Tag Archives: technology

The Facebook Effect: Rethinking Productivity

Posted on April 5, 2011 by | 4 Comments

I’ve never been one for chatting.

During my full-time career, I think I went out to lunch with colleagues about three times in seven years.

These days, I tend to view any moment not explicitly tied to production as a minute wasted–60 more seconds that I’m kept away from my awesome kids.

I love to-do lists, and especially crossing them off.

And, yet, one of the quotes from The Facebook Effect that stuck out at me most is this: “understanding people is not a waste of time” (p. 143).

And that has me thinking about what productivity really looks like, and about the kinds of behaviors nonprofit organizations should reward, and about the proper role of social media in the social work workplace.

Because the truth is, of course, that social workers are not immune to the time-wasting potential of social media. We often need to relieve stress, and a few moments spent in idle browsing can turn into…a few more, until we’ve been distracted from our real purpose.

That’s not just poor time management. It’s unethical social work. We have an obligation to use our agency’s resources wisely, and to keep our clients’ needs foremost in our minds. To do less is to violate a core trust, and to abdicate our most sacred responsibility.

But what about social media usage that connects us more deeply to our constituents, helps us to engage with donors, shapes the nature of the conversation about our issues, and gives us insights into how others view our organizations, and our work?

It’s hard to argue that collecting that kind of information, building those relationships, and broadening our scope of influence could ever be a waste of time.

Even beyond “official” agency uses of social media, I think a strong case can be made for individual social workers using their own connections to engage friends, family members, and colleagues in the quest for social justice, and, indeed, to practice their listening and relational skills in this medium.

When I look back, actually, I think about the relationships that I may have shortchanged with my intense focus on accomplishing tasks. Would it have been easier for me to permeate the organizational culture with an emphasis on advocacy, had I engaged in more relational work with colleagues? Did I ever unintentionally send clients the message that they should “get down to business”, and, in so doing, cut off important relationship-building?

Did I ever make people feel that understanding them was a waste of time?

How do you use social media at work? What dangers do you see, and what opportunities? How do you balance collegiality and productivity? How would our work lives look differently if we valued building relationships as much as accomplishing tasks?

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The Facebook Effect: Practicing Advocacy in Baby Steps

Posted on April 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

There is a debate, of sorts, at the intersection of traditional activism and avant-garde technology, about whether advocacy on Facebook (and other social media, but it mostly seems to center on Facebook) is a poor substitute for “real-world” activism and a diversion from important work, or, conversely, whether such online activities represent the future of organizing and a replacement for more traditional campaigns.

This week, as I think and write about my use of social media and my observations in that field, in response to my reading of The Facebook Effect, I’m wondering what if, in fact, it’s kind of neither?

What if putting your politics in your status updates and inviting your friends to community events, which are both relatively passive actions that nonetheless require being “out” with one’s concerns and preferences for social change, is kind of like an interim step towards the kind of organizing that can build lasting movements, and the kind of advocacy that can take down whole regimes?

Because, sure, there have been some pretty dramatic examples of Facebook campaigns that have resulted in significant “real-world” impact, like the anti-FARC work in Colombia but, on the whole, most people’s use of Facebook is a whole lot more mundane. And there may even be some evidence that having an online outlet for policy frustrations reduces one’s willingness to take those complaints directly to those in power, although I haven’t seen any conclusive research to that effect (and I have been looking). The concern is that people will feel that “they’ve already taken care of it,” and stop short of real change. On the other hand, Facebook is now one of the first places people air grievances, and some studies suggest that these actions foment offline activism, too.

Even casual use of social media, though, makes obvious the ways in which political conversations seep into interactions, and the ways in which people practice defending their beliefs, and seeking out the likeminded, in an online forum.

And I think of that as baby steps.

Because organizing is always about asking people to make a leap, to step out of the private life that, while not necessarily comfortable, is at least known, into a public realm that promises conflict and tension and inevitable disappointment. And getting people to do that from scratch has always been hard.

But if today’s potential advocates have already seen that the world doesn’t fall apart when people don’t agree with you, or even when few respond to your invitation, then maybe they’ll be less reluctant to step out. And, conversely, if activists have used social media to discover that they’re not totally alone in their passions, then maybe the alienation and apathy that are an organizer’s worst enemies can be chiseled away, at least a little.

I don’t think the revolution will be on Facebook, although it’s also unlikely that it will be a complete bystander.

And maybe, just maybe, the revolutionaries will have practiced some of their arguments, refined some of their skills, and connected with some on their comrades, on this platform.

Our challenge, from this view, is to neither glorify or denigrate this online activism, but, instead, to recognize, translate, and leverage it in the social change arena. That requires getting past the outdated (and never that true in the first place) idea that social justice work necessarily equates with painful sacrifice, and creating movements with enough room for people to enter at multiple points.

