Nine moves against fake Facebook account
Channel Nine has asked Facebook to close a fake Nine News account, which has been urging viewers to switch to rival Seven.
Yesterday, users began noticing how the unauthorised Facebook account was posting comments urging people to watch Seven’s coverage of the floods.
This is not the first “off message” post on the page. In recent days, the account has not only “liked” the Seven News Facebook page, but has also asked users whether or not Nine should broadcast the cricket instead of its flood coverage.
“We are currently working with Facebook to have the site taken down,” said a Nine spokesperson.
The account has been in operation since August last year and has a similar name and style to the official account.
Since it commenced, the account has received more than 2,000 likes. In contrast, the authorised Nine News page has more than 163,000 likes.
Nine is not the first Australian brand to move against unauthorised parody accounts. Last February, Qantas moved against a spoof account, which called itself @QantasPR.
Professor Mark Pearson, professor of journalism and social media at Griffith University, says incidents such as this are not uncommon.
“I think overall there is a need for greater social media literacy in the community,” said Pearson.
Many users on the spoof Facebook page thought it was legitimate, even interacting with the account in the comments section.
“This is all part of learning how to distinguish between the real and the parody,” said Pearson.
“Throughout history there have been been parodies of different things people have sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between these, be they print or online. ”
The journalism academic said media outlets also need to be vigilant against such parodies.
“Corporations, like Channel Nine News, need very sophisticated social media monitoring and editing so that they use the devices which are available to get their sites to the top of hit lists.”
Nic Christensen
Do you know who is behind the unauthorised Channel Nine Facebook account? Email nic@mumbrella.com.au
Dirty tricks campaign by Seven or a publicity stunt by Nine? Lame either way.
User ID not verified.
Someone did the same thing to Jetstar the other day.
Not wanting to encourage these things, but it’s a pretty funny short-term hack that’s easily fixed by the brand banning that user from their page.
User ID not verified.
unfortunately, improved social media literacy will still not equip many people to identify certain types of humour like subtle parody and satire. They will never geddit.
User ID not verified.
No one monitoring the account. It’s not hard.
User ID not verified.
I have a very good suspicion that it’s the same person that was behind the slating of the Ch9 coverage of the Olympics last year (with the Facebook page). A self-professed “guerrilla marketer” specialising in social media. One that also accidentally posted a screengrab of his desktop showing all sorts of social media monitoring and research tools, and linked to a specific person.
User ID not verified.