BP’s oil spill spreads across the online social sphere
There is a new phenomenon in the way in which news is being reported. Drastically different from traditional reporting, news is also being reported and translated online in social media. Through platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and more, individuals are able to express themselves, voice their opinions, translate stories in their own way, and reach out to individuals or groups on a larger scale than ever before. It serves as a means to more effectively monitor the public’s reaction to a particular story or issue.
There is absolutely a question of accuracy of information with news being ‘reported’ in this way. News reported in such a manner cannot and should not be taken as accurate; however it should not be underestimated as an important tool in terms of public opinion analysis.
BP’s recent oil spill has received a substantial amount of press coverage, and has generated a high volume of public interest, much of which has been demonstrated on the Internet. A number of websites focusing on the oil spill have embraced numerous social platforms and tools in order to communicate their message. For example, www.gulfcoastbenefit.com is a site dedicated to the event ‘Gulf Coast Benefit’, a non-profit event that took place on 1st July to raise funds for those affected by the oil spill. The site incorporates a wide range of online social mediums including a Twitter feed, what is currently trending in Twitter, a Flickr feed, Facebook’s social plugin, and a video feed showing the concert via justin.tv. The site also links with www.meetup.com in order to map locations around the world where people and groups are taking part in the event. The organisation encouraged people to promote the event by using a range of social media applications and platforms: Foursquare when checking into the concert; by adding the Campaign Live widget to their website, Facebook, and MySpace; to show support with a Twibbon; by changing their Twitter background; by asking people to add their photos to the Gulf Benefit Concert Flickr group using the tags ‘oilspill’ and ‘rockthespill’. All in all, the site has a full artillery of social media tools to connect and unite people toward a common goal.
Official organisations and Government organisations have also embraced these mediums. The US Coast Guard Eighth District External Affairs have hosted a Flickr slideshow - displayed on their site – beside a list of news items and documents. They provide links to their Twitter account (@Oil_Spill_2010) and their Facebook page (Deepwater Horizon Response).
The site enables you to report incidents, report oiled wildlife, file a claim, volunteer, make a suggestion, view recent footage, and of course keep up to date with the latest news on the incident. It is a fantastic site to keep up to date on all the latest news, and provides fully interactive functions such as recent videos from their YouTube feed. With this and their accounts with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon, they are also armed with a full artillery of social media tools, all for the benefit of connecting with the public over the oil spill and increasing their credibility by doing so.
Virals on the oil spill have been prevalent: numerous spoof videos have been posted on YouTube. This is of course bad press for BP with their already sullied reputation, which begs the question, how do companies begin to manage their damage control in such an environment? One way BP has attempted to combat the bad press spreading across the ‘Net is by buying top ‘oil’ search terms with Google, Yahoo and Bing, so results prominently feature BP’s official site with its response to the spill (read more at The Times). This is in fact a sound (although costly) PR strategy, which has been used in numerous instances throughout the past decade, including by political parties worldwide.
Still, there is nothing to stop people from discussing BP and the oil spill, particularly on Twitter. BP can certainly attempt to recover some ground via Tweeting from its account @BP_America, but there’s nothing to say that this is what people want to read when they log into their Twitter account. Let’s face it, @BP_America is just not as interesting as @BPGlobalPR, the fake BP Twitter account set up to serve as an amusing counter identity to the real BP. @BPGlobalPR represents the public’s anger at the incident and offers more than BP’s real Twitter account: entertainment and an affinity with their own feelings toward BP. Its popularity is proved by its sheer volume of follows: 183,945 compared to @BP_America’s meagre 16,740 (at time of writing).
I’m fascinated by the in which new forms of communication are being embraced via the Internet and the way in which it is transforming elements of our daily lives, such as the way news is reported by the public. By browsing the Internet and popular social media sites and applications, the user is able to obtain far more information on issues than simply by watching the news on Television or reading about it in the paper. Users are able to engage and connect over issues and current stories like never before, in a way that could be both beneficial and damaging for companies, organisations and political parties, and this phenomenon is only just beginning to really take off.
The below links are a just a small collection of virals, spoofs, and websites on BP’s oil spill.
Spoof YouTube Videos:
BP Spills Coffee
Obama and BP:
Killing you killing me
BP Oil Response
BP Public Apology
BP Commercial Spoof
BP Oil Spill Re-enacted by cats
World’s strongest red-neck offers solution
BP’s oil spill solution
Oil spill rap
Deepwater Horizon Response The official Deepwater Horizon site
Oil Spill Live Cam Formerly live webcam
Mapping
