Linus Kjellqvist, cognitive scientist, social & web strategist writes about a scout that takes up the subject of cheating, a contemporary comparison to money laundry and words laundry.

Working in the black economy is a familiar concept to most of us; however, we understand less how dirty money is “laundry”. The mafia, so to speak, uses pizzerias and video rental places to launder their black money into white.

As the Internet’s development this trend has also spread to high schools, colleges and universities. Not in the sense to launder money, but in terms of launder words. That is something that has become increasingly easy for a student to do and more and more difficult for a teacher to track.

Mafia launderers’ money through pizza places and video stores – students launder their words by Yahoo and Google. When the Internet came, students have access to the entire world essays by university databases. All of a sudden students discovered that they could create essays quickly and easily and get validation by plagiarizing others’ essays. To minimize the risk of getting caught were words and sentences stolen from different essays which made it difficult to track, an approach similar to launder money.

Year 2005 grew a wave of students who are suspended from the universities in Sweden. Big headlines in the Swedish newspapers wrote about increased cheating and plagiarism in universities (Göteborgs Posten, 07-06-2005). Since 2001, the cheating has increased by 250% in Sweden (Dagens Nyheter, 22-04-2008). More and more students got caught, and the explanation seems simple. The teachers used the same tricks. For all of a sudden got the teacher an entirely new tool. The same tools that the students, namely that time Alta Vista, and now more famous Google.

All fine and dandy. But times change, even for students. The year 2007 Google’s new tool where released- Google Translate. Some students found this to be a phenomenal tool. By a few clicks they could take a Swedish text, translate it from Swedish to English, English to Danish, then to the Chinese, Japanese, and finally to Swedish again. Student took already written words and whole projects and used Google Translate to “launder black words” to white. Almost impossible to trace. Checkmate.

Something changed. Earlier, the same year, we read about the cheat suddenly dropped. We could read an article in the Swedish news paper Dagens Nyheter (22-04-2008) showing that for the first time since 2001, the number of students who were convicted of cheating fell. Why? Summary, have students’ morale increased, or it may be another explanation? Has Google Translate something to do with it? Is this the future of new internet tools? A little cheating and word laundry is okay, right?

“Cheating is just wrong if it is detected”. This was the case with the minister from the Swedish party Moderaterna, who failed to pay the TV license fee for 17 years, cheating tax by hiring foreigners house builders, hired untaxed maid, brought a fake degree to his resume, hired incompetent managers from the company Carnegie in the department, taking bribes by Russian oil companies, etc.” (Comments taken from the Swedish news paper Metro 10-12-2007)

 
Ps. this text is completely white and has been translated from Swedish to Danish to Spanish to English. Ds.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/linuskjellqvist

Simple, the internet and social media is great. We all agree. The latest statistics show that more and more use the so-called social media. The user age increases, a matter of course nowadays even for those born around the end of the second world war. Even my dear mother, who usually loves her garden has now a excuse to sit in front of Facebook every time is cloudy. Like, like like. My dear mother, great success online. Bad for the flowers.

This also applies to industry. Like, like, like. Companies have taken Mark Zuckerberg’s work to their heart. Now, social networks are doing fairly good according to the statistics. More than one million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages. Impressive isn’t it?

Like everything else, there are trends. When my dear mother grew up the trend was hats. Nowadays, the latest trend is “Cross functional social media engagement”. Face it! It is not wrong to compare hats with cross functional engagement. Agree?

Some might say, the phenomenon social media is not a media, more like a mindset. Meaning that companies are moving from the traditional way by having one or two employed by the marketing department in charge of social media, to now involving the entire company’s various departments. Employees within the Human Resource, Sales, Support and Marketing departments as a one big happy family. But is it a one happy family you get?

Some of us see it as a divorce. A total chaos within the family. Maybe as a trend that is quickly replaced with another? To allow individual employees to speak for the company through out the social media without being audited may not be a good idea.

HR department, the people who are interested in your company, they will contact you, if they are interested. Mostly by email. Sales department; let the sales do what they are good at – selling. Support department; come on, how many actually complain and need help? Not many, really. Most of the customers actually help other customers. There is absolutely no problem with a call center if they respond quickly on the phone. Marketing department; let your employees focus on their core business. Have one, maybe two social media experts have a central role and allow the them managing the whole, by twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It is enough because most people are there. It’s easy to figure out that if you are in more channels, it becomes messy.

No, social media will continue to grow and will move at a faster pace. My dear mother among others will find it difficult to keep up. This also applies to most businesses. That is why not every department should be involved. It is better to outsource – experts that really knows the social media. So, don’t you think that this “Cross functional social media engagement” will soon be over?

Like, like, like.