Gagnon — Right and Wrong

(Image originally from Mashable)

In the Globe and Mail today, columnist Lysiane Gagnon writes:

Then social media arrived, with their good sides and their bad sides, and introduced a new culture, a culture where anyone can publish anything about anybody, with the Internet acting as a giant, unfiltered, viral poster. A person’s reputation – her most precious possession – can be destroyed in a click.

There's right and wrong in her perspective (not least of which on the *fail* side she blames social media for today's "gutter journalism"; that's simply sophistry).

The internet has seen the rebirth of 'doxa' — the manipulation of opinion through rumor — which can result in a dangerous jump to judgment. Reputations — of individuals and companies — can be shredded without proof and without the benefit of the doubt being given. 

But there is a filter and partial antidote to this social web vigilantism and that is the intelligent crowd.

True, the majority of people jump on the snarky train too quickly. But two things will begin (and are beginning) to happen:

1. Smart people are raising cautions in the middle of the nasty firestorms, even around someone with the questionable mental acuity of Toronto mayor Rob Ford
2. People in the social media demos will learn from their mistakes, as with the misleading tweets during the Boston Marathon bombings. They will become more cautious and contemplative about their judgments and less ready to join the social mob.

I don't have an easy time trusting public opinion. It is often so wrong. After all, Ford was elected in the first place.

Nevertheless, I'm seeing more circumspect tweets and Facebook posts whenever others are hastily mocking or attacking someone who could be innocent. And that's a strong signal we are becoming a more sophisticated online democracy.

Now if only activist groups made a similar commitment to a higher standard of research and reflection before denunciation.  

What Weak Ties?

(Image originally from http://mashable.com/2012/11/02/social-media-negative-politics/)

At least two — there may be more — conclusions of a recent Pew Research Center study on Civic Engagement in the Digital Age are further signs that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are the new demos for political discourse. And, of greater long-term consequence, the evidence suggests being active on social networks leads participants to more and different political activity, both online AND off. 

The study of more than 2,200 American adults "examines online and offline political engagement and pays special attention to the role of social networking sites in political activities." (For reasons I don't fully understand there appears to be far less social network-based political engagement in Canada . . . for the time being.) 

The first of the two study findings I find most persuasive is that in every category of political activity, a significantly higher percentage of social network users than of all adults take political action, including offline actions such as encouraging other people to vote and belonging to a group that is involved in political activity. This begins to put the lie to critics who believe a Facebook 'like' is nothing but a weak and inconsequential expression of alignment with an idea. 

The second finding is that being active on social networks in fact leads to active political behaviours in general. Now, we are not talking here about Arab Spring-level street action. But the Pew study found that "43% of social networking site users say that they have decided to learn more about a political or social issue because of something they read about on a social networking site".

And, take note social defeatists, nearly 20% of site users say they have "decided to take action involving a political or social issue" because of something they have learned about on the social platforms.

If I was a campaign organizer, I would be putting a social strategy at the core of my supporter recruitment program and of my identification and enrollment of social network opinion influencers.

(Cross posted to http://hkstrategies.ca)