You are a Marketing Manager, seeing the Facebook cultural problems can be detriment, you are communicating with the company’s executives in a 300-400 words memo. State the problem (15 points.)  Begin your memo with a statement of the main problem.  Analyze the problem (15 points.)  This is where you identify relevant facts from the case and apply a conceptual model to diagnose the problem. Analyze the problem you identified (and not some other problem). Organize the facts into a coherent whole as if you were presenting evidence to persuade a skeptic. Clearly state any assumptions that you’ve made. Provide evidence from the case to support your analysis: use quotes, numbers, and facts from the case or other sources. Analyze the problem using a conceptual model from the readings or lectures. Apply the conceptual model fully and explicitly. Cite your sources. Draw a conclusion and provide specific recommendations for action (20 points.)  Provide the results of your analysis. What are your main conclusions? What should be done next? Some cases call for a specific decision or specific actions that need to be taken, while others do not. However, most cases at least call for an explanation of “what you would have done” in the situation. Provide specific  recommendations that logically follow from your analysis of your problem statement. Guideline - see attached article below or use one from your own research. ++++ Forget Washington. Facebook’s Problems Abroad Are Far More Disturbing. By KEVIN ROOSE OCT. 29, 2017, New York Times For months, Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., has been in crisis mode, furiously attempting to contain the damage stemming from its role in last year’s presidential campaign. The company has mounted an all-out defense campaign ahead of this week’s congressional hearings on election interference in 2016, hiring three outside communications firms, taking out full-page newspaper ads, and mobilizing top executives, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, to beat back accusations that it failed to prevent Russia from manipulating the outcome of the election. No other predicament in Facebook’s 13-year history has generated this kind of four-alarm response. But while the focus on Russia is understandable, Facebook has been much less vocal about the abuse of its services in other parts of the world, where the stakes can be much higher than an election. This past week, my colleagues at The Times reported on the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in Myanmar that has been subjected to brutal violence and mass displacement. Violence against the Rohingya has been fueled, in part, by misinformation and anti-Rohingya propaganda spread on Facebook, which is used as a primary news source by many people in the country. Doctored photos and unfounded rumors have gone viral on Facebook, including many shared by official government and military accounts. The information war in Myanmar ...

1. You are a Marketing Manager, seeing the Facebook cultural
problems can be detriment, you are communicating with the
company’s executives in a 300-400 words memo.
State the problem (15 points.)
Begin your memo with a statement of the main problem.
Analyze the problem (15 points.)
This is where you identify
relevant facts
from the case and apply a
conceptual model
to diagnose the problem. Analyze the problem you identified
(and not some other problem). Organize the facts into a
coherent whole as if you were presenting evidence to persuade a
skeptic. Clearly state any assumptions that you’ve made.
Provide
evidence
from the case to support your analysis: use quotes, numbers,
and facts from the case or other sources. Analyze the problem
using a conceptual model from the readings or lectures. Apply
the conceptual model fully and explicitly. Cite your sources.
Draw a conclusion and provide specific recommendations for
action (20 points.)
Provide the results of your analysis. What are your main
conclusions? What should be done next? Some cases call for a
specific decision or specific actions that need to be taken, while
others do not. However, most cases at least call for an
explanation of “what you would have done” in the situation.
Provide
specific
recommendations that logically follow from your analysis of
your problem statement.

2. Guideline - see attached article below or use one from your own
research.
++++
Forget Washington. Facebook’s Problems Abroad Are Far More
Disturbing.
By
KEVIN ROOSE
OCT. 29, 2017, New York Times
For months, Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., has
been in crisis mode, furiously attempting to contain the damage
stemming from its role in last year’s presidential campaign. The
company has mounted an all-out defense campaign ahead of this
week’s congressional hearings on election interference in 2016,
hiring three outside communications firms, taking out full-page
newspaper ads, and mobilizing top executives, including Mark
Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, to beat back accusations that
it failed to prevent Russia from manipulating the outcome of the
election.
No other predicament in Facebook’s 13-year history has
generated this kind of four-alarm response. But while the focus
on Russia is understandable, Facebook has been much less vocal
about the abuse of its services in other parts of the world, where
the stakes can be much higher than an election.
This past week, my colleagues at The Times reported on the
ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority in
Myanmar that has been subjected to brutal violence and mass
displacement. Violence against the Rohingya has been fueled, in

