and various government programs
• Risk‐related
• Expansion control – High; expansion( initially) not controlled by design
• Privacy and security assurance – Medium; basic Facebook and Twitter controls for embassy‐affiliates with monitoring of non‐embassy‐affiliated posters
• Message control – Medium; with a high risk of message corruption with a demonstrated disconnect between the Department of State and local embassy personnel in Cairo
The use of a high risk SNA approach at the U. S. embassy in Cairo is a good example of the applicability of the model with regard to the selection of an SNA that allows( by design) partially monitored messaging. The embassy has made clearly embarrassing tweets( called“ rogue tweets”) on Twitter concerning several recent political events and the embassy official charged with creating the tweets has been recalled as a consequence.( Rogin, 2012)
4.2 The“ change we see” campaign by the Labour Party in the United Kingdom
In 2010 the Labour Party of the United Kingdom created a Flickr social media campaign to highlight its past achievements( particularly in infrastructure development) and as a method of countering the austerity program of the opposing party. The official narrative was as follows:
The Labour Party has launched a crowdsourcing new media campaign, asking its members and supporters to submit photos of examples of Labour investment since 1997. The“ Change We See” campaign asks people to upload photos of the rebuilt hospitals, the local Sure Start centres, the schools that have been invested in and other examples of Labour’ s investment.
From an adoption model perspective, the use of Flickr as an SNA for largely political messaging purposes is clearly problematic. As an SNA, Flickr allows anonymous posting of photographs and videos that are shareable within a potentially wide but self‐directed audience. The following summarizes the model characteristics associated with this government SNA:
• Expansion‐related
• Virality – High; virality with photo uploads cross‐posted to Facebook, Twitter and other SNA’ s
• Geospatiality – Low; confined to the UK with geotagging and mobile platform support by Flickr
• Temporality – Potentially high; without restrictions but currency of imagery not critical
• Value‐related
• Media quality – Medium; photographs with descriptions( from the originator) and commentary from registered posters
• Stakeholder values – High; intended to support the implied values of the Labour Party
• Information value retention rate – Low; content consisted of static photographs of buildings with an accompanying description
• Risk‐related
• Expansion control – High; expansion is not controlled by design
• Privacy and security assurance – Medium; handled by Flickr with basic security and privacy controls
• Message control – Medium; photo uploads and post monitoring available via Flickr administrative controls
The use of the Flickr SNA to“ crowdsource” photos in support of a political party’ s values contains the inherent risk of message corruption. Also, since Flickr can be linked to Facebook and Twitter the possibility exists for the rapid propagation of a corrupted message. This is precisely what occurred with“ rogue” photo uploading of politically sensitive content and the embarrassment of the resulting censorship and ultimate lock of the site by the Labour Party( see“ Labour: Change we see but you can ' t photograph.”)( Day, 2010)
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