Using influencers is a great way for brands to reach their targeted audience on social media without using excessive pop-up ads.  However new forms of any medium bring new obstacles. 

One obstacle would be that influencers are people and that their behavior and social engagement is uncontrollable.  Anything that they say, tweet, hashtag, post, etc. all of a sudden becomes associated with the brands that they represent.  Another problem would be that they often pull followers of all kinds—not necessarily just the group that a brand may want to…

In 2013, a 16-year old student in Ottawa, Canada was arrested for making bomb threats to multiple schools across North America and a few in Canada. On Twitter with the handle of @ProbablyOnion the teen regularly tweeted about his bomb threats and asked for Twitter suggestions on who he should “swat” next. “Swatting” is the act of calling in false emergencies to 9-1-1. Eventually, investigators located the boy and he faced 60 criminal charges including “conveying false information with intent to alarm” after 30 false calls pertaining alleged…

When it comes to monitoring social media, there are two aspects that I believe should be taken into account: the audience’s awareness of the intent of the author as an influencer, and the author’s intent from post to post. It kind of sounds like the same thing, but hear me out. In Schneck vs. Us, the defendant was a general secretary of the Socialist party, a group which was outwardly opposed to the United States’ involvement in WW1. Schneck, our “author” in this scenario, had the intent of keeping…