The Assumptions of the Social Media Community

Sometimes you go to a meeting and someone produces a moment of elegance, that is, a moment that neatly sums up an area of experience. I had such a moment recently at a meeting on Governance, Media and Accountability organized by the  Salzburg Global Seminar. As often happens at such meetings, some of the sessions involve social media specialists educating 'digital migrants' like me (as opposed to the young people of today who are said to be 'digital natives') regarding all the cool new tools being developed. I always come away impressed, and happy to be educated on the subject, especially the tools that can deepen citizen engagement in policy and empower them to hold governments accountable. Some impressive possibilities are emerging, about which more later.

But very often the discussion takes on a millenarian tinge. We get told that new social media tools will destroy all others, life will change beyond recognition, mass media is 'legacy media', about to go the way of mastodons. I find such over-claiming irritating because not only is it not true, it is also unnecessary. The history of  media- going back centuries -  shows that all information and communication technologies add to the mix, the polyglot mix. What you do with them depends on what your communication objectives are, the nature of the media environment (or, fancy new phrase, the 'media ecosystem'), and the media access and consumption patterns of your target audiences.

Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation - an amazing digital migrant who has gone native to a brilliant degree - summed up some of the questionable assumptions of the social media community thus:
 

1. Everyone has access to new media. (And we know that is not true, especially in developing countries.)
2. Everyone has goodwill and will not harm others.(We know that is not true because some pretty bad people use new media to pursue evil ends.)
3. Everyone can correct each other. (We know that is not true because education levels vary, ignorance persists on the Web, information access varies etc.)
4. Everything is transparent. (We know that is not true because manipulation goes on, identities get hidden, advertisers make bloggers support products without owning up to being paid and so on. See "Truth in Advertising, Offline or Online".)

The point, of course, is not to knock social media, but to suggest that all the mechanisms that shape the public sphere need cool analysis in order to manage inevitable complexities. Every new technology throws up ethical and governance challenges, and these need to be frankly acknowledged and managed.

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Other interesting research by the Knight Foundation: Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age - Overview of Conclusions and Recommendations
 

Photo Credit: Flickr User Gideon Burton