Dan Slee

A quick reminder and a bravo to those of you creating important content on social media in these difficult times.

Try ever so hard not to just screenshot text and post it as a picture.

If you are doing that you’re unwittingly missing out a chunk of the population. Around 350,000 people in the UK are blind or partially sighted and some of your info will be badly needed.

The issue was flagged-up by the lovely people behind the newly-launched @covidaccess Twitter account who are asking people to adjust what they are doing. In this tweet they set out their purpose.

An example of what good looks like

Heading to the excellent @NHSuk Twitter and you’ll find  this tweet is an example of something that hits the mark.

It’s good because the text of the tweet introduces what is in the video. The video itself uses speech and subtitles to share information. Everything which appears on screen as an image in the video is described in the speech. And there is a link to find out more.

A handy resource

If you’re looking to create an accessible image the nice Helpful Technology people have blogged some tips you can follow: Accessible images on social media: what every government agency needs to know

If you’re a public sector communicator you’ve got one topic to communicate to your audiences right now and that’s coronavirus.

There’s a more than fair chance that the people you want to speak to are online and on Facebook.

So with that in mind, here’s two approaches that are measurably different from my local corner of the NHS in Dudley.

They break down into the government message v human comms.

Human comms

The first post is a message to say that volunteers can take a parcel to the bedside of anyone in any of the combined total of 900 beds.

It has an image of volunteers – presumably their own stock shot – and the important information rounded off with an emoji.

There’s no link to drive people to to get the full message and it’s written in accessible Facebook English.

The numbers speak for themselves with almost 90 comments, 400 shares and more than 700 likes.

It shows the human side of the Trust, the fact that real people volunteer there and they’re bothered about patients.

The official line

The second post is the official line.

There’s a link straight to the relevant gov.uk website with timely important information that’s also changing hour-by-hour.

With this post, 35 shares, a single comment and 16 interactions.

Overall, less audience for what is mission critical information.

In no way is there any implied criticism from me for the disparity in the numbers. I don’t know the team there but I’m really impressed with what they are doing. It’s going to involve long hours and its right that they sign post to the right information.

But it got me thinking.

The staff who are working hard for you pic

The impact of the volunteers post reminded me of a post from the Whaley Bridge incident where a reservoir almost failed engulfing hundreds of properties.

Fire, police, local government, NHS, Environment Agency and firefighters worked long shifts to save the dam and the town from disaster.

The community was grateful and a photograph from a smartphone of firefighters working posted to a fire station page attracted an abnormally high number of interactions.

It wasn’t a news picture with an amazing eye-catching image.

It was a picture of people.

It was just a collection of firefighters with some of the pumping equipment, information about their shift and a message of support for the community.

That message of support was reflected back from the community.

I’m thinking that maybe that’s the kind of image that needs to be in the tool box. Public sector people doing their job with a message to the community.

It’s far likelier to cut through to wider Facebook.

I know that people are flat-out busy and collecting images like these takes time. But I’ve a feeling the time invested with be repaid by creating content that’s going to have a far bigger impact and reach.

At a time when there’s a deluge of misinformation that’s really important.

‘He’s an escapist’, the writer Nathaniel West once wrote, ‘he wants to cultivate his interior garden.’

What is striking is that everyone has a tolerance for coronavirus news and especially if you’re in the public sector communicating it.

At times, a 24-hour flow of information can intoxicate. If only, you think, if I keep reading I’ll stay ahead of the game. But like a drunk at the gates of the Guinness factory who is deep into their second truck you soon realise you can’t process it all.

So you move to phase two, escapism because the news is serious.

Even those who are knee deep in much and bullets need to re-charge.

It’s completely fine to take a dive into the deep end of this as that’s what will help recharge your batteries.

So, enough.

I’ve blogged things to take your mind off things / get through self-isolation / recharge your batteries.

Escape

12 clips of Train Guy on Twitter

He’s every man – and it tends to be a man – who is on a train loudly telling the rest of the carriage how importantly on trend they are. Have a bend back. Geoff Linton’s going to be there. Bounce back post pitch?

Find the videos here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Five clips of animals being cute from Twitter

Because we all need animals in our life.

Penguins jumping randomly down stairs. Watch them go here.

Koalas just hanging out here.

A cat being sung to here.

A polar bear learning to balance with their Mum here.

A budgie singing into a mirror here.

Cute Dog videos on TikTok

Cute dog gets confused on TikTok here with more cute dogs here, here, here and here.

