Social media, like most technological advances before it, has become a highly effective tool for bigots, racists, and revisionists. It is up to those of us who wish to rise above prejudice to respond and correct “misinformation” (a gentle word for lies) when we see it.

I just came across an excellent post On Reem Abeidoh’s blog on this very subject. Reem asks:

“The real people in the online world bring their prejudice to the communities they belong to. However, if there is a strong enough brigade who shuns and demotes these people, would their muscles deflate? Can the community establish an internal code to ensure that everyone feels comfortable online?”

I am not sure how enforceable a code would be. I do agree strongly that those of us who are intelligent and skilled writers and researchers (bloggers), sometimes with sizable audiences, can do much to counter the lies with a reasoned, well-researched response.

I am Jewish, and recently found myself on a Facebook group where a conspiracy theorist was explaining how the Jews control the media, the government, the banks and big business. They also incidentally helped found Nazism! In this case, one of the “sources” used to prove this was The Protocols of Zion, a book that has long been recognized by scholars as a fraud, but which is still popular with anti-Semites.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the Protocols of Zion are a master plan by “the elders of Zion.” This is patently absurd. The source material was written about Napoleon III, and was not written about Zionism, nor influenced by it. How then could it be what propagandists claim it to be? It isn’t. The Times of London exposed the hoax of the protocols in 1921, but over the years it has been convenient to ignore this, and subsequent evidence, that the protocols are bogus, because the fraud is the foundation of so many claims of a vast, global Zionist conspiracy.

When I posted this information to the Facebook group, the person I was arguing with eventually conceded this point and went on to quote other sources. I feel I made a small victory, and either embarrassed the author for his being so easily dran into this 100-year-old scam, or perhaps influenced others who might have thought his claims valid.

Based on my Facebook experience, here are my suggestions for responding to online hatred:

• Respond factually and unemotionally
• Cite reliable, unbiased sources. There are no truly unbiased sources, but don’t for example, quote a Jewish source in a Jewish argument.)
• Be logical and methodical
• Choose your cause, become an expert on it and use social media tools like RSS, Google News Alerts and Technorati blog search to track interesting conversation
• DO NOT link to racist sites and material unless you have to. This only propagates this information and improves its search engine ranking. Obviously if you are responding to someone, you have to link to that person’s blog or web site, but don’t succumb to the temptation to provide a number of links to racist content to illustrate the problem. Don’t help these people.

I’ve just started thinking about this in the past six months or so, and I would love to hear your comments on the seriousness of this problem and what bloggers can do about it.

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Hugh MacLeod argues that “public relations is getting social media all wrong,” and “if your ideas have merit, bloggers will talk about them,” and therefore traditional press releases are unnecessary and irrelevant.

The idea that blogs and other social media have replaced the press release is simplistic. I won’t argue that press releases are often laden with corporate crap, and the PR profession needs to take a hard look at this, but the quality of a typical press release, and the relevance of press releases, are two separate discussions. Certainly more and more people in all fields are becoming social media-aware, but there are still plenty of journalists and editors who do not blog or read blogs, but who can be reached with a press release. Anyone who is currently advising clients to stop issuing press releases, whether that person represents a PR agency, an advertising agency, a marketing firm, or a social media consultancy, is negligent. Some day soon we may indeed be ready for the elimination of the conventional press release, but that day is not here.

The theme of MacLeod’s blog is “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards.” Many of them are enlightening and amusing. But I am completely clueless (I admit it) as to the meaning of this cartoon, included in MacLeod’s post:

First of all, I have no idea what the diagram is trying to convey. Second, it is labeled “ad agency biz model,” so I am not sure how it is connected to public relations. The themes of commodification/de-commodficiation (odd words) and “hard sell” are not dealt with in MacLeod’s post.

MacLeod paraphrases Stowe Boyd: “Please, please, please dont talk about audiences when you are theoretically promoting social media.” The idea that corporate communications and marketing people are clueless because they use the word “audience” is a popular red herring among anti-traditional communications jihadists. While the dictionary definition of audience might imply one-way communications to a captive and passive group, the concept, properly applied, is a powerful one that is highly relevant in social media strategy. In the corporate world, segmentation allows a company to enable effective communications with its various audiences. These audiences include customers, prospects, shareholders, business partners, employees, developers, journalists, bloggers, securities analysts, industry analysts and other influential groups that the company needs to reach.

Each of these groups has different interests. Securities analysts, for example, are interested almost exclusively in the company’s financial performance, and generally don’t want to hear about product features or corporate social responsibility. Developers want to know about tools, and the availability of software updates and bug fixes.

By understanding their audience(s), bloggers can engage in more interesting and effective conversations. If I visit the blog of an expert in Service Oriented Architectures and read a post on his experience trying to replace a stolen Blackberry, that might be mildly interesting (OK, it isn’t), but would have no value to me. I’d rather learn about the blogger’s views on the role of open source in SOA adoption. In this case, the first blogger is a narcissist, who has failed to consider his audience, readership, whatever. And I don’t care how articulate, funny or clever a blogger is. If he or she has nothing of interest to say to me, (a disregard for audience), then that blogger and the company are wasting their time and mine.

Finally, it’s totally unnecessary, unkind and uncivil to say that “most PR folk are still pretty clueless.” This kind of posturing trash talk is usually a smokescreen for the lack of a fully formed logical argument. I think the following diagram proves my point unequivocally:

I was sickened and saddened to see that the Discovery Channel chose today, the day we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, to premiere its new series Future Weapons. Discovery’s web site promoted tonight’s episode by urging viewers to “discover weapons that will always find their target, including the AS50 semi-automatic sniper rifle.”

King’s dream lives on with his followers, but it died for him April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry St. in Memphis, Tennessee. King was killed because he advocated non-violence, peace and racial harmony. The irony of this act has been lost.

For those fascinated by weaponry, here is what is believed to be the .30-06 (pronounced “thirty-ought-six”) rifle that killed King.

In the U.S. alone, according to one estimate, a child under the age of 19 is killed every three hours by a firearm. The dreams of nearly 2000 children are snuffed out here every year. That’s very disturbing. I assume that this also bothers the executive management of the Discovery Channel, the producers of Future Weapons, the program’s sponsors, and its viewers. If not, that’s even more disturbing.