The headline was a no brainer
This is how it read on The Washington Post website:
"Online social networking sites, or socnets, are changing how people get their political news."
First, and most importantly, I think everyone will agree that the term "socnet" should be banned with perpetrators subject to slow torture.
With that out of the way, the article is interesting in its underscoring of the changes in the ways people get and provide information. It's not really a new idea, and the fact that it is especially true for political information will surprise no one reading this blog. What the article made me think about was that it's one thing to believe that change is occurring, it's quite another to be doing something about it — what are associations doing about it?
If political advocacy is a major part of your mission, do you know the quantity and quality of the involvement of people affiliated with your organization in social media? Are they pushing forward ideas that synch with your organization? How are you training members to get involved in these areas?
If you think social media is just a bunch of navel-gazers — a group of people all blowing hot air at each other — I tend to agree with you to a point. I think it's probably ok if you can't answer the above questions right now. However, I do think the time for ignoring it is past. The circle of people who are engaging in these online communities has grown too large, and the circle who read without engaging is also larger still. The 2000 presidential election was dominated online by The Drudge Report. In 2004, Dean's fundraising and major media (perhaps most notably ABC's The Note) were the major signs that political news and ideas were traveling differently than before. In 2008, it's too numerous to count in both large and small ways. The next page is already beginning to turn; you need to make sure your organization has something to say about what is written on it.
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Comments
I just saw my favorite social-media headline on CNN.com yesterday: "Anonymous anger rampant on internet." Which actually ties back to one of my favorite comics I've seen recently ...
To comment more substantively on your post, I've heard of associations using social media to push information out to their grassroots advocates, or to encourage their grassroots to contact legislators or regulators about issues of importance to the association. I haven't heard of associations helping their grassroots to speak on a more one-on-one (or one-to-group) way through social media. I think it could be interesting; one important factor, though, would be that the grassroots folks communicating with other individuals online couldn't just cut and paste text when they talk about the issues, or the people they're speaking to would figure it out pretty quickly. They would have to have real conversations--which is both more difficult and more effective than just sending a form e-mail or reading off of a script. Associations might need to give their grassroots a different kind of assistance for that kind of outreach.
Posted by: Lisa Junker | November 4, 2008 6:29 AM
In the longer term, I wonder how badly the democratization of the web will reduce our collective interest in reading, and publishers' commitment to providing quality, vetted sources of information.
As associations we are publishers who stake much of our legitimacy and value on our content. Yet, the sharp declines in circulation, readership/viewership, even market cap of major publishers and broadcasters (starting well before the credit crunch of course) are scary indicators of how our potential and current memberships will tend to value our sector-specific news. The socnets (hee hee!) are great SOCIAL tools, but this natural trend in human behavior tends to devalue 'legitimate' information channels.
Don't mean to digress from your key point, but as news sources become more fragmented and more focused on self-publishing, the opportunity to spread biased disinformation and to have it accepted as fact and a generally increasing 'signal to noise ratio' are downsides of society doing better and better at taking full advantage of cool new internet tools.
Posted by: Kevin Whorton, WM&R | November 18, 2008 8:25 AM