It’s the time of year to reflect. For bloggers, that means sharing our highlights of this calendar year, noting there are still a few days of waxing and waning before we have to remember to date our cheques differently. Wait. Do you still write cheques?
So, here is a summary list of some of my highlights for the year in digital public affairs and communications. I’ll publish some personal reflections separately.
- Hélène Campbell and her A Lung Story movement: Hélène Campbell’s #BeAnOrganDonor campaign proves every voice counts and Hélène Campbell: Individuals make a difference
- KONY2012, which I believe is a great success story despite the criticism Invisible Children faced: What makes #kony2012 an online sensation
- Social media warfare between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas: Social Media 2012 in three acts: share it forward, dark arts and war porn
- A new standard for unethical PA/PR practices was established by Greenpeace’s Let’s Go Arctic campaign: Six degress of faux-real crisis media coverage and Virtual is where real happens
- Idle No More, the First Nations youth-led movement, is poised to cross the New Year’s even threshold and carry over into the new year: Why the Government can’t be #IdleNoMore
- #TellVicEverything was good-natured, creative and effective: You really are telling Vic everything
- An anti-Loblaw Internet pile-on was sparked when Amanda House apparently personalized a business dispute: The Yopro vs. Loblaw pile-on raises some serious ethical questions and Yopro vs. Loblaw has left the building: a look back at an online crisis
- Internet-based electoral voting systems are attractive targets as we witnessed when a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack threatened to derail NDP leadership convention voting: Welcome to cloud(y) politics and Investigation into the DDoS attack on #ndpldr vote ends
- Barack Obama’s ‘Four more years’ hug became (and remains) the most popular tweet of all time. Public affairs folks take note… I believe it’s less about the victory message and more about the human-relatable image attached to the tweet: Can a single tweet break the sound barrier?
- The digital culture learning curve is a steep for all newcomers. Politicians are no exception: Parliament’s problems are not with technology and It’s not Twitter. It’s you.
Honourable mentions are as follows:
- Clint Eastwood’s off-script rant became an Internet sensation: Go ahead, take my day: Clint Eastwood takes over the narrative
- Quality journalism is not free: To pay or not to pay: can quality online news remain free?
- Who knew? Canadian youth participating more in online election chatter than US counterparts
