{"id":16967,"date":"2014-04-08T17:17:25","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T07:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=16967"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:58:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:58:08","slug":"silencing-the-bird-burgewords-timeline-of-immigration-department-tweet-fallout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/silencing-the-bird-burgewords-timeline-of-immigration-department-tweet-fallout\/","title":{"rendered":"Silencing the bird: @burgewords timeline of Immigration Department tweet fallout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TWITTER\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks to No Fibs<\/em> readers and citizen journalists monitoring the mainstream and social media for the past 48 hours, we’ve been able to put together the limited facts about the people behind the tweets sent to refugee supporter Vanessa Powell last Friday by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP).<\/p>\n

Two of the most common questions I have observed on the social media are: who sent the texts, a rogue staffer working on the weekend, or someone else? And was it a targeted attempt at censorship, or random?<\/p>\n

Well, there’s nothing like a timeline to see what’s true and what’s not. Here’s what we know, and where we know it from:<\/p>\n

Thursday, April 3<\/span><\/p>\n

Powell posted an image on her Facebook taken at Villawood Detention Centre, Sydney, of a refugee bus which was to be used to transport detainees to Curtin in Western Australia. Apparently the post was set to public at the time. Another Facebooker,\u00a0George Georgiadis, a friend of Powell’s and a fellow asylum seeker advocate and activist, left a comment on Powell’s post at some time afterwards.<\/p>\n

Friday, April 4<\/span><\/p>\n

At 4.29pm, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection tweeted Powell and asked her to remove an “offensive post” from her Facebook.<\/p>\n

\n

@VanessaPowell25<\/a> it\u2019s come to our attention that a Facebook post on your wall contains an offensive remark directed at a staff member.1\/2<\/p>\n

— DIBP Australia (@DIBPAustralia) April 4, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n