The basic idea of this hype being pushed at us with both barrels a blazing is that it is a way by which like minded people; or as the proponents would have us say - friends, to connect. The reasons for this so-called need to connect can range from political affiliation to business connection to get your warm and fuzzy on by taking up the social cause du jour.
Even though the originating college kids are laughing their butts off over how the tech bunch are trying to make a business mountain out of a school kid’s mole hill while Robert Scoble is trying to prove otherwise, the fact is that you will never see any serious social change coming out of any social network, Facebook or any of the copycats.
While those with good intentions try to use whatever avenue is available to them to get social crisis messages out and try to get people involved social networks like Facebook are showing that having a social conscience isn’t on par with making friends and passing around applets that only want to make money off of them.
A perfect example of this lack of persistent social conscience on places like Facebook one only has to read the post by Sarah Lai Stirland on Threat Level where she reports on the [sarcasm] massive [/sarcasm] response to the Facebook group setup to raise awareness of the incredible government crackdown in Myanmar (Burma).
Through their page on Facebook the Burma Campaign UK and Amnesty International had organized what they hoped would be huge worldwide protest marches against the Myanmar censorship and crackdown against Buddhist monks in the country.
Instead of the hoped for 10,000 people in London the organizers were lucky if 3,000 showed up. So much for social networks being a method for raising social awareness. With everyday that goes by these social networks strike me more a nothing more than backslapping hen parties as you play who has the most friends. It wouldn’t surprise me if a TechCrunch party was announced on Facebook they’d have more people show up than did for a truly important social crisis.
Listening to: Enigma - 15 Years After CD2, The Cross Of Changes - Second Chapter
Conversation Tags: social networks, Facebook, Robert Scoble, Burma, Myanmar, social conscience
2 Comments
You might be right, but Barack Obama’s campaign staff told me that a university got 4,000 people to attend a rally (and got Barack himself to come) simply on Facebook. Is that “social change?” I think it is.
First off I wouldn’t be totally trusting of any data coming out of a campaign office as being reliable Robert
but maybe that’s just my crankiness coming out.
However I have long maintained; and don’t see anything to change my mind, that the immense social pressure that could be brought to bear by the blogosphere as a whole is doing anything more than finding new ways to pat themselves on the back over things that have no real impact on on things that mean anything on a social level.
If there was indeed a social conscience within the blogosphere beyond the ones of self interest would people still be living in FEMA trailer; or worse, in New Orleans, would only 3,000 people show up to protest the Burma disaster, would your Government be so easily usurping your privacy rights, would true poverty be an acceptable class of society to find people being shuffled into.
This whole notion of social media, social network or any other social gratification of ego is becoming a mockery as long as we refuse to use the voice and the power that things like blogs give us.
Getting 4,000 students to attend some stupid political rally that won’t mean a damn thing after the election is not social change - it’s just another way of gaming the system and making us techie types feel all justified in out twittering and blogging and networking.
Social change .. I don’t think so.