And, then, we can all take some big steps together.

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Watching sausage being made

Posted on March 22, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I love teaching policy classes.

And I love talking about policy.

But I know that our policymaking processes, at different levels of government and across many topic areas and within the contests of opposing viewpoints, and often seemingly hidden behind closed doors, can seem arcane, muddled, and even completely baffling, including to students who desperately want to understand how the policies that affect their work, and their clients’ lives, are made.

And, so, I’m always looking for tools that will help make policymaking real, for students and for social work practitioners in the field, to demystify what’s really not all that mysterious a process: the way that power collides with power to, more often than not, prevent anything really seismic from changing at all.

Especially after feedback from my generous and kind and forgiving first class of students, I’ve incorporated more case studies, guest speakers from the field, interactive online content, and classroom debates, to try to peel back the layers and help students engage with the policies that so need their voices.

And one of the things that I have to help students struggle with is their innate disgust, really, with some of the political realities. Social workers are mostly a pretty ethical bunch, and we pride ourselves on process, and so learning about how budget rules are broken and deals get made can tend to send social work students running as fast as they can in the opposite direction.

And I understand that. I do.

When I first taught U.S. history and government to new immigrant adolescents, more than 10 years ago, I was so caught up in my own disillusionment that I had a hard time even reading the Bill of Rights without rolling my eyes.

But they reminded me then, and so I remind my students now, that no system of governance ever got better by people sitting on the sidelines. Our democracy has managed, perhaps almost in spite of itself, some pretty wonderful victories for justice, and there’s tremendous potential for more. Besides, if we’re going to throw up our hands in despair, we might as well be holding a protest sign.

In other words: do not avert your eyes. We need witnesses.

And that’s why I’m so excited about some of the new tools (and some that aren’t SO new, now, anymore) to help people understand policymaking, and the workings of our government, in meaningful ways.

There’s Many Bills, which is a visualization of legislative content that organizes it into color-coded themes, making even really bad bills look pretty. You can compare different versions of bills related to the same problem topics, such as housing policy. You can also search by a member’s legislative activity, which is pretty stark sometimes.

Another IBM lab tool is Many Eyes, which I’ve used to make maps for nonprofit organizations before, but which can also do text content analysis, so that you can see tag clouds, for example, of speeches made by prominent elected officials. The graphic above is a visualization of Obama’s Inaugural Address.

Probably the single best online tool I’ve found for information about the activities of Congress is Open Congress, which has a blog, profiles of individual members, real-time status of the House and Senate, summaries of recent votes, overviews of bills in the news and bills recently filed, and lots of opportunities for comments and engagement with the content. One of the aspects I like most about it is the extensive set of tools to improve individuals’ access to the information: RSS feeds, email alerts, integration with your social media platforms…I use it not just as a go-to for information about Congress but also as a feed of current happenings, for the times when even I forget to look.

There’s a lot more on the Presidency than members of Congress, and some states aren’t covered at all, but PolitiFact can be a good starting point in sorting out competing claims in the political arena. Of course, here, there’s an obvious element of subjective judgment (as always, in politics!), but the claims are pretty well cited and supported, and the ratings are clear and complete. My very favorite part? Their interest in researching the truth behind chain emails submitted by users. Social Security for Mexicans abroad, anyone?

A similar site that’s unfortunately not very updated is Speechology, which, at least at one point, had a bit wider reach and a more interactive feel, analyzing candidates’ promises and assertions, not only in speeches, but also in campaign advertisements. I would hope and expect that it might be ‘reactivated’, a bit, for the 2012 cycle, at least, and it could be a model for what local media analysts could do regarding regional officials.

What I find most helpful about these last two sites, really, isn’t even as much their content as their premise: we have a right to understand what our elected officials are doing, and we have the tools with which to do so.

Then, when we don’t like what we see, we know what to do.

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One year later: Health care and our “Reform Reality”

Posted on March 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

On March 21, 2010, one year ago today, my husband and I stayed up late watching the debate on health care reform stream on his computer. Even though I’d read all of the analyses about the advance vote count, I think I still held my breath when the roll call was winding down.

No, of course it’s not a perfect bill.

There were several versions I preferred to what finally passed, and I’m not excited about how long some of the most significant pieces will take to be fully implemented, especially as the country continues to grapple with rising entitlement expenses, a lagging economy, and frustration with Congress.

But still.

My kids will be able to stay on our health insurance until they actually finish college. I don’t have to worry that my genetic blood disease will make us lose our insurance. SCHIP is protected. We’ll see increases in preventative care investments. We’re closing the “donut hole” gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage. We’re trimming cost excesses in Medicare Advantage. We will finally stop losing ground, at least, on the rising ranks of the uninsured.

