I know that the course calendar (or somewhere) asks us to hold for a while on our thoughts about the ways that different technologies affect our views of media, but I'm already thinking about ning, since this is the first week of using it. I'd like to at least record some of my initial questions about ning. My situation in using these technologies is complicated in that I'm always wearing 18 different hats and also trying to give a lot of attention to the different set of needs associated with every one of those hats.
Under my fundraising-for-social justice hat, I've been thinking about ways to increase overall visibility of my *issue* -- civil lawyers and equal justice for poor people -- by using (digital) *social networking.* (I say digital because fundraising has always been about social networking.) My issue is largely invisible: When an average Jane thinks about social justice and activism & social justice movements and the like, they rarely think about "equal justice for poor people" or "lawyers for poor people." Worse, when an average Janet thinks about anything, they never think about "equal justice for poor people" or "lawyers for poor people." When I first started working in this movement, I thought it was a messaging problem...which it was. But, once we got decent messaging done (as much as it's ever done, since its changeable), the visibility problem still did not budge. At all. So, we haven't also addressed the problem of delivering the (any) message. Yes, we're all on facebook and we get in the press once in a while, and we have e-news alerts and notices, etc, but we're still relatively invisible -- even though we have huge impacts in the communities we serve.
So, the Utopians see *social networking* as the answer to all things. I'm exaggerating. But still. I need to think smarter about using tools like ning and jumo (see below) or social go.
I've been looking at jumo.com and considering ways to use that. It seems like jumo is a create-your-own-network but under our publicized umbrella for social justice issues.
As I look at the ning creators site, I found it really interesting to see those creators discussing *member engagement* because getting people to pull the trigger and donate to my issue is all about getting culmination of an engagement interaction by my *members* (or folks who we've made to become interested in us.) It's the # rule of fundraising: a large mailing list means nothing if those list members are not engaged enough to give money.
Of course, we're on facebook and we have a website, but it feels nebulous and like I'm shooting in the dark with them.
Then, there's the question of producing content for any tool. Getting engagement (using facebook and the website and ning or jumo or anything else) requires the constant production of fresh content that works to engage.
Then, with my teacher hat and my grad student hat, I see that Anne-the-creator-of-this-ningnetwork has moved from a less modern version of "teacher" into a "creator of this network of students" and that's appealing to me in thinking about ways to encourage dialogue (rather than expert-based discussion) in higher education and in comp. However, part of that perception is relevant to my questions (sent via email) about whether we're all posting to discussions that Anne created or whether we're creating our own discussion threads.
And you thought I was going to write about applying Benjamin's view of the political aspects of art and technology and about my I-have-no-idea-where-I'm-going-with-this blog about ownership of property and its relationship to media. Silly you.
Yeah Deedee! I just want to say that I do appreciate all the untiring hard work you've done in the cause for justice for poor people.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had an answer for you, but I don't. All I know is don't stop because that's how movements build. People talking, gaining visibility, using the channels where the people are, speaking loudly, writing loudly and not stopping.
I feel for you and Laura and your tireless pursuit of justice. I also see how people just check out, and I don't know why. Except for maybe until a problem becomes YOUR problem, it isn't imperative. My parents didn't give a shit about prison reform until it was their son being warehoused. Now they care and are active. I think it does start with complicating people's understanding of things... and visibility.
Ever thought of zines? Zines reach people in a way that other media doesn't.
(Coming to these tomatoes always makes me smile.)
ReplyDeleteDeedee, your writing in this post seems to me absolutely appropriate for our class discussion -- in terms of Benjamin and the other writings we're read -- precisely because you are asking about how we move from the very very large institutional views offered by the people we read to how we might possibly make use of those views on the ground, in our daily lives and in our specifically-aimed actions with media. (There is a discussion prompt for this week that asks a parallel question about moving from that big view to the in-hand view of specific media objects; you should of course use that discussion to ask the kinds of questions you ask in your blog post here -- as though you needed my permission. [And that last comment about permission and your questions about the discussions could lead us into another discussion, somewhere, of how the institutions (including authority structures) of teaching carry over into these new media such that some people still want/expect me to lecture and set all the limits and... but that's a discussion to which we'll round back later because I want to return to your more immediate focus.])
Your questions have a very specific focus: how to make a certain concern more visible and so how to get more people involved. There's a fair amount of academic writing (some of it more empirical than a lot of what we'll read in 742) on precisely this: Given how a particular medium has been constructed and has been used, how might we use it to increase civic participation?
I did some work almost 10 years ago now around how the design of the websites of medium-sized cities both defined and encouraged (or, more often, not) civic engagement. What I learned was that the already existing approach in a city toward its citizens shaped what was possible online: a website might be simply a list of services and might provide places for people to pay fines and bills, or it might be set up to encourage people to talk to each other. For example, as a result of how Santa Monica made computers available in its library, and how it configured those computers, and how it configured its website, citizens were encouraged to talk to each other -- and the homeless people who used the library computers were able to build a coalition with homed people to shape Santa Monica's policies toward homelessness.
So your questions are very practically aimed. Our course readings support your analyses of the larger structures in which media function, but I would like to see you dig into the work others have done on how to use -- day to day -- existing media to build real participation. (One place to start, if you haven't seen it yet, is with a pessimistic approach to social media and social engagement: check out Malcolm Gladwell's recent article in the New Yorker -- "Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted" -- and then do a Google search suing terms like "Malcolm Gladwell social media" to see the sort of pissed off response he received. These writings mostly function at a still too-removed from the practical day-to-day perspective I think you seek, but is an opening.)
Any of that at all helpful?