Welcome to the 44th episode of the Mediatwits podcast, this time with Mark Glaser and the Rachel Sklar as co-hosts. Sklar is a writer and social entrepreneur, and is filling in for Rafat Ali. This week, we convene a special roundtable to discuss how social media is changing activism, in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, in a backlash to Rush Limbaugh, and in many other cases. Our special guests include BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, Ohio State civil rights history professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Change.org’s Brianna Cayo-Cotter. How do activist campaigns go viral, and can they go too far?
Then we talk about the recent legal drama around social network Pinterest, where some copyright holders have been upset with use of their images. The social network recently changed its Terms of Service so it no longer had the right to sell the images of people who posted on the site. Plus, it now allows self-promotion. Special guest Steve Eder of the Wall Street Journal talks about the various copyright debates Pinterest has spawned in the legal community.
Check it out!
Subscribe to the podcast here
Subscribe to Mediatwits via iTunes
Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here
Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Intro
0:20: Co-host Rachel Sklar en route to save Obamacare
1:35: Rachel: Social media activism is a gateway drug to real activism
3:30: Rundown of topics on the show
Social media makes activism contagious
4:40: Special guests Jonah Peretti, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Brianna Cayo-Cotter
7:50: Peretti: Things spread faster now than ever before
9:20: Cayo-Cotter: 2 million people joining Change.org each month
13:30: Jeffries: The medium of information dissemination has changed
16:10: Rachel: Mainstream media now taking part in social media
18:00: How one woman spread the word about pink slime on Change.org
19:50: Cayo-Cotter: 2.2 million people have signed petition to prosecute Trayvon Martin’s killer
21:55: Jeffries: Social movements don’t just form online; they move into the streets too
Legal issues for Pinterest
23:40: Special guest Steve Eder
26:00: Eder: People uncomfortable with Terms of Service that allowed Pinterest to sell what they pin
28:00: Eder: Pinterest didn’t want people to self-promote, but backed off that idea
30:20: Rachel: The sharing issues are not much different than copyright issues with blogging years ago
More Reading
Trayvon case shows more blacks tapping power of social media at USA Today
Social Media: The Muscle Behind the Trayvon Martin Movement at Time
.JPG)
The Power of Social Media in the Trayvon Martin Case at HuffPost
Prosecute the killer of our son, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin at Change.org
Spike Lee Apologizes for Re-Tweeting Wrong Address for Alleged Killer of Trayvon Martin at WSJ
How to Use Pinterest without Breaking the Law at WSJ
Pinterest Extends Olive Branch to Self-Promoters at WSJ
Inside the underground Pinterest spam rings turning your clicks into cash at Digital Trends
Click image below to see it at full size:
Weekly Poll
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about how social media is changing activism:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+
