Selective grief and outrage on social media - 16 Nov 2015

Our top story is about social solidarity in times of tragedy, with Louise Marsland focusing her [TrendTalk] column on how the tragic events of the past few days in Paris and Beirut, have fuelled a debate about whose lives matter most on social media. While mainstream media has come in for this kind of criticism many times, Facebook's decision to enable its Safety Check in Paris has many debating "selective grief and outrage"...

We also focus on a primary concern across the continent: Digital illiteracy. I attended the opening day of MRMW Africa 2015 recently and learned all about the continent's truly mobile consumer and the need to create more mobile content and services that are relevant, accessible and available to users in their own language.

Sipho Hlongwane twists the focus in looking to another important issue: Circulation figures and why playing it straight and true always wins, especially in light of the newspaper industry taking a double-hit from the expansion of digital publishing and the 2008 recession.

Looking a few weeks ahead to 2016, there's no doubt it will be all about creating and sharing video content. I spoke to the ZAlebs video team about what a day in the life of a video producer is really like and how marketers and advertisers can better make use of video content.