Social media wrap: How to lose Facebook friends and influence (Rick Sanchez take note)

In politics and media, it’s said to be wise to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But what if you’ve been unfriended on Facebook for making an impolitic remark?

Political statements are one of the main reasons that Facebook and social-media users get “unfriended” -- or removed from a friend list -- a new study has found.  Frequent, unimportant posting is cited as another key reason. 

So while you may find your local congressional representative’s repetitive tweeting about the pulled-pork sandwich he ate at the weekend rally a little tiresome, you at least now have a reason to remind them to stick to the issues. 

Making crude or racist comments was the third main reason for being unfriended (for more on Rick Sanchez, see below), a survey of more than 1,500 Facebook users by a University of Colorado Business School student reveals. 

Perhaps key to note for politicians on Twitter and Facebook was that just 27% of survey respondents would unfriend a person for their offline behavior, while 57% considered online behavior -- or “netiquette” --  the main factor in unfriending someone.  

“They say not to talk about religion or politics at office parties and the same thing is true online,” ...

... said the study’s author, Christopher Sibona, a Ph.D. student in the school’s computer science and information systems program  

Like any cabinet or caucus, hierarchies exist in online behaviorism, the study found, with a perennial “unfriender” holding a higher social rank than a user who sends repeated friend requests -- up to a point, obviously. Getting rid of all your friends is not sensible social-media practice. Case in point: John Mayer's Twitter strategy. 

Reactions to being unfriended ranged from hurt or bemusement, with much depending on who did the unfriending, the study found.  With 500 million users online, Facebook is the most popular social-media website. Twitter last week finally usurped MySpace in the popularity stakes, with more than 170 million users. That’s a lot of friends to choose from.  

But just for a  bit of fun, we’re going to examine this study through the lens of a news-media personality and political commentator whose offline behavior not only got him fired from a major news network, but leaves an interesting question about what happens to social-media followers when this happens. 

We’re talking about Sanchez, who last week was removed from his anchor post at CNN over an impolitic remark aimed at Comedy Central presenter Jon Stewart and the “Northeastern liberal elite” who Sanchez claimed run the news media (including CNN). Sanchez has since apologized for his remarks.

Widely taken as a slur on Jews, Sanchez committed the social-media sin of telegraphing an out-there political viewpoint tinged with religion and race that many considered to be crude.  And let’s not get started on Sanchez’s “frequent, unimportant” tweeting.

So why does Rick Sanchez’s Twitter account still register more than 145,000 followers a week after he made his controversial statements? Well, true to the survey cited above, Sanchez made his remarks on an offline radio show forum (which just 27% considered a reason to unfriend). 

We also put it down to voyeurism (which after all is often the reason people sign up to social media to begin with).  A clutch of users are clearly waiting to see if Sanchez, who hasn’t tweeted since his firing, will use his heavily followed Twitter account to make amends. 

So what happens to Sanchez’s 145,000-plus followers if he doesn’t return?  Nothing, probably, apart from a whole lot of people unhappy at the prospect of being left in Sanchez’s dust.

Maybe Harry Truman’s famous maxim rings true even today: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

-- Craig Howie

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Photo: "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." Credit: Comedy Central

Comments

[Michael Santomauro]

Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is "nothing more than a screen to present chosen views." The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually "think outside of the (Jewish) box."

What happened to Oliver Stone is a good case study. The Wall Street Journal reported this past summer that Stone said that “public opinion was focused on the Holocaust because of ‘Jewish domination of the media.’” Stone also said that the Jews “stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f—– up United States foreign policy for years.”

Like so many others before him, Stone groveled: “In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry.”

Joe Sobran who died this past week had this to say about Jewish media power:

“Jewish control of the major media in the media age makes the enforced silence both paradoxical and paralyzing. Survival in public life requires that you know all about it, but never refer to it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and if you don’t respect their victimhood, they’ll destroy you. It’s a phenomenal display not of wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism, a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism.”

