Recycled Shoe Photo and Russian Zen

Available for over a year

Sharing images of the Peshawar attack The support on social media was overwhelming in the aftermath of the Taliban attacks on Pakistani schoolchildren. People exchanged messages of support and widespread condemnation of the attackers. And they also shared images, some quite graphic. One of the images circulating on Twitter and Facebook was that of a tiny, blood-soaked child’s shoe, held on a man’s outstretched palm. “This not any blood stained shoe of a child, it’s a blood stained shoe of Humanity… that died in Peshawar”, wrote one twitter user. It was soon pointed out that the image of the child’s shoe was not from the school attacks in Pakistan; some speculated it was taken over the summer, during the last Gaza/Israel conflict. Others that it was from Gaza war in 2010. We tracked down the man who took the photo and find out where it really came from. This year’s trends Many of the top social platforms have been creating end of year lists of what have been the biggest trends on their sites. We discuss what was popular on Twitter and Facebook. We also speak to Kevin Allocca, who has been involved with making this year’s YouTube Rewind video – featuring some of the biggest videos of the year. Russian zen and the rouble The Russian economy is in the doldrums at the moment - falling oil prices, economic sanctions, the rouble has fallen dramatically in value on the foreign exchanges. It’s pretty bleak news. Many Russians have been channelling their woes into making a number of videos laced with humour and stoicism. We sample a few, including Zenrus, a site which displays a dashboard showing foreign exchange rates between roubles, dollars and Euros, and the price of oil in real time. While at the same time, the site plays soothing music.