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Tag archives for social media

Social media and crocheted cats

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In my part of Sweden’s social media world people are talking about Hjärtekatter, “Heart cats”.

HjärtekattWhat is a heart cat? It’s a crocheted cat, an amigurumi, with a scar right across the heart.

Why is there a scar? Well, sometimes life takes an unexpected turn and a baby is born with a heart defect. The baby has to live its first few weeks or even months in a hospital. And when you’re little, insecure and scared, what is better than to have something to hold on to?

One mom wanted to give her child something that would be a reminder of the stay in Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital in Gothenburg, a stuffed animal with the same scar as the child and a friend made her a heart cat.

Then they thought, what if they could give all the kids with heart problems a heart cat to take home? Maybe if they asked around and started a Facebook page, there could be … say 100 cats crocheted until the end of the year? A lot of cats! Would it be possible?

Today, one month later, they have collected 314 cats! The cats are crocheted all over Sweden, almost every crochet or knit blog has made or is making a cat. People are crocheting several cats in different colors and then take pictures of them before they send them away. Look at Marias Garn, Kaffebönan or Garnsligt for example. There are groups on the knitting community Ravelry and the Swedish Knitting association, Sticka has challenged all its members to make a cat. The project has been a total success and now Lund University Hospital can also give away heart cats.

More heart cats

Then the moms thought, what about the siblings of the sick children? Not only do their lives fall apart because another child arrives and gets all the attention that a newborn little brother or sister would, but also this new baby is sick and has to stay in the hospital and mom and dad are worried and don’t have any time for them. What if we can gave these siblings a little stuffed toy as well? A new challenge is made!

Do you want to crochet something? Contact Hjärtekatten at hjartekatten@gmail.com. If you can’t crochet, you can donate 75 SEK (about 8 Euro), choose a color and a name and someone else will crochet a cat or another toy for you!

Heart cat pattern

Heart cat blog (in Swedish only)

Inger

May 27, 2011

Social media in Sweden – what’s going on?

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I sat in front of my computer at work yesterday following Disruptive Change, a conference arranged by Disruptive Media. It was streamed live to all of us who couldn’t sit there in person. Twitter was full of buzz on #dchange and a lot of interesting things were said.

My favorite speaker was Mark Comerford, @markmedia, a social media guru who is always fun to listen to. I tweeted a few things he said and here are the essentials:

You will never reach me if you don’t reach my network and you don’t lose an individual, you lose a network.

The color of shit = If content is king, context is empress. Theres no such thing as too much information. Something that is uninteresting to you might be today’s best for me. Information overload is not a problem of consumption but of filter failures. If your network gives you shit, it is your fault – you have chosen the wrong network.

You can see the conference at Livestream if you are interested in the meta debate about social media in Sweden right now. http://www.livestream.com/disruptivemedia/

Searching for #dchange at twitter will also give you a hint on what was going on. A lot of it is in Swedish but there’s almost as much in English, from those of us that cannot translate and tweet at the same time.

Inger

May 25, 2011

When social media makes a difference

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Last Sunday a xenophobic, rightist party was elected into the Swedish Parliament.

I and many others immediately felt Sweden become a colder and rougher country to live in. My Facebook News Feed soon drowned in status updates about how sad and disappointed people felt. A lot of people didn’t let it stay at sharing their feelings in status updates. Several Facebook groups were instantly founded and people were given the opportunity to show their discontent about the election result, for example Sverigedemokraterna ur Riskdagen – Ja tack (The Sweden Democrats out of the Parliament – Yes please) and The Swedish news paper Aftonbladets’ campaign Vi gillar olika (We like different) who together have more than 400 000 likes.

17-year-old Felicia Margineanus went even further and founded the Facebook manifesto Get together för jämlikhet KL 18 på Plattan (Inget bråk, bara kärlek!)(Get together for equality at 6 pm at Plattan (No fighting, just love!) and challenged everyone to participate in a peaceful protest against racism and xenophobia. As a result, over ten thousand people gathered at Sergels torg in Stockholm this Monday.

More than 10,000 people gathered at Sergels torg in Stockholm to protest against racism. Photo: Maria Öhrn

The Sweden Democrats got 5,7 % of the votes in the election. As tragic as that may be, it’s still important to point out that 94.3 per cent of the Swedes did NOT vote for SD and that a huge number of people are opposed to the party and its xenophobia. And even though social media didn’t play that much of a role in the Swedish election of 2010, it is now a force to count on when it comes to opposing the racist tendencies in Sweden.

Mikaela

September 23, 2010

Politics in your pocket

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As the iPhone, social media AND politics nerd I am, I’ve spent the weekend playing with the Swedish political parties iPhone apps. The Red-Greens have a shared app, so does the Alliance. In addition, the Social Democrats, the Center Party and the Christian Democrats also have their own separate apps.

The Red-Green’s app is purely focused on politics — you can compare the Red-Greens to the Alliance or ask a question about the Red-Green’s politics. Relevant information of course, but why use an app for this? Apps should be used for funnier things if you ask me.

The Alliance lets us play with magnetic poetry to say good things about their politics. Fun for about… 30 seconds.

The Social Democrats app is a guide to where my nearest voting station is. It may be useful if you are a very absent-minded person, but quite boring.

The Christian Democrats app is called “What does Göran say” and lets you play with party leader Göran Hägglund and a few quotes. Some of them are really by him, some aren’t. My guess is that he probably never said “WTF is going on dude”, but “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” are probably his words. I like this app — totally meaningless but fun.

The Center Party has given us an app that is all about their leader Maud Olofsson. You can take a test that tells you “how much Maud” you are, or you can hear Olofsson speak about her “roots, values and dreams for Sweden”. I think it’s necessary to be a hardcore fan of the Center Party and Olofsson to think this is fun.

The winner is definitely the Christian Democrats’ iPhone app. It uses a good dose of humor and focus on entertainment as well as politics. Success! It remains to be seen if the Christian Democrats succeed equally in the elections this Sunday.

Kajsa

September 13, 2010