March 20th, 2009
The third of three posts looking at the question of does social media = social change? I apologize for being long-winded…each of these posts has been too long. It is a big question.
In the first post I tried to start painting the backdrop by remembering that we must be clear on what it is that we really want to accomplish, so that we might use our tools for the right things in the right ways…so that we can be confident that we are moving in the direction of where we truly want to go. In the second post I tried to finish painting the backdrop by considering what the world needs most from us, so that we can apply our tools where they will have the greatest impact.
This post is about why social media is potentially part of radical and far-reaching social change. Social media (if we are rigorous in working out the questions in the first two posts) can actually be a revolutionary set of tools and in many ways is ideal for us to use in redefining leadership and citizenship and for us to use in being the architects of our future.
Revolutionary?
If we know who we are, what we are here for and what the world needs from us, Social Media CAN EQUAL Social Change because:
Social Media Levels the Playing Field:
Social media shifts the balance of power away from traditional, concentrated power bases to individuals and groups of individuals. A couple of examples would be:
Geography: Location is less and less important as it becomes easier to find, interact with, share with and collaborate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. If you have a computer and broadband access, you can truly have a global reach. Now more than ever before the Alpine, Texas…North Platte, Nebraska and Sutherland, Iowas of the world can become creative, artistic and collaborative centers and rather than suffer from brain drain, become magnets. If they get it. If they make the investment. Big ifs. But the potential is there. The potential is there for a rebirth of rural America.
Welcome to Sutherland, Iowa
Information: I now have more access to more information than ever before possible. It is also easier than ever before for me to share that information. Shared access to information helps to diffuse power. The downside is that we have now have access to so much information, if we are not able to search, analyze and store the stuff we really need we can get buried in the avalanche.
Social Media Facilitates Self-Expression:
I recently heard someone say that the killer characteristic of the new internet is self-expression – in particular honest, passionate, self-expression and the way it extends the ability to speak and be heard to a larger swath of the human race than at any time in history. I now have at my disposal the tools to produce and distribute many types of content to anywhere in the world. If I want to write a book, produce a song or a show, I need no support or permission from producers, agents, promoters, marketing people etc., I can just do it.
This also helps to diffuse power…institutional and power gatekeepers have less significance today. And that is a good thing. More of us now have a platform for our own truth telling, and this is huge.
Sojourner Truth – Truth Teller
Every real social movement came to life through personal truth telling. If you take a look at the stories of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and others, you will see personal truth telling at their core. When only a few of has the opportunity to tell our story, it becomes very easy for us to ignore, deny or be unaware of all the other stories in the world. If all we say about Omaha (where I live) is happy, shiny things…we start to forget that there are people here without…that there are people here that will sleep on the sidewalk tonight. That is dangerous, because if we allow ourselves to be convinced those things are not happening, we are likely to do nothing about them. Gloria Steinem said that “Personal truth telling as a path to social change is the most important and enduring legacy.”
All real, sustainable change begins with the consideration of new truths and new questions. And regardless of what my truth is, what my unique gift is, I have a new set of tools, a new platform…maybe I want to start a business, or advocate a new way of business, maybe I want to tell a story about my community with pictures or video or song or poetry, I have new tools to use…I have a new platform and I can find people that appreciate my story, my idea for support….because truth telling can be lonely, and I can find those who disagree with me…and I can learn from that.
Social Media Gives Greater Ability to Convene:
Because social media provides us with new places, ways and tools for convening around issues or events we do not need the permission, support or even participation of the institutions involved. If we want to organize a dialogue about our local schools, we can do that easier than ever before without any involvement of the school. And beyond that initial dialogue we can have a space to continue examining the issues, share information and resources and coordinate future activities. This helps us to be less reliant on those we consider to be “experts”, or that have a title of “leader.”
Social Media Facilitates Intersections:
Social Media helps to bring people together and create more and new intersections. Intersections, new connections, are tremendously important and powerful. For starters, a lot of creativity and innovation is born of intersections. When different people, perspectives, experiences and questions intersect, there exists the potential to create something brand new. Our interactions and conversations with other people, where we are discussing different perspectives and sharing questions are in many ways landing strips for the future…that is where what is next starts to come alive.
The Noise at the Intersection
In addition to that, our personal and professional networks remain in many ways very segregated. One of the most valuable things we could do to fight inequality and discrimination (intentional and unintentional) is to weave more diversity (race, gender, profession, socio-economic status, geography, age, etc.) into our networks.
And, the more we realize that there are not a lot of degrees of separation in the world, that we are very interdependent the more difficult it becomes for us to commit violence upon each other. Mother Teresa said “If we are without peace in the world, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” Social media makes it easier to find, connect with and interact with people…people that are similar to us and different from us. The more connected we are the easier it will be for us to remember that we belong to each other and to live accordingly.
Social Media Adds Context:
Our relationships can actually be enhanced through social media, because we have the opportunity to provide so much context…and context really is key. Human beings are funny. We like to think of ourselves as these very rational, logical beings but we are really something very different than that. We are in many ways very illogical and irrational…although we tend to be very good at rationalizing our irrational behavior. One of the places we see this is in our interactions with others. Our human nature drives us to make a lot of decisions (assumptions really) about others based on very little or almost no information. Sometimes those assumptions are accurate and things work out well for us, but sometimes those assumptions are horribly wrong and we end up with a mess on our hands. Sometimes our assumptions about the intentions or motives of others change our behavior toward them or gets in the way of collaboration. There is a lot of opportunity for misunderstanding, miscommunication and misinterpretation in the human interaction, and social media allows us to add much more context to our relationships. All of that additional context decreases the potential significance of our assumptions and miscommunications. Context makes our relationships more resilient.
There is really nothing radical or revolutionary in anything that I have said in these three posts. I am actually talking about something that should be very basic and normal and comfortable for us…I am talking about democracy. I am talking about applying the fundamentals of democracy to our work and our lives.
But.
Truth be told…we may have much to remember about democracy.
Mary Parker Follet said; “Democracy is the rule of an interacting, interpermeating whole…we have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness. We only get wholeness through reciprocal relations…through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations. Democracy is really about coming together to create wholes.”
Social media tools are very democratic in nature, they help us establish and build those reciprocal relations and create new and generative wholes.
So.
I will refer back to some of my earlier babbling about questions.
What do you want the world to be?
What are you willing to do, to make it so?
Are you willing to be the architect of your own future?
Whatever your answers are, social media can help you make them reality. The merit of the outcome is more about your answers than it is about the tools you use.
be good to each other