Poor Jan Moir. Boy did she learn a lesson about social media this weekend!

Actually what am I saying, the woman deserves no sympathy. This is she who wrote an article in Friday’s Daily Mail, sensitively titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”.

Cutting to the chase, she concluded that Gately died of being gay – a terrible ‘unnatural’ lifestyle, his death being confirmation of this and that all gay marriages end in disaster, and quite possibly – death.

I won’t get into personal opinion any further you’ll be pleased to hear (however, read Charlie Brooker’s view for a particular angle!).

This story vividly highlights the effectiveness of social networking for galvanising public opinion towards particular issues, in this case homophobia and bad journalism!

More specifically, it demonstrates the power of Twitter not only as a platform for creating campaign content, but also as a channel and mechanism for distributing it.

Within hours on Friday “Jan Moir” and #janmoir were both rocketed to the top of the trending topics on Twitter, and stayed there almost all weekend.

How did this happen?

I can explain it as social media and online PR in action: the result of the interactions of a combination of content creators and retweeters – individuals (you and I) and relevant influencers (bloggers, organisation reps and mainstream online media predominantly).

These individuals and influencers were sharing their retorts while retweeting others’ content at a ferocious pace. More and more people joined what, in effect, had become a focused and successful campaign against Moir.

Influencers like Stephen Fry and Giles Coren added explosive fuel to the campaign.

At one point, Fry retweeted a humourous comment by a blogger which immediately sent thousands of visitors to his website resulting in the said blogger asking Fry not to do it again as it crashed his server!!

The effect of even one influencer can be immense in social media, driving vast amounts of website traffic (as long as your IT can handle it!).

Mainstream online media lent a hand too, in particular The Guardian who were supremely fast to react, putting editorial about it online right as it was happening – creating yet more content to be commented on and retweeted.

Another feature of this campaign is how it evolved and diversified. It often went beyond the initial Moir article, turning heat on The Daily Mail itself for publishing it in the first place (and its record of homophobia, racism, xenophobia and so on).

At some point around midday on Friday a separate campaign evolved on Twitter and now on Facebook, targeting Daily Mail advertisers like BT and Marks & Spencer.

It was pointed out to these brands that they had display ads on the same webpage as Moir’s piece and so were aligning themselves with right-wing bigotry and they should do something about it. And guess what – they did.

And this is the crux of the matter.

This example could easily be interpreted (as social media has so often been in the past) as a flash in the pan. But this argument against social media is wearing thin these days, and this case study proves why.

It was actually Jan Moir herself who summed it up correctly on Friday (wait for it!).

Not in her original article (phew!) but in her virtually unrepentant response to the furore, she blamed the whole thing on a “heavily orchestrated internet campaign”. Well done Jan, it was indeed such a campaign and the results speak for themselves.

Today it has been revealed that The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has received 21,000 complaints about the article – that’s more complaints in ONE weekend than the PCC has received in the last five years! They are now investigating the matter.

Display advertising from some of the biggest brands in the UK was removed from the webpage. Even when the Mail desperately tried to claw something back by changing the headline of the online article, the advertisers stuck to their guns. (Great brand effect by the way, well done guys!)

The key features of this example are speed, content, opinion, engagement, interaction and of course influence – highlighting again that influence really does now live and breathe online.