Note: Like my last post regarding the Newtown shooting, I am not intending to make light of the tragedy that occurred or the 26 lives lost. This post is written strictly from the perspective of a mass communications scholar.

1) United States vs. China

On literally the same calendar date as the Newtown shooting, a man in China attacked and slashed 22 schoolchildren with a knife. The similarities between this and the Newtown tragedy are jarring. In addition to the choice of weapon, the most noteworthy difference was that not a single child died in China from that incident. It’s also well known that China has very strict gun control laws.

I won’t make the leap to causation, but it’s very hard to divorce the two ideas. The fact that two attacks on different sides of the world took place on the same day, and the one that occurred in a country with strong gun laws meant all of those schoolchildren are still alive today.

This story has the potential to be a very important talking point in the impending gun control debate in the States. But what I find most interesting is that this anecdotal evidence can be reasonably used by both sides of the debate. The pro gun control group can say that if guns were not as easily available, then Newtown may have ended the same way as the incident in China. The anti gun control group can say that violence is going to occur anyway and that it’s in our human nature, and that we need to be able to protect ourselves from those who are unbalanced. Also worth noting is that schoolchildren attacks in China are surprisingly and disturbingly not uncommon.

credit: HD-Photography2000

2) Social Media as News Sources

In my previous blog post, I touched upon how I think CNN’s over-reliance on social media and crowdsourcing for their reporting is lazy and bad for the news industry.

But that’s not the whole story. Consider the fact that if Facebook didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have firsthand accounts of Ryan Lanza declaring his innocence (and the fact that he was alive).

Consider this Reddit thread in /r/Connecticut, where a user made up-to-the-minute updates regarding the latest breaking news. In a world where it’s hard to recant statements or reports, the ability to edit or update content on the web makes so much sense.

3) News vs. Pseudo-News

Regarding that last point, I would not consider Slate a source for breaking news. I have long viewed it as an editorial and blog-like news magazine. But when CNN misreported the identity of the Newtown shooter, it was organizations like Slate that responded with the truth.

With the Internet becoming the preferred choice for receiving news from a larger percentage of people, the line between strict news organizations and “pseudo-news” sites is further blurred. Consider a site like Buzzfeed, that largely started out as a gossip and funny image-sharing site. During the last election, they had a Mormon writer on Mitt Romney’s bus reporting from his perspective how religion was involved in the campaign.

With the reliability of the big name news organizations increasingly being called into question, it’s getting hard to know who to go to for the hard facts.

Just ask NPR. They took a big shot in credibility back in 2011 when it misreported that Representative Gabby Giffords had died.

4) Racial Issues

It’s no secret that ever since 9/11, the race of violent perpetrators is always brought to the forefront. For instance, when someone of foreign descent commits an atrocity, it’s usually quickly chalked up to terrorism by select members of the media (e.g. the Fort Hood shooting from 2009). But how many times have you heard Timothy McVeigh called a domestic terrorist? What about extreme zealots who commit crimes against abortion clinics? These are clearly acts of domestic terrorism, but they’re very rarely addressed as such by the mainstream media. Which is what led to Bob Schieffer making a very poignant hypothetical on Face the Nation. Schieffer said, “If this person had… an Arab name, people would be going nuts.” See the abbreviated video clip below:

There’s no doubt in my mind that that would’ve been the case. In fact, I know that some people of Middle Eastern descent hold their breath whenever they find out that an act of violence has occurred on American soil, hoping that it’s not someone of their ethnicity. I even remember two years after the Virginia Tech shooting, there was another act of violence in Binghamton, NY where an Asian man went postal at an immigration office and killed 13 others. There was a short-lived time when race relations between Asian-Americans and other Americans suffered, but luckily, there weren’t any real residual effects. However, Muslims and Arab-Americans have not been so lucky.

As insensitive as it may seem to state this, the fact that the Newtown shooter was a white, American male (and not anyone with a foreign sounding name or skin complexion) is a lot better for our national discourse. The media can focus on the two biggest issues at hand that they usually throw to the wayside for sensationalist, xenophobic fear mongering. Gun control and mental illness are the major topics of discussion, rather than the race or nationality of the shooter.