Five shows I’ve road tested from BBC Sounds

When working, I have to have ear buds in. I’ve come to see them as a physical manifestation of the on-switch. So, here are five that I’d recommend and you can chobble through the back catalogue box-set style.

Elis James and John Robins BBC Five Live show here. It is what happens if a hip version of Swansea midfield general Alan Curtis collided with Alan Partridge.

That Peter Crouch Podcast is here. It’s what would happen if a your 16-year-old footer obsession self collided with a Radio One DJ.

In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, who must now be 108 hosts a high brow Radio 4 programme that invites experts on a subject to talk about a specific subject. Often they’re obscure topics. It’s what happens when five University professors collide with podcasting equipment. This fills you in here.

Blood on the Tracks features Colin Murray and guests who talk about music that matters to them. It’s what happens when Fighting Talk meets a record shop. More here.

The Missing Crypto Queen features a podcast-style series tracing the woman behind a crypto-currency bubble. It’s what happens when a police procedural meets the internet. More here.

Four threads from Twitter that are an excellent diversion

There are still corners of Twitter that do it for me and the thread functionality flush them out.

THREAD: ‘Tell me what its like having your kids at home from school but describe them as your co-workers.’ Here.

THREAD: ‘Holker Street is gloriously old school and deserves to be kicking with the soulless identikit stadiums in the Football League.’ Here.

THREAD: ‘As a public service in these stressful times I’d like to offer, as a palate cleanser, the most embarrassing moment of my life.’ Here.

THREAD: ‘This is the story of the WORST GIG I’VE EVER DONE.’ Here.

THREAD: ‘I heard it was an emergency, so I emerged. As an actor, I can’t do much without face to face contact. But I can read verse. If me reading a particular poem would make you happy, let me know and I’ll post it on @SoundCloud I’ll try and do at least one a day. Here.

Four Spotify playlists

I can work with this on shuffle 386 songs.

Peaceful rain sleep white noise from the rain.

1000 best songs of all time. Well, 1001 actually.

Reckless Yes. Sarah Lay’s record label.

Three accounts on Flickr to lose yourself in

Tyne and Wear museums has a cracking archive of images and people from the region. Including shots of the Tyne Bridge being built. See them HERE.

Library of Congress have thousands of images from America history HERE.

Reykjavik Museum Oh, those Icelanders… HERE

Four places to listen to on the web while working or dozing off

youarelisteningto pulls in police radio snippets and plays ambient music uploaded from soundcloud. Its an oddly compelling mix.

mynoise.net has the sound of heavy rain falling on the Irish Sea off the coast of Ireland on a loop. Endlessly.

onlineclock allows you to balance a range of noises to give you the perfect blend. Rain, sheep, wind, birdsong? Covered.

Hipstersound thinks people work better when they are in a coffee shop. So, there’s a range of cafes recorded from across the world.

Two things to explore if you’ve time to kill

Explore space with these free tools provided by the European Space Agency and NASA.

Or re-run the 1995-6 Premier League season Championship Manager-style with this android football manager app.

Pic credit: Flickr / Documerica

One of the finest books I’ve ever read are the diaries of Harold Nicolson a former diplomat and wartime MP.

Nicolson held a ringside seat in Parliament from 1933 to 1945 as Chamberlain’s government fell, Churchill stepped into place and the evacuation of Dunkirk.

He was a diplomat before his election and was used to recording the facts of a situation and then giving objective analysis before moving on.

His accounts of the big set pieces of 1940 have become part of the definitive history. But the strength of Nicolson’s diaries are that it captures the mood and the everyday. Even at a time of national crisis people still complained about the buses or what so-and-so said to such-and-such.

In other words, even in a time of national emergency people still lived everyday lives.

In the national crisis of 2020, we can often take things from history. One thing I’m taking is the news cycle of 1940. This saw two daily peaks with delivery of the morning paper and then the 9 o’clock BBC Radio News bulletin.

At times just recently the news cycle has been endless. I’m switching off from a 24-hour news hosepipe and I’m looking to check once a day. I’ll be checking what the Government’s chief medical officer says and what the Government line is.

I won’t be giving Piers Morgan a single click or the other barrack room doctors the time of day.

If coronavirus is the long haul, rationing the news and still living the every day has to be part of it.

For public sector comms people who are dealing with this at work this feels essential.

Picture credit: Flickr / Documerica.

At times of trouble, we return to what seems familiar and safe.

Bright twinkling lights of home port to a fisherman in peril at sea means safety.

