Swedish tourism Twitter initiative backfires The Swedish government agency responsible for tourism, VisitSweden joined up with the Swedish Institute and advertising company Volontaire in developing a plan to promote the country on Twitter. The initiative describes itself as "a public agency that promotes interest and confidence in Sweden around the world." In an innovative move, the @Sweden account is run by a different Swedish citizen every week. Patrick Kampmann, the creative director of Volontaire, explained the thinking behind the initiative when he said recently in an interview, "Sweden stands for certain values - being progressive, democratic, creative. We believed the best way to prove it was to handle the account in a progressive way and give control of it to ordinary Swedes. The account, which has more than 40,000 followers, has to date been controlled by a diverse spread of the country's population, including a female priest and a lesbian truck-driver. This week's 'curator', mother-of-two Sonja Abrahamsson however provoked controversy tweeting messages such as After a series of negative comments condemning her Tweets which also included an image of Freddie Mercury looking at a table of food with the caption "This pic I call 'hungry gay with aids'," Ms Abrahamsson wrote, "Im sorry if some of you find the question offensive. Thats was not my purpose. I just don't get why some people hates Jews so much. I thought it was a good idea to ask the question when so many well educated people all over the world can answer. Bad idea. In responding the the Tweets, Visit Sweden marketing director Marie Ziv said "She is a controversial and provocative person for sure, "We haven't called her or told her to stop or back down. We want her to continue being herself, "It's our choice not to censor anyone because we want to keep it real."