Two deadly explosions in Moscow metro became the main theme in the Runet (Russian Internet) on March 29, 2010. The blasts occurred during the morning rush hour in central Moscow. The first was at the Lubyanka metro station (7:50 am), the second came 40 minutes later at the Park Kultury station.
Social media in this extreme situation appeared to be much faster than traditional media. But despite the activity and efficiency, it also became a source of panic and misinformation as well.
This post discusses the positive and negative aspects of social media’s role in the attack response.
40 Tweets per second
The tragedy in Moscow metro has become an example of how news now moves much faster than traditional media often allows: “40 Tweets per second on the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro vs. only 4 TV newscasts in the morning” via@krassnova. People were very active in sharing the information from the places where the tragedy took place. While the Twitter user base in Russia is not very large at only 183 thousand users, everyone including TV channels and the Russian government saw Twitter’s value.
Check what you RT
As good as Twitter was at facilitating quick transmission and response, it also spread rumors and unverified facts. The information sometimes appeared to be incorrect or without links to sources. Twitter was full of rumors such as ”I’ve heard that another explosion occurred at another metro station“ or ”Officials don’t speak about the new explosions, why?!“. Thousands of retweets of unchecked information created significant panic among users.
Hashtag: Real Help – Real Spam
People used Twitter to lend a helping hand by encouraging blood donations or appealing to car owners to drive people from the metro and bring them to their destinations for free (as opposed to using taxi drivers who raised the prices for their services). To make these efforts easier to follow and coordinate, Twitter members used hashtags like #metro29 and #moscow. At the same time, however, some unethical marketers used these hashtags for spam and advertising, taking advantage of the high levels of interest.
Lack of Control
Videos and photos that people gathered and placed on their blogs inspired passionate debates about the ethical aspects of posting the pictures of victims without the permission of their relatives. Moreover, such content was posted and distributed uncut among unprepared users. The lack of editorial control shocked people.
Mr. President on Twitter
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is going to launch his official microblog on Twitter in the near future. In related news, the Presidential Administration sent an official notification to the administration of Twitter with request to remove the fake Medvedev account, which was very active during the Moscow metro terrorist attack.
2 Deadly Explosions in Moscow metro became the main theme in Runet. The blasts occurred during the morning rush hour in central Moscow. The first was at the Lubyanka metro station (7:50 am), the second came 40 minutes later at the Park Kultury station. Social media turns to be more quick and operative than traditional media. The tragedy in Moscow metro has become an example of TV sluggishness: “40 Tweets per second on the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro vs. only 4 TV newscasts in the morning” via @krassnova.
Shortly after the tragedy in blogs and social networks began to appear the first reports from users via twitter and LiveJournal. The main issue, which were discussed – how to help the victims (shortage of donated blood), horrible behavior of Moscow taxi drivers (who took advantage of the situation and inflated the prices several times for those who had been unable to get out of the subway, but had yet to reach their destinations) .
Today in blogs, photos from tragedy places, video from tragedy places, hashtags broadcasting the news in real time – #moscow and #metro29. Moreover, in twitter there was an hour of silence from 5 till 6 p.m. on March, 29.
Recently in Moscow there was very heavy traffic because of unexpected snow. And almost all city stopped in cars on the roads. Many of clerks had been stucked in traffic for more than 3-5 hours. And what did the do?
With yandex.traffic service which helps to identify the situation on the roads and to mark (put a tag) the place with, for instance, car accident, people began to change with each other not only information but with their thoughts and expressions: “Hey, I’m staying here for 3 hours. Just want to leave my car and go to the pub, follow me!”
Ministry of mass communications of Russia announced tender of developing a program which would allow to find different ideas useful for the government in Runet and Russian blogosphere. Ministry is ready to give 5 mln rubles on this project.
From documents we see that the issue of this project is finding out special social networks, creating data bases of them and monitoring program which would allow to listen to them attentively on regular bases. And in addition the task of this project is developing the strategy of promotion the interests of federal executive committees in social media.
So, if new project runs every user can influence on its realization just posting his/her genius ideas on the web. There will be a chance of noticing them on «high level». Another question – how to analyze and select all this stuff. Though there is another way to deliver your genius idea – just post a comment on Medvedev’s blog or write to kremlin@gov.ru.
