This week's #philsocial class nicely brought together several of the more interesting themes that this course has presented into what has actually been the more directly useful content to my endeavour to better understand what Social Media means for business and organisations.
It was also very interesting personally - it was about revolutions and flash mobs and the power Social Media has to create and motivate a crowd. Begining with #Kony2012 as a case study, Dr Tim Rayner (@timrayner01) looked at whether Social Media was a truly powerful tool for activism, or whether the ties created were too weak for anything more than mere "clictivism" - i.e. superficial and transient activity that ultimately led to nothing. The famous Kony video campaign did create more than 100 million views on You Tube and Vimeo - but any "boots-on-the-ground" attempts were a spectacular failiure. This could be partly because the campaign was visciously discredited in the media, or simply because Social Media doesn't create enough "glue" to galvanise people into meaningful activity? This was the central question of the session.
We then took a tour of popular revolts and demonstrations through the last few years - a nostalgic parade of romantic movements that evoke great emotion and excitement. We dwelt on the London Riots (and let's not forget the #broombrigade), #arabspring and #Occupy in particular, but also looked at the "Sorry Everyone" and the subsequent werenotafraid.com campaigns following the 2004 US Election and London bombings respectively. (It is interesting that both campaigns were achieved - in 2004 and 2005 - before Facebook or Twitter.)
The key proposition was that for those that took part the movements empowered them - gave them a sense of belonging and empowerment.
However, to what extent could Social Media take the credit for these movements? The rest of the lecture explored two very interesting differences of opinion.
Was the revolution tweeted?
The first is essential to guaging the very value of social networks. Gladwell vs Shirky debate (nicely summed up and even scored a year later by Bill Wasik.) Malcolm Gladwell - famous author of "Outliers" among other missives - argued, importantly in October 2010, that "the revolution will never be tweeted" in The New Yorker. Malcolm made the argument that Social Networks build only "weak ties" that cannot be galvanised into powerful armies of activists - only months before powerful armies of activists were galvanised through social networks all across north Africa. The revolution was indeed tweeted and the hashtag was #arabspring.
Clay Shirky argued that while more than mere social networks were needed for social organisations to become effective forces for change, was not reason for social methodologies to be dismissed out of hand:
"The fact that barely committed actors cannot click their way to a better world does not mean that committed actors cannot use social media effectively"
But it was BIll Wasik's summary of the two positions that provided the most value for me. He argued two points of great pertinance to the organised use of Social Media.
- That while social networks could not create strong ties, they could maintain already strong ties across a distributed area
- That emotion was the glue that bound these networks.
Loose ties is an important aspect of the machinery of social networks I have learnt. It can help build weak ties with total strangers in such a way as the strong ties are latent and implicit, and achieving those strong ties is greatly expedited as a result of the strong affinity and proximity social media can achieve. Basically, when the moment is right, those weak ties can be converted into very strong ties very quickly, and then maintained over huge distances. Wasik's other point about emotion being the glue is key also - if you can develop content or an experience that evokes great emotion - and that sense of belonging and/or empowerment - then you can create a very powerful network indeed. The value of such networks could one day become an asset on the balance sheet of the wisest companies.
Fear or Love?
The final part of the lecture looked at the other debate and in it reverted to the core of the series - the Philosophy - comparing the social organising principles of two great thinkers: Hobbes and Spinoza. The former thought that fear was the fundamental civilising factor in the way community organised itself. The latter saw that human affinity and - for want of a better word - love bonded far tighter communities. Their very different times and experiences in a large part explain their radically different positions of course. But in today's world the passion and enthusiasm of the #occupy movement and the commitment and comeradery of the #arabspring masses demonstrate quite clearly that the collaborative and pay-it-forward gift economy of the social media counter-culture is in the ascendance. The Hobbesian command-and-control, top-down society on the other hand patently will not work - neither politically nor commercially.