{"id":38954,"date":"2010-12-20T22:24:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T22:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-social-media-amber-alert-a-personal-story\/"},"modified":"2010-12-20T22:24:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T22:24:06","slug":"the-social-media-amber-alert-a-personal-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/the-social-media-amber-alert-a-personal-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Social Media Amber Alert: A Personal Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Social Media Amber Alert: A Personal Story<\/a><\/p>\n

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theatlantic<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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At the end of November, Joe Sjoberg went missing.\u00a0He was last seen by his roommate on Monday, November 29, in Madison, Wisconsin, where the two shared a home.\u00a0A graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota known for his extroversion and warm, welcoming personality, his\u00a0disappearance\u00a0was a shock to those who knew him. Distraught, Joe\u2019s family filed a missing persons report, and a case was opened with the Madison Police Department. But while the Madison Police conducted their investigation in the usual manner, Joe\u2019s family and friends refused to wait by the phone for news.<\/p>\n

The family\u00a0started a Facebook group entitled \u201cHELP JOE SJOBERG MISSING.<\/a>\u201d The Facebook page has since become a\u00a0home base for a Web-wide mobilization effort, a call to arms to find Joe and bring him home safely to his parents and friends. But\u00a0Joe\u2019s brothers, Robert and Patrick, didn\u2019t stop there, pushing a flyer with Joe\u2019s face and standardized message onto Facebook, Twitter, and social news forums throughout the Web.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeginning on Thursday, Dec. 2, we launched a massive social media campaign, spanning forums from Facebook to Reddit to Craigslist to Twitter, with retweets and posts numbering in the tens of thousands,\u201d said Rachel Mandell-Rice, a friend of Sjoberg family, via email. \u201cCelebrities such as Jimmy Fallon, Craig Ferguson,\u00a0Sports Illustrated\u00a0<\/em>writer Peter King, and ESPN commentator Matthew Berry have posted this news on their twitter feeds. The sheer magnitude of the campaign has prompted one blogger to refer to it as a \u201cSocial Media Amber Alert<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

While even the most casual observer understands the boost that a mention from Twitterati like Ashton Kutcher or Kim Kardashian can provide to a cause, the campaign to find Sjoberg extends far beyond mere awareness to coordinated action.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn December 4, 2010, we learned that Joe had researched private airstrips in Wisconsin. Within 90 minutes of posting a request for help on the \u2018Joe Sjoberg Missing\u2019 Facebook page, volunteers had contacted the almost 600 private airstrips in Wisconsin, and faxed or emailed flyers with information,\u201d Mandell-Rice told me in an email.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Read the whole story\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you want to raise awareness of Joe\u2019s\u00a0disappearance, tweet \u201cPlease RT, #JoeSjoberg has gone missing in WI. Please help us find him.\u00a0<\/a>http:\/\/bit.ly\/ieE12p<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/a>http:\/\/on.fb.me\/HelpFindJoe.<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Social Media Amber Alert: A Personal Story theatlantic: At the end of November, Joe Sjoberg went missing.\u00a0He was last seen by his roommate on Monday, November 29, in Madison, Wisconsin, where the two shared a home.\u00a0A graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota known for his extroversion and warm, welcoming personality, his\u00a0disappearance\u00a0was a shock to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[1539],"class_list":["post-38954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","tag-emergent-digital-practices","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-a8i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}