Shelby Co. (ECWd) –
Over the past 13 years of our operations, we have seen time and time again the negative impact and distrust of elected officials in communities due to social media postings. While many such posts grow from a valid concern, the lack of knowledge on some matters commonly leads to misinformation spreading like wildfire with that famous “share” button. Shelby County is experiencing this on multiple fronts. Below is just one example.
Last fall an elected department head posted the following to her personal social media page on August 11, 2022.
“FYI:
As of September 1, 2022 Shelby County will NOT have an Ambulance Service.”
An hour later, during working hours, she posted this:
“The County Board meeting is tonight at 7, show up and voice you opinion. This affects all residents of Shelby County! It’s a health & safety issue.”
On the surface, this sounds like a great thing to suggest, come to the meeting and voice your opinion. We call for that all the time, however in this case, the opinions that may get voiced are based on misinformation.
Before any meeting even took place, in less than 4 hours from the original post, there are people posting comments based on the belief the county will not have an ambulance service as of September 1, 2022. The one-word posts are telling. “OMG”, “crazy”, “sad”, “why”, and then “bastards”.
We can only assume the “bastards” are the county board. How special is it that people resort to this type of name-calling before...
What happened? The owner of this website (www.khmertimeskh.com) has banned your IP address (64.62.158.116). Please see https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/troubleshooting/http-status-codes/...