Your own reassuring beacon can be as personal to you as your fingerprint.

“When I’m ill,” a mate once told me “I watch the Michael Caine film Zulu.

“I know what happens in the end. I’ve seen it hundreds of times and there’s enough to keep me from falling asleep.

“Besides, ‘Men of Harlech’ always gets me and that bit with the firing step is just ace.”

At peril at sea is the UK led by UK Government.  We are in as much peacetime danger as we were in 1918 when the last big Pandemic struck.

The three pillars of trust

It is a hard task to tell people there’s going to be deaths.

In 1918 at the time of the last pandemic, the reassuring voice of authority came from the man in the pulpit on Sunday morning, the family doctor and senior politicians.

In 2020, two of those three pillars of trust for the population are gone.

At the start of the 20th century, almost half the population could be found in church on Sunday. In 2018, it was six per cent.

In 2020, we are not waiting for the voice from the pulpit to tell us what to think. And just 14 per cent of us trust what a politician has to say. We are more likely to have our views influenced by your mate Yvonne on Facebook or barack-room medics like Piers Morgan.

There are some excellent communicators across UK Government and the public sector. I see and meet with them often. However, two decisions at the top of Government comms has proved the point that in a crisis some people return back to what is familiar. They returned to old school media management techniques. First, an unattributed briefing to Robert Peston on the idea 70-year-olds will be asked to stay in quarantine. And second, the Health Secretary writing behind the Daily Telegraph paywall about the next steps for coronavirus.

Both decisions stank.

News floated unchallenged by politicians without the surgical light of examination. This is fine if you’re trying to get the media to be interested in a new initiative. This blows up in your face if you are gaming people while dealing with life and death.

Both pieces of media management came over as trusted as a sales pitch from a time share salesman in a shiny suit.

Put the doctor up, stupid

Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Earlier briefings had a politician and then a senior doctor or scientist to present the rationale and findings.

Doctors and nurses are trusted by more than 90 per cent of the population.

I would rather listen to the Chief Medical Officer explain to me the toughest step imaginable and why science says this is the best step rather than feel played by a politician using old school media management techniques.

I would also then rather have the same piece of advice reinforced over and over by my council, NHS Trust and senior doctor than a vacuum filled by Bill from Facebook whose shared a post claiming to come from Wuhan.

At the moment locally, I’m seeing the NHS and council online largely inactive. The council hasn’t posted on the subject for five days on Facebook and two days on Twitter. There is a post on their home page. The NHS Trust for the area posted to Facebook an hour ago.

The order not to create content away from the official one is being played out as ‘do nothing’ and that’s dangerously wrong.

Journalists have a role to play too

Times are hard for newspapers. I get that. I used to be a journalist. But the path out includes them, too. In an era where outrage = clicks and clicks = income it will be hard to steer clear of Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage. For the good of the country they need to.

Neither can add to this debate.

What we need to do

We are at sea and the wind is building.

There is a storm coming.

The reassurance I want to hear is from the Chief Medical Officer, epidemiologists and people who have build their career on how pandemics move.

In the film ‘Zulu’, the leaders were British Army officers Lt John Chard and Lt Gonville Bromhead at the Rorke’s Drift Trading Post. Both unknowns who rose to the task and communicated to their troops clearly what was needed.

In 2020, the two most effective soldiers are Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty.

Put the doctors up, please.

And then make sure their message is shared on every available platform by thousands of public sector communicators across thousands of platforms and then shared again by an army of hundreds of thousands of responsible citizens.

People don’t go to the official website any more than they go to church so take the message to them.

Give me someone in a suit that I’ve never heard of before because they were busy getting shit hot at epidemiology. Have the politician in the background to put their name to it all.

That’s all.

That’s the familiar and safe lights I want to see.

Hey everyone, remember when ‘going viral’ was something good? Different times.

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 is not just a health war but an information war.

The war isn’t just being fought in the A&E departments but by public sector communications people tasked with flattening the upward graph of contagen so the NHS does not get overwhelmed.

We know that the public sector is using its own channels. Websites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and other platforms are being used.

But How has the discussion played out in community Facebook groups away from the corporate real estate of the web?

To find out, I looked at 15 Facebook groups from 10 communities in the Braintree district of Essex with a combined membership of more than 34,000. For each group I checked through the first 15 pieces of content served by the algorithm. I logged content that was negative, such as panic buying rumour. I logged community conversations, such as a offer of helping old people shop. I also looked for pro-active public sector content.

