Today I opened my Twitter stream and between the pictures of delicious food and cats sitting on a pile of cash, I saw images of people holding signs protesting the recently enacted executive order prohibiting people from select Middle Eastern countries entering the US. According to the ban citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are banned for 90 days to travel into the United States. However, the order has been met with public protest: One sign I saw in my Twitter feed states: “but ya’ll said: all lives matter.” Another reads: “the home of the brave does not fear helping people in need.”
Refugee stories on social media
The current refugee crisis is one of the most disputed political issues in the world. Countries including Turkey, Lebanon, and Germany have each welcomed over a million Syrian refugees. Many of the stories about the refugees, the crisis, and the affected destination countries are broken, documented, and shared via social media. Social media has given a voice to advocates and dissenters around the issue, and this weekend’s executive order raised awareness of the crisis once again.
Iranian-born Nazanin Zinouri studied at Clemson University and later found a job in Clemson as a data scientist. Once a year she travels back to Tehran. On Facebook she posted her story about what happened to her when she tried to return to the United States last week:
“After waiting in the line to get my documents checked and after 40 minutes of waiting, I was ready to board the plane to Washington, only to have officers ask me to leave the boarding area. ‘For security reasons your boarding is denied.’!!! Yes after almost 7 years of living in the United States, I got deported!!! No one warned me when I was leaving, no one cared what will happen to my dog or my job or my life there. No one told me what I should do with my car that is still parked at the airport parking. Or what to do with my house and all my belongings.”
Some people are luckier. After being released from detention at JFK airport, watch this response by Hameed Khalid Darweesh below:
Iraqi interpreter released, excited to be with his family. He still loves America. pic.twitter.com/ZpeQ933d9d
— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) January 28, 2017
There are positive stories as well. Neghar Jahed used an original approach to finding a job, she wrote an open job application on LinkedIn detailing her life story. In summary, while her parents remained in Iran, Neghar lived with her sister as underage asylum seekers in the Netherlands. To obtain a residency permit, a prerequisite for holding a job, she had to wait for 4.5 years. After obtaining her residency permit, she posted an open application on LinkedIn which was seen by millions and shared by many. Neghar will soon start a paid traineeship doing what she loves the most: helping people.
Curate content that is safe and relevant
Though the social content on the refugee crisis and the stories of refugees on social media can greatly enrich your articles, curating this kind of content can be tricky. For instance, a hashtag like #refugeeswelcome can encompass content that is both relevant and safe about 95% of the time. However, occasionally a post is irrelevant or, there are rare cases of someone posting an offensive remark using the hashtag. The latter can be filtered out with a blacklist that the Crowdynews platform offers, and the former can be removed via manual moderation.
How do you curate the best posts of #refugeeswelcome? A good solution is to use our developer APIs. They enable you to create a social stream that blends in naturally with the look and feel of your website. Furthermore, you can use our APIs to display the Instagram posts of a hashtag sorted by the number of likes. To learn more about social media curation solutions from Crowdynews, click on the button below.
