Social Media Empowers Citizens to Change Public Policy
The founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, recently wrote an article entitled, How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change, where he compared the historical policymakers to the bloggers of today. Basically, his article was premised on the belief that social media has always been around but the vehicle through which we use it has changed. For example, Newmark writes, “Martin Luther brought church abuses to light and initiated the Protestant Reformation through his 95 updates (theses), and Thomas Paine spread his blog (printed pamphlets) about democracy to the masses in the ramp up to the American Revolution.” While I understand his point, that people have always influenced government and reform, I think he glosses over the fact that today’s social media raises awareness like never before because it’s more accessible to larger audiences.
Newmark does, however, acknowledge the speed with which social media can effect change today as opposed to the times of Martin Luther King or Thomas Paine. Newmark writes, “A great example of this is SeeClickFix, where you can use a smartphone to take a picture of a problem, geo-tag it, add a comment, and send it to the civic authorities who can fix it.” In the past, you would have to actually contact a person – if you could figure out who to contact – to have this problem fixed. You would have had to explain the problem and someone probably would have had to visit the scene before repairs could even start.
Today’s social media has also created more government accountability and transparency than ever before. In his interview with ourblook.com’s, Scott Burns, co-founder of GovDelivery said, “Agencies can now get instant feedback on outcomes and citizen satisfaction.“ Furthermore, “[w]ith accountability and visibility comes continuous improvement.” Consequently, lawmakers can no longer drag their feet and hide behind the bureaucracy. Social media creates a space where a diverse group of citizens, that may have never run in the same social or professional circles, to organize around a common purpose and use the power of a group rather than an individual to affect change; thereby forcing lawmakers to act promptly and efficiently. Burns put it best when he said, “technology is the biggest opportunity we have to make citizens better citizens and government better government.”
Thus, while citizen have provoked change throughout history, the power citizens have today is unprecedented and will continue to grow as generation Y grows up. The social media of today presents a new set of opportunities as it creates a forum for people to organize and fight for change effectively merely by clicking a button. Furthermore, transparency and accountability that comes as a result of social media demands lawmakers to respond and act quickly and efficiently.
Julie, thanks! and my glossing over is simpler, just trying for brevity, since otherwise, no one would read the piece.
thanks!
Craig
Hi Craig,
Thanks so much for your comment. I found your article and thoughts driving it quite interesting, hence my motivation to reference it. I look forward to reading more from you about the effects and reach of modern social media.
-Julie
After reading Julie’s article and then clicking over to read Craig’s in full, I definitely had that “a ha!” feeling especially after reading Craig’s first paragraph — and went off on my own tangent. Nowadays, most of us associate social media with DIGITAL media, and furthermore, associate it with the usual suspects like Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, and other known “social networking sites/tools.” However, I got to thinking… is ANY media, digital or not, NOT social media? If the intent behind social media is to initiate social interaction, then last night’s episodes of The Office or Survivor will accomplish that since my buddies and I will talk about the episodes at length. Sure, these shows are entertainment, but so is most of the stuff you see on Facebook (see my photos and join the discussion!). Similarly, a New York Times article (paper) can result in informal water-cooler talk, or raise eye brows, or motivate people to get out and do something.
While Wikipedia states “Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues,” (so it must be true!) I have to think outside the digital online box on this one and see how it affects/effects me.
Thanks guys!