Coronaviris IS playing out in Facebook groups

From the research, almost half of groups had one piece of coronavirus content about the outbreak. As a topic, it is playing out in the community.

Fig 1. Facebook groups which have coronavirus as a discussion

Yes, there is negative content

As the coronavirus pandemic has evolved, how the community has reacted has changed with it. Conversation in Facebook groups mirrors the conversations that are taking place offline, too.

So, conversations of panic buying are being played out. Stories of panic buying lead to more panic and the cycle becomes self-fulfilling.

More worrying than high demand for pasta being taken off the shelves are tales of how you can self-diagnose by simply holding your breath.  In incredible times the incredulous becomes common currency.

But yes, there is community discussion too

Not all the content is fear inducing.

The community has been coming together with offers of help to elderly people.

With all that in mind, what role is the public sector playing in the online discussion?

Yes, there is public sector content but links aren’t shared

This snapshot of 15 community groups in a corner of Essex I’ve mapped before is just a snapshot.

But one lesson is that content is shared in Facebook groups more than links. Not a single web link was found in the trawl.

A text message sent to a resident had been screenshotted and posted to two of the groups.

Elsewhere, Essex County Council had created some myth-busting which had been posted into the group by the group’s own admin.

What’s striking is that there was not a single link to a government, NHS or public health website.

Bravo the council for creating the content and well done the admin for posting it.

For me, this is exactly the kind of approach needed to help spread reassurance to the community at a time of anxiety.

Fig 2. Facebook groups which feature content

Steps the public sector needs to take

It’s almost impossible to stay across the more than 1,000 groups and pages across Braintree, for example. Or your area.

But what public sector communicators can do is create content that’s shareable across platforms where people are. Why? Because this information is important and people are not always clicking through to organisational web pages.

Planning for a big incident is difficult.

Much of the national planning has already been done and what’s playing out is an approach long agreed.

However, locally, that’s maybe not the case.

This Twitter thread from Jim Whittington here is worth looking at and reflecting. Jim Whittington is US-based and provides consultancy around wildfires. He’s used to the long haul.

Most comms people in the UK may have experience of the big incident but not the incident that lasts for months.

Terror attack? We’ve got experience of that. Too much in some ways.

A big fire? Yup.

A medium-sized incident? In spades.

A 24-hour thing? Ten a penny.

Most teams will run to the sound of sirens when the incident first develops.

But once the adrenaline fades what then?

And what if you’re all burnt out and you’ve only just begun?

I’m struck by the advice of a former chief executive I worked with. In a big incident one of the first things he did was send a senior officer home. Why? To be fresh in a couple of days time when those at the coalface are worn out.

I’m struck by the Environment Agency in the UK who have dozens of people trained in using social media ready for when major flooding strikes. People who don’t have media relations roles can slip into the role.

I’m also struck at the lessons Greater Manchester Police took from their response from the arena bomb. Plan for the long term and ask for help early were two pointers.

Jim’s thread is here and it needs reading by public sector communicators. It’s packed with gems.

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr

A few days ago I wrote about the need to play whack-a-mole with coronavirus rumour.

That’s the need to challenge people with the wrong end of the stick.

It’s fine having official channels with reassuring information.

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking people will head to the official sources.

They won’t.

Go instead to the places where people are.

Go armed with the right information from the definitive source in a shareable format and ask people to do their civic duty by sharing.

Do it yourself.

Ask your staff to.

Enlist an army of volunteers.

On WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, Twitter and in canteens, bus stops and homes.

Here’s why you should.

I took a 10-minute scroll through the Facebook groups and newspaper Facebook pages I’m a member of and found these.

If you looked you’d find the same.

Create or find shareable content from the definitive source and go and find people where they are.

So, you’ve got the official advice lined up and the official channel set… your job is only half done

Scroll through Twitter and Facebook and you can find all sorts of weird conspiracy theories. And that’s before venturing onto Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Messenger and WhatsApp.

There’s a whole load of information circulating despite the best efforts of platforms like Facebook and Twitter who are promoting the right resources.

But to know the problem you need to understand the solution.

This is what misinformation and disinformation looks like

Logging onto Facebook this morning this story about a parent taking their child out of school because there’s no hand sanitiser at the door. And that feels like the tip of the iceburg.

Scrolling down I came to the Birmingham Live Facebook page. That’s the Reach-owned platform that’s the Birmingham Mail online. It is a significant platform with almost 400,000 likes.

