Reflection on Social Media Case 9: Ponderize

The issue of the LDS Ponderize speech caused a lot of diverse opinions of members of the LDS community and those watching from the outside. Social media as we have discussed throughout the entire semester is a powerful tool that can reach a lot of people. I believe what Devin Durrant did was an abusive use of power. He used his privilege of speaking to his community to try and make a profit. It was not until after there was a controversy that that he showed that the money would now be going directly to the church. Even as we can See here that he regretted his decision, it is still problematic.   The website selling the goods was even eventually taken down as can be seen on this website.   

The take away from this case study is that it is difficult to cover up or hide a bad decision once it is released online to the public. We can see that the LDS church tried to take control of the conversations by issuing a new statement of where the money was going.  I think this was a smart decision. I think it would have become more of a problem for the church if they had tried delete the controversy over the merchandize. By adding to the conversation and not taking away from it I believe that they church saved themselves from a lot of grief. From this case study we can access that once something is out there its out there. You can’t take back a public decision. It is now in the hands of the public to discuss. As we can see from the trending hashtag that came out of this case study it is easy for the public to change the conversation into something that the original organization never intended to happen.