Your two Discussions for this unit will deal with Justine Sacco and a controversial tweet she posted
Question:
Your two Discussions for this unit will deal with Justine Sacco and a controversial tweet she posted a few years ago.
Salon Magazine's piecebegins with a description of what happened: "PR executive Justine Sacco wrote an offensive tweet before boarding a flight from London to Cape Town, South Africa. "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" she said. Between the time Sacco tweeted and when she landed in South Africa twelve hours later, the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet trended worldwide....Internet sleuths figured out which flight Sacco was on and when she would land. Her work and cell phone numbers were uncovered. Her entire online footprint was revealed. She had made inappropriate tweets before. She had Instagram and Facebook accounts. These have all been deleted but nothing on the Internet really disappears. The digital echoes of her mistakes will endure. Sacco's former employer, InterActiveCorp, immediately distanced themselves, condemned her words and she was fired. During her flight, Sacco gained thousands of Twitter followers, an audience raptly waiting, somewhat gleefully, to see what would happen next. Justine Sacco unwittingly scripted a gripping, real-life soap opera and she wasn't even there to watch it unfold."
In this article, and the three that follow below, you will read about Justine Sacco and the controversy she created. Read the four articles and then respond to the discussion forums that ask you to think about her situation.
- "Why That Dumb AIDS Tweet Was So Captivating" (Deadspin.com)
- "Why We Should All Fear The Righteous Online Mob" (Huffington Post)
- "Justine Sacco: Sympathy for This Twitter Devil" (Variety.com)
- 1. Justine Sacco: Is She Racist?
Justine Sacco's tweet certainly has some racist overtones, even if (we assume) she was trying to be funny (and failed). But does that make her a racist? Think about her situation, but also think more broadly: does a single tweet (or Facebook or blog post) represent the entire person? If we found another tweet that said she headed to Africa to do humanitarian research, would we be able to reconcile those two images of her? And do either or both of those tweets tell us anything about her onground life?
Consider the Sacco situation and any other situations that you have read or heard about, or experienced yourself, and respond to this question: Is the person we present online the person we really are?
- 2. Justine Sacco: Should She Have Been Fired?
Justine Sacco was fired after her tweet went viral. Should she have been? In this case, she worked for a public relations firm; her job was to know how to make other people look good, so there's some question about whether or not she can actually do that.
But the larger question is, should a company be able to fire someone because they said something stupid online, on a private account? At what point do you stop representing your employer?
- Justine Sacco: Should She Have Been Fired?
- Justine Sacco: Is She Racist?
Entrepreneurial Finance
ISBN: 978-0538478151
4th edition
Authors: J . chris leach, Ronald w. melicher