On the first coronavirus story I found this meme posted as a comment.

The comment thinks that the virus is a vehicle for a sinister New World Order conspiracy. Laughable? Once a Trump presidency was seen like that.

On Facebook, critical faculty largely goes out of the window. Research from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said that almost half of people can’t remember who shared the content on Facebook in the first place.

The handy thing about Facebook is also its weakness. Your mate Dave shared it. He’s bound to have checked it. Anyway, Dave’s a good guy. But chances are Dave hasn’t.

Scrolling further, a link from Birmingham Live takes me to an unofficial coronavirus page that is filled with conspiracy like this:.

So, what to do?

You could hide under your desk. Or do something about it.

Expecting everyone to go to the official site for the official information is for the birds.

How you can build a defence against a wall of misinformation

Thankfully, history has the answer.

In 2011, after riots swept the UK The Guardian and academic researchers spent time analysing first hand accounts, Twitter data and court action to map what and how things happened.

Their conclusions Reading the Riots can be found here and they’re worth spending time with if you haven’t already. While the research is eight years old they hold some universal truths.

Our findings confirm that police, emergency services and government agencies face
difficult problems in making effective use of social media platforms such as Twitter during crises. In particular, though our analysis of rumours on Twitter suggests that false rumours are ‘self-correcting’, we argue that there is a public safety case for providing information and advice via sources that the public can trust in a more timely way.

– Rob Proctor, ‘Reading the Riots: What Were Police Doing on Twitter?’, 2012.

For Twitter, read social media.

In short, while some rumours will be shot-down by people online it would be helpful if they had the tools to do it and also be encouraged to do do.

Create the content. But actively get a team of people to share it from their own channels. Staff. Community leaders. Active citizens. Neighbourhood Watch people.

But first create sharable content

So, sharable content is an absolute must.

Kent County Council’s video update here from their Director of Public Health is an example of that. Short, concise and to the point its on the money and got re-used by the media and elsewhere.

You sharing your sharable content

But being pro-active feels like a thing to do, too. Going into Facebook groups as yourself with sharable content feels like a must.  I’ve blogged about this before and part of the Vital Facebook Skills workshop deals with this. In short: make friends with the Facebook group admin and see if they’d be receptive to you or your page joining.

An example of this is Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust who posted content this into a Facebook group.

By all means take the central message from Public Health England or elsewhere but present it in a way where it can be shared online.

Recruiting others to share your sharable content

In emergencies, its striking to see the good people as well as the bad. There are people who want to help as well as those who are busy photoshopping sharks into Cockermouth High Street.

But also you need to think about how you can build bridges with bloggers, hyperlocal site owners and most of all Facebook group admins as well as your staff.

A whatsapp group with those who can fight your corner with links feels like part of this.

They could be doing the hard work of myth-busting if only they knew they had a valued role.

So, play whackamole with rumour.

Play whack-a-mole yourself.

But recruit and encourage others to do it for you with the tools you create.

Picture credit: Rosemarie / Flickr

A few weeks back I finished reading ‘The Secret Diary of Anne Frank’ book with my daughter.

I’d never read the tale but I was aware of that story.

She was a teenager whose story starts with her life as a girl in Holland. The fact she is Jewish is a side issue that drags the direction of her life into a new direction. After years in hiding with her family and others she is arrested by police and taken to Auschwitz where she dies weeks before the end of the war.

It’s a book that isn’t just a book about hiding. Anne emerges as a vibrant girl with thoughts of her own. Her steps into adult life are mapped out.

Anne Frank is one of six million who were murdered in the Holocaust.

But how to tell the story of the others who dies is difficult.

The Auschwitz Memorial, who run the site of the death camp in Poland, have taken the approach of tweeting images and a short biography. It’s an arresting process which gives a human face and also oddly restores a degree of dignity, They’re no longer a number. They’re a person with a story to tell.

In the random images I’ve chosen, French girl Ida Fistel who aged eight and 41-year-old German woman Kate Farber and Vera Popperova, 19 who all died. All are images taken in happier times.

Lastly, I’ve chosen Kazimierz Piotrowski whose prison mugshot and striped pyjamas fits the description of what you imagine an Auschwitz prisoner to look like. He has a shaven head and looks malnourished.

Kazimierz survived.

Ida’s tweet is here.

Kate’s tweet is here.

Vera’s tweet is here.

Kazimierz’s tweet is here.

What’s the lesson?

Putting a human face on something will always make it relatable.

But also there’s a warning in history.