When Sam, Thomas and I recorded the 45th episode of our Small Data Forum podcast two weeks ago, who would have imagined that the major topic for us then - the EU's COVID vaccination mess - would continue to be a major topic today, one that's evolved and morphed into something even more alarming than it was then. We were pretty critical of the European Commission, how it is managing the vaccine rollout across the 27 member states, and its communication. The World Health Organisation calls it … [Read more...] about SDF 45: The vaccination mess in Europe
Public Relations
Volkswagen pranks its tarnished reputation on April Fool’s Day
In a time where misinformation, disinformation and outright fake news are features of our online landscapes that diminish trust, you'd think that brands (and Volkswagen in particular) would think twice - at least, think carefully - about actively doing anything that can negatively impact their brand reputation and instead do everything that promotes a sense of trust in their brand. Given that what's good, bad or ugly is often highly subjective it's hard to pinpoint a specific prank done by a … [Read more...] about Volkswagen pranks its tarnished reputation on April Fool’s Day
SDF 44: Facebook and the robber barons are at it again
Last week Facebook announced that it had decided to up the ante in its fracas with the Australian government and ban mainstream media news on its platform. The move meant that all Facebook users - not just Australians - would not be able to share or view news on Australian news Pages on Facebook. This move by Facebook was in response to the Australian government introducing a new law that would force Big Tech to pay media companies a fee to include their news in their users' news … [Read more...] about SDF 44: Facebook and the robber barons are at it again
Civilising Wikipedia
Last month, Wikipedia celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the founding of its English-language website, an online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. Today, Wikipedia has more than 55 million articles available in over 300 languages, in addition to the original English. It says that 1.7 billion unique visitors come to its websites every month. For many people, it's the first stop on the Internet when you want the answer to "What is…?", "Who is…?", "Where is...?", "When … [Read more...] about Civilising Wikipedia
FIR 203: Insurrection and Sea Shanties
'Trust' was the major theme for discussion in the January episode of The Hobson and Holtz Report podcast aka FIR 203 that Shel and I recorded last weekend and published on Monday. It underpinned all other topics we discussed as we started the episode reviewing the key analysis in the Edelman Trust Barometer 2021 - the report concludes that there is a 'crisis of leadership' with a growing trust gap and declines in trust worldwide; and without a trusted leadership source to look to, people … [Read more...] about FIR 203: Insurrection and Sea Shanties