Tag Archives: ISIS

How did Facebook fail with its Safety Check in emerging markets?

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There are some times you really shouldn’t be making a distinction. Last week two tragedies took place, the first in Beirut and the second in Paris.

Others have written, much more eloquently than myself, on the raw emotion they felt after the two acts of terrorism – Beiruti blogger Elie Fares was one of the first to write about his anguish at Lebanons’s suffering being ignored by the West.

What is telling with the decision to activate the Facebook Safety Check was a comment by Alex Schultz, Facebook’s VP for Growth, who said:

In the middle of a complex, uncertain situation affecting many people, Facebook became a place where people were sharing information and looking to understand the condition of their loved ones. We talked with our employees on the ground, who felt that there was a need to fill. So we made the decision to try something that we’ve never done before: activating Safety Check for something other than a natural disaster. There has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris.

While Facebook’s intentions were to help those in need, the appearance to many in emerging markets such as Africa and the Middle East was that of bias. In effect, it was as if a life in Paris was worth more than a life in Beirut, or in Kenya or in Nigeria. This was compounded by Facebook’s decision to provide users with the option to upload the French flag over their profile picture.

Schultz’s comments that it was a human decision to activate Safety Check for Paris lead me to lose this question. Who at Facebook should have put forward the idea to use this service anywhere or everywhere where there is a crisis? My answer would be the communications and policy teams.

Communications in particular is the function that should act as the bridge between the outside world and the corporation, the part of the business that brings the outside in. That’s why, for example, Comms leads on issues and crisis management. Comms should have a robust understanding of the different stakeholder groups and how they impact the organization.

However, my take on Comms goes further. Comms should act as the conscience of the organization, and the Comms team should be able to advise when something is not right ethically. Unfortunately, Facebook’s team missed this opportunity here and instead turned what should have been an opportunity to play a vital role in helping inform families and friends re the safety oftheir loved ones into an example of unintended double standards (this was compounded by the Safety Check being used for residents of a Western capital rather than an Arab or African one, which in the context of colonialism also doesn’t look good).

Mark has said that Facebook’s policies will change and rightly so. Facebook is considered by many in emerging markets to be a tool for good, which is helping to promote positive change. It’d be a shame to see that opinion shift due to a lack of cultural awareness.

Has Social Media Overtaken the News Cycle? The Story of the Kuwait Mosque Bombing

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Last Friday was one of bloodshed and horror in Kuwait. The country, which has not been affected by regional sectarian issues in the same manner as its neighbours Iraq and Saudi Arabia, experienced something truly terrible. During Friday prayers, when men gather to pray together in the mosque, a suicide bomber entered one such mosque with the intent to kill as many of those inside as possible. To date, twenty seven people inside the Imam Sadiq Mosque, a place of worship for Shia Muslims. Two hundred people were injured.

Apart from the horror of this atrocity, which Islamic State claimed responsibility for, what is telling is the speed and amount of information which spread via social media, particularly WhatsApp, in the Gulf.

I was receiving messages about the bombing two hours before the news had made it onto websites such as Al Jazeera English. Not only was the information written down, but people were sharing both images and video thanks to the proliferation of smartphones as well as the availability of high-speed mobile data services.

Below is just a selection of the images that I received on that day.

What’s fascinating is not just the speed of information, but also the accuracy of that information. When Al Jazeera Arabic made a mistake with the name and picture of the suspected bomber an image was shared on social media of the correct suspect.

In addition, the amount of information was remarkable. While global networks provided a couple of minutes of coverage about the bombing, the images and video shared via Whatsapp built up a comprehensive picture of the incident, including video footage of the scene as well as interviews with witnesses and survivors. Unlike the news networks, many of whom don’t have correspondents in Kuwait, this was amazing, in-depth reportage of the Imam Sadiq bombing. Just two of the videos I received are below.

What was missing from all of this was context. On the same day there were terrorist incidents in both Tunisia and France, one of which was claimed by ISIS. Due to the local interest in Kuwait on my Whatsapp channels, no news on these two events was shared. This was a different story on the news networks where the three stories came together into one coherent piece on ISIS and its aim to spread terror across the Middle East and Europe.

Is the Imam Sadiq mosque bombing an example of citizen journalism working at its best in the Gulf? If so, how can media outlets catch up to ensure they have access to this information at the same time as its distribution through both private messaging networks such as WhatsApp as well as open platforms such as Instagram and Twitter? Twitter is looking to bring in a head of media partnerships for the MENA region, to work with publishers. It’ll be interesting to see how this and other efforts to get news outlets to work through social media impacts their ability to tell the story accurately in real time.

On a final note, my thoughts are with those who experienced this terrible incident. May all of those who were injured make a speedy recovery, and those who died always be remembered.