Last month we (as Edelman digital Russia) launched new online project – a blog for professionals in HR sector – for Ventra Employment (Edelman Imageland’s client). The project’s goal was to build a communication platform for online interaction between Ventra Employment specialists and it’s current and future clients and candidates. In addition, new platform allows HR-experts from Ventra’s clients list (wish list for candidates) to communicate with their candidates managing it’s own blogs on blog.ventra.ru.
This communication platform is effective B2B solution for drawing new clients to Ventra Employment. With it being launched just recently it has already become important for Ventra experts. Ventra employs real professionals and they have much to tell to their clients and partners through new blog.
Besides, there is an opportunity for the company to participate in the project on a partnership basis. That’s what we did. Now our HR expert represents Edelman Imageland as an employer on blog.ventra.ru, telling our users about Edelman appraisal system, Edelman Global University and other interesting programms for Russian candidates. Very interesting notice, when expert really understands his/her goal and all benefits which are results from blogging – it takes just short period of time to teach him/her to blog. And I have to admit, that our HR director – Anna Govorina - is very natural in this new way of communication.
The Social Media Association has been founded in Russia as a group of experts working with social media, with the support of the Regional Public Center of Internet Technologies (ROCIT), Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEK) and Internet & Business Association (AIB). The goals of the SM Association include but are not limited to:
• interchange of experience between the leading market players;
• customer and industry advocating through developing Social Media Code of Ethics;
• promoting new approaches to PR and marketing;
• social media trainings;
• professional community building;
• developing industry standards.
“Social media market is growing in Russia,” said Anna Rokina, NetMind research director. “And we really need some quality standards and guidelines to be developed for those working here. We also need some measurement standards for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising and promotional campaigns being implemented in social media”.
The Social Media Association has its steering committee with:
Edelman Imageland Russia (Olga Rasulova), Netmind. Social Media (Anna Rokina), SK Content Group (Sergey Kuznetsov), Redkaya Marka interactive marketing company (Anton Popov), Comunica agency (Mikhail Umarov), IPSOS, Affect agency, BigIdea and ArtStyle MEDIA advertising & communication agency.
The Association will join Russian companies communicating with their customers through social media and blogosphere, agencies offering promotion in social media and doing it effectively, experts and freelancers working with social media and industry analysts and researchers.
Last week Edelman Russia presented this year’s trust findings in Moscow at the International Council for Cooperation and Investment forum.
The event was headlined by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, attended by several of Russia’s most notable CEOs, and widely reported by business media.
Jere Sullivan, Edelman’s Vice Chairman of Europe, presented the data to the country’s political and business elite. “It was a fascinating discussion.” - mentioned Ekaterina Kvasova, Director Russia&CIS Projects. ”The data highlighted significant contradictions in opinions on trust within Russia, which ranks amongst the highest in terms of country’s trust levels in their government and outside the country where Russia shares the lowest trust scores along with China.”
You can download the full copy of the presentation, which is relevant to any company/organisation conducting business in Russia, Moscow.
When media announced on April, 21 at 14 p.m about Russian president’s blog in LiveJournal, which was launched on February,09 with aggregated content from his Vlog on Kremlin.ru (by the way, on January’09 his vlog switched on the users comments) – the quantity of his friends achieved more than 1 thousand till 20 p.m and raised attention among Russian bloggers and online media.
Dmitry Medvedev said in his announcement to journalists that this initiative devoted to his closer communication with online users. And as RIA-Novosti says, his press attaché Natalia Timakova tells that in his first video post on LJ President will congratulate the participants of Russian Internet Forum, whish starts on Wednesday, and say some words about the future of Runet and Government activities in this field.
LJ of Dmitry Medvedev strictly premoderated by 4 accounts: blog_d_medvedev, moderator_1, moderator_2, moderator_3 and according to the rules of his blog you can write the comments only on Russian.
Today I’ve got greetings from NY by Chris Weston. He said in his letter that he was just looking at “Views from Edelman Offices” article on Runetreview and Flickr and thought to add one more.
“This is the southern view from the New York office. We only have a few months left here in this location, but this is an iconic view here in the States, and I thought it would be a nice addition.”
And I thought that it would be a great idea to give this project the second life.
I’ve made the group on Facebook (I suppose that this social network is very popular among Edelman’s folks as far as Edelman.inc launched the official Edelman facebook community).
Being a part of this group you could add your views and share your videos about your office’s lifes. I think that this uniting idea could help us to know more about our colleagues all over the world and our working days.