3. part, by misinformation and anti-Rohingya propaganda spread
on Facebook, which is used as a primary news source by many
people in the country. Doctored photos and unfounded rumors
have gone viral on Facebook, including many shared by official
government and military accounts.
The information war in Myanmar illuminates a growing problem
for Facebook. The company successfully connected the world to
a constellation of real-time communication and broadcasting
tools, then largely left it to deal with the consequences.
“In a lot of these countries, Facebook is the de facto public
square,” said Cynthia Wong, a senior internet researcher for
Human Rights Watch. “Because of that, it raises really strong
questions about Facebook needing to take on more
responsibility for the harms their platform has contributed to.”
In Myanmar, the rise in anti-Rohingya sentiment coincided with
a huge boom in social media use that was partly attributable to
Facebook itself. In 2016, the company
partnered (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
with MPT, the state-run telecom company, to give subscribers
access to its Free Basics program. Free Basics includes a
limited suite of internet services, including Facebook, that can
be used without counting toward a cellphone data plan. As a
result, the number of Facebook users in Myanmar has
skyrocketed to more than 30 million today from 2 million in
2014.
“We work hard to educate people about our services, highlight
tools to help them protect their accounts and promote digital
literacy,” said Debbie Frost, a Facebook spokeswoman. “To be
more effective in these efforts, we are working with civil
society, safety partners, and governments — an approach we

4. have found to be particularly important and effective in
countries where people are rapidly coming online and
experiencing the internet for the first time through a mobile
phone.”
In India, where internet use has also surged in recent years,
WhatsApp, the popular Facebook-owned messaging app, has
been
inundated with rumors, hoaxes and false stories (Links to an
external site.)Links to an external site.
. In May, the Jharkhand region in Eastern India was destabilized
by a viral WhatsApp message that falsely claimed that gangs in
the area were abducting children. The message incited
widespread panic and led to a rash of retaliatory lynchings, in
which at least seven people were beaten to death. A local
filmmaker, Vinay Purty, told the
Hindustan Times (Links to an external site.)Links to an external
site.
that many of the local villagers simply believed the abduction
myth was real, since it came from WhatsApp.
“Everything shared on the phone is regarded as true,” Mr. Purty
said.
In a statement, WhatsApp said, “WhatsApp has made
communications cheaper, easier and more reliable for millions
of Indians — with all the benefits that brings. Though we
understand that some people, sadly, have used WhatsApp to
intimidate others and spread misinformation. It’s why we
encourage people to report problematic messages to WhatsApp
so that we can take action.”
Facebook is not directly responsible for violent conflict, of

5. course, and viral misinformation is hardly unique to its
services. Before social media, there were email hoaxes and
urban legends passed from person to person. But the speed of
Facebook’s growth in the developing world has made it an
especially potent force among first-time internet users, who may
not be appropriately skeptical of what they see online.
The company has made many attempts to educate users about
the dangers of misinformation. In India and Malaysia, it has
taken out newspaper ads with tips for spotting false news. In
Myanmar, it has partnered with local organizations to distribute
printed copies of its community standards, as well as created
educational materials to teach citizens about proper online
behavior.
But these efforts, as well-intentioned as they may be, have not
stopped the violence, and Facebook does not appear to have
made them a top priority. The company has no office in
Myanmar, and neither Mr. Zuckerberg nor Ms. Sandberg has
made any public statements about the Rohingya crisis.
Correcting misinformation is a thorny philosophical problem for
Facebook, which imagines itself as a neutral platform that
avoids making editorial decisions. Facebook’s community
standards prohibit hate speech and threats, but many harmful
viral posts — such as a WhatsApp thread in Southern India that
spread false rumors about a government immunization campaign
— are neither hateful nor directly threatening, and they
wouldn’t be prohibited under Facebook’s community standards
as long as they came from authentic accounts. Fighting
misinformation is especially difficult on WhatsApp, an app for
private messaging, since there is no public information trail to
fact-check.
Facebook has argued that the benefits of providing internet
access to international users will ultimately outweigh the costs.

6. Adam Mosseri, a Facebook vice president who oversees the
News Feed, told a journalism gathering this month, “In the end,
I don’t think we as a human race will regret the internet.” Mr.
Zuckerberg echoed that sentiment in a 2013 manifesto titled “Is
Connectivity a Human Right?,” in which he said that bringing
the world’s population online would be “one of the most
important things we all do in our lifetimes.”
That optimism may be cold comfort to people in places like
South Sudan. Despite being one of the poorest and least-wired
countries in the world, with only around 20 percent of its
citizens connected to the internet, the African nation has
become a hotbed of social media misinformation. As BuzzFeed
News has reported, political operatives inside and outside the
country have used Facebook posts to spread rumors and incite
anger between rival factions, fostering violence that threatens to
escalate into a civil war. A United Nations report last year
determined that in South Sudan, “social media has been used by
partisans on all sides, including some senior government
officials, to exaggerate incidents, spread falsehoods and veiled
threats, or post outright messages of incitement.”
These are incredibly complex issues, and it may be impossible
for Facebook — which is, remember, a technology company, not
a global peacekeeping force — to solve them overnight. But as
the company’s response to the Russia crisis has proved, it’s
capable of acting swiftly and powerfully when it feels its
interests are threatened.
Information wars in emerging markets may not represent as big
a threat to Facebook’s business as angry lawmakers in
Washington. But people are dying, and communities are tearing
themselves apart with the tools Facebook has built. That should
qualify as an even greater emergency in Menlo Park.