In 1996, reprinted in the May 27th issue of the New York Times, by Ari Shavit, an Israeli columnist describing his feelings on the killings of a hundred civilians in a military skirmish in southern Lebanon. Shavit wrote:

“We killed them out of a certain naive hubris. Believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate, and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own.”

Peace.
Michael Santomauro
ReporterNotebook@gmail.com

PS: An antisemite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an antisemite.

[Tony Ryals]

I know nothing about this Mr.Sanchez until now but plenty and all need to about CNN,FoxNews and Jon Stewart to know he is closer to the truth than they are or will ever hope to be.Wolf Blitzer and CNN covered up
and did damage control for Olmert rather than doing an investigation into who was suing them for $100 million in Florida.And Fox ‘News’ has had myriad Middle East and war ‘experts’ who have been involved in stock fraud and money laundering as well such as Ollie North, Mansoor
Ijaz,Marc Ginsberg,etc.,etc.
Oh by the way Lanny Davis who defended the Honduras’ coup leaders with the help of CNN in Spanish and English also defended the mortgatage and stock fraud called Novastar that lied about its worthless dividend paying ponzi scheme being a victim of ‘naked short
selling’.What ever became of them ?

http://www.phillyimc.org/en/node/70918

CNN,Wolf Blitzer Cover Up of Michael Zwebner,Air Water Corp Fraud Helped Ehud Olmert To Israeli PM Office

by Tony Ryals | 07.04.2008

Long before Morris Talansky came on the radar screenin an Israel National Fraud Office investigation this past May,(do a google search ‘ehud olmert morris talansky global technologies ‘,CNN and Wolf Blitzer and their legal representative in Florida,Holland & Knight LLP,covered up Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s criminal ties to U.S. Air Water Corp stock fraud and to British Israeli con artist Michael Zwebner which enabled the corrupt Olmert to become Israeli PM in the first place !

WTC,9/11,ICTS International,NY Mosque:Netherlands Geert Wilders … – [ Traducir esta página ]I meant to only focus on two charcters in the 9/11 WTC mosque controversy ,Barack Obama and Dutch wingnut and Zionist with possible Jewish-Indonesian …
http://twincities.indymedia.or…..1-official

If Jon Stewart could only read SEC filings he would know,or have known a decade ago, that Menachem Atzmon,convicted of money laundering in his own country of Israel,was behind the stock fraud called ICTS International that ‘guarded’ Logan Airport in Boston where the two planes that hit his WTC originated from according to U.S.government’s own official story.Stewart isn’t as stupid as he pretends….
Because I stopped watching CNN long ago due to its right wing pro
Honduras coup and Zionist bias I really don’t know who Rick Sanchez
is.However I do know that Wolf Blitzer and CNN covered up and didn’t
report a $100,000,000 litigation against them in Florida by British
Israeli money launderer Michael Zwebner all because I was posting on a
penny stock message board called ragingbull.com about Zwebner’s
connections to then Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Zwebner who used a
small part of his stock fraud against Americans to hire gay
prostitutes or indulge in harrassment litigation of his critics such
as myself.
He even tried to divert attention from his stock frauds by pretending
I was ‘anti-semitic’ and claimed I was accusing him of eating a
cheeseburger with a milk shake rather than the fact that I was
accusing him and Ehud Olmert quite properly of stock fraud and money
laundering against Americans.I emailed Blitzer with the fact that I
Tony Ryals was the one posting as wolfblitzzer0 on ragingbull UCSY
message board where Zwebner using his connections to Olmert and then
Israeli President Moshe Katsav,(later accused of rape), to promote his
non existent ‘air water machines’ in order to defraud investors,even
lieing about selling them to American Coalition forces in Iraq and
the Israeli army.Yes he was making money for himself and his
hypocritical Zionist pals by luring investors however naive into
buying worthless shares(incorporated in Nevada he used for money
laundering in Lichtenstein,the Caymans and Israeli bank accounts etc.
and Olmert even wrote aletter in SEC’s UCSY filings claiming to have
visited Zwebner’s ‘Air Water Machine’ factory in Israel !