There are many more reasons why the Newtown shooting can and should be one of the biggest stories of the year and also a media case study for years to come. I’m sure once the gun debate actually happens on a national stage, it will become clearer how these factors helped shape the narrative. And hopefully for the better.

However, as a student of Mass Communication, it made me a bit sad (and embarrassed) to see how poorly handled the situation was, not to mention how it showed desperation on the part of AP to cling onto what dignity it had left.

Oh, and there are also the issues of shoddy journalism and utter Public Relations fail. Anybody could do a simple Google search on Woot to discover that the nature of their editorial content is facetious at worst and lighthearted ribbing at best. To turn a joke into a serious matter was a huge communication mistake, and AP pretty much openly invited the criticisms of Woot loyalists and people who were just plain Internet savvier than the AP.

This was potentially an excellent PR opportunity for AP to set themselves apart from the rest of the struggling online news industry. Sure, they could have dismissed Woot’s allegation altogether or called shenanigans. But they could have also played along. The AP could have written an equally silly response to Woot to show that they have a sense of humor and “get” how the Internet works.

But alas, it was a poorly mishandled Mass Comm and PR trainwreck.

Every first year Psychology student has learned about the phenomenon of confirmation bias. In a nutshell, it means that people tend to selectively interpret information in order to reaffirm their preexisting beliefs. For instance, let’s say you believe that microwave popcorn tastes better than movie theater popcorn. Then there’s a good chance that the next time you microwave the perfect bag, you’ll forget all the other times when not all the kernels popped or when it came out a bit burnt. You’ll only retain the memories of when the popping went right and ignore the consistency of the theater’s popping machines.

What does this have to do with branding and social media? Consider Twitter’s trending topics. Millions of Tweeters determine the trends of the day, week, or even month. At the most basic level, these trending topics tell us where the conversation is. In an ideal system, the topics would also be what people value the most or hold the most important. In a way, trending topics are an open system of self-reinforced agenda setting. Agenda setting is a mass communication theory that posits that the media can control what the public believes to be newsworthy simply by reporting about it. Repetition combined with freshness will make people believe that a story or issue is important (this ties in really neatly with the psychological concept of the availability heuristic).

Now think about how this can help or hurt a brand. Let’s use the Tiger Woods Nike Commercial that I last blogged about as an example. If Person A (let’s call him Brandon) just saw the commercial on TV without any context or explanation, where would he find information? A lot of people would go to news sites or social networks. So Brandon types in “Tiger Woods Nike” into the Twitter search box, which returns tons of opinions in real-time (more or less). In turn, Brandon, who hadn’t previously formed an opinion about the commercial, will see that different people find the commercial brilliant, confusing, or downright creepy. It’s possible that these Tweets will help Brandon make up his mind and feelings about the commercial.

But what if the person already had an opinion on a topic but still wanted to see what other people thought? Let’s consider Person B, named Judy. She watched American Idol last night and found her favorite singer Lee to be the best performer. So later on, she clicks onto a TV show review blog and reads blog posts or comments either saying that Lee was awesome or that Lee was terrible. Because Judy already formed an opinion on the matter, she’ll likely disagree with the divergent blog post or comments. Rather than consider both sides of the argument, Judy will knowingly nod her head when she reads thoughts that she agrees with and vehemently shake her head when she wonders how others can have a differing opinion.

For established brands selling products or services, returning customers and loyalists are much more valuable than new one-time purchasers. If Apple had to choose, I’d venture that the marketing team would rather have the person who buys every new generation iPod as a customer than the person who makes the iPad his or her only on-brand purchase (Apple has actually done an amazing job grooming more consumers to fit into the former category).

By extension, when it comes to social media pushes, the brand behind them should be looking to target both the Brandon’s and the Judy’s. Provide a jump-off for the social conversation and let people discuss freely. Companies have to accept that they cannot control the conversation anymore. Agenda setting is now crowdsourced by anybody who wants to get involved. Social media should not be an exercise in damage control, but rather, a chance to gain real-time feedback on whether or not a campaign was well done.

Therefore, if brands reward and reinforce the positive feelings that people like Judy have about them, that’s already more than half the battle. I’m not saying that the potential Brandon’s should be ignored, but brands shouldn’t have tunnel-vision and take the loyalists for granted. Treat them well, and their words will do a lot of the brand building legwork for you.