2. A Bad Story Can Spread Like Wildfire October 16 – 8:30 a.m.: Blogger puts up a post called: “TSA Agents Took My Son” that alleges a TSO in Atlanta took her child away during secondary screening. Very emotional post. Story quickly spreads throughout the internet, via Twitter and other blogs. TSA OPA becomes aware. TSA OPA uses clues from the blog to provide information to TSA-ATL, who scours through hours of CCTV footage to find tape of blogger and her child being screened. Footage clearly shows the story is false. SLT members approve posting CCTV footage on the TSA Blog to let the public see for themselves.
3. Quick Response Kills the Bad Story Early Saturday morning, “Response to TSA Took My Son” was posted on TSA’s blog, including the CCTV footage. We used Twitter to “tweet” the blog link to everyone who spread the original post. Story quickly changed from “Bad, Evil, Wicked TSA mistreats passenger” to “woman lies about screening experience.”
4. Swift Action Gives Positive Results Blogs that initially wrote about the story as if it were true quickly apologized to TSA. The frontline workforce expressed appreciation for HQ standing up for them. Social media experts cited TSA’s effort as a textbook example of killing a bad story and protecting our “brand.” Not taking action would have eroded faith in TSA and hurt our mission.
5. Statistics Average Monthly Hits to Blog – 50,000 Total hits to this post: 126,790 Average comments per post: 75 Total Comments to this post: 400 Total Views of the CCTV footage on YouTube: 17,508 Technorati Ranking: Top 636
6. TSA: On the Cutting Edge What has to be the best ever use of social media by a bureaucracy… ~ Jessica Gottlieb The TSA's immediate response, on Twitter and on its blog, squashed an internet meme that had been catching like wildfire -- a meme that had the potential to do serious public relations damage to the agency. ~ TPM Live Wire Either way, the TSA's speed and deftness with new media tools helped stave off what could have been a public image disaster for the agency. ~ TPM Live Wire