It’s better.

And, in addition to the tangible improvements it makes in our health care “system” (what we have now can’t really accurately be called anything like ‘systematic’!), health care reform also represents a triumph of policymaking against tremendous ideological, fiscal, and political odds. I don’t believe in the “better than nothing” school of thought, much, because I’ve seen too many cases where settling for a little meant that we never saw a lot.

But this is better.

And, so, on the one-year anniversary, when the vast majority of health care reform’s provisions are but directives to be specified and analyzed and codified by regulators within the Department of Health and Human Services, between now and 2014, I’m spending some time checking out the Reform Reality site created by the Health Care Foundation of Kansas City (for which there are billboards all around my town!).

It’s a fully interactive site, with options to click to see how health care reform’s provisions affect those with different current positions in the system today. The content is similar to other sites, but I think it’s easier to engage here. You can see some of the expected fiscal impact, check out how reform aims to improve our nation’s health status (which is, after all, the ultimate measure of the success of any health care system), and link to organizations locally and nationally working on the aftermath of that day last March.

Check it out, and then I want to hear from you. What do you think about health care reform, one year out? Where do you hope we are one year from now? What about health care reform excites you the most, and what were your greatest disappointments?

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Software code as regulatory advocacy

Posted on March 15, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Even with as much reading and thinking as I do about social work, social problems, and social change, there’s still something, every couple months or so, that completely blows my mind.

I love it when I come across something that makes me think, “of course!”

And, when it intersects with regulatory policy and advocacy…well, that’s just about perfect.

An essay by Gene Koo in Rebooting America brought together just such a trifecta. He writes about the increasing ubiquity of software code as a controlling influence in the implementation of social policy, and of the associated technical and political challenges in ensuring that computers don’t literally take over human judgment in critical areas of social welfare.

When you start to think about it, there are so many ways in which software is replacing the decision making even of powerful legislative and regulatory actors. Computer programs determine eligibility for public benefits, process appeals, and calculate compliance with program guidelines. Those functions are important for the overall functioning of a policy and, in the lives of an individual or family, they can be monumental.

Koo’s points about the ways in which software code shapes policy implementation mirror discussions elsewhere about the significance of regulations as the place where a policy’s intentions are translated into actual operations.

As with those rules, software code can reflect routine errors (the easiest thing to fix!) or, more perniciously, the development of what is called “codelaw” can, while not directly contradicting the law, reflect a particular implementation that isn’t the only way to construe the law. It’s in this case that software code essentially makes law, and it’s here that the same kinds of advocacy strategies we apply to the regulatory context–pointing out contradiction to legislative intent, illustrating pragmatic implementation hurdles, demonstrating the potential for inconsistent impact, and mobilizing key political and technical stakeholders–can make a real difference.

Koo’s discussion parallels that on this blog and elsewhere about the proper place for discretion in social policy. While software code can eliminate dangerously capricious decisions, which can be good governance, it also takes away the ability for trained personnel to include compassion in their way of carrying out legal mandates. This is the same tradeoff we contemplate with debates about how precisely to draw regulatory guidelines, too. Here, though, even more than with bureaucratic regulators, we’re trusting the critical task of “filling in the gaps” not to trained government employees, mostly committed to the programs they oversee, but to software developers, who, while technically expert, often have no substantive knowledge of the law nor accountability to the general public.

Kind of scary, really, especially since, while I can recognize a problematic regulation when I see it, I have no such dexterity when looking behind the curtain of a software program.

The strategies that Koo suggests for working within this new reality of “codelaw” also parallel those that work within the regulatory context. We should have a sort of “notice and comment period” when people can submit potentially tricky cases and see how the software code handles them, and our campaigns should identify software experts who can lend their expertise at this phase (a perfect opportunity for crowdsourcing!). He also recommends resisting the “baby and bathwater” reaction; we must recognize the potential to use software to ameliorate failings such as racism and sexism, which have certainly been endemic results of human judgment and discretion within our welfare systems.

Like so many of the new technological applications in the field of social work, then, the rise of codelaw is here to stay, so our challenge is to figure out how to make it work for us, and how to work within this framework to protect our legislative gains (and lessen the sting of our losses!), build relationships with those in power, and enhance the power of our constituencies.

Even when that means a string of characters is our advocacy target.

Where have you encountered “codelaw” in social policy? How have you worked, successfully or not, to advocate for kinder, gentler, software systems in these areas? What lessons have you learned in that advocacy?

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Crowdsourcing our government?

Posted on March 10, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Of all of the essays from Rebooting America that captured my attention, it was probably the one from Beth Simone Noveck, about completely envisioning a new style of citizen participation in governance and decision-making, that most captured my imagination.

She starts with an acknowledgement of a lament close to my own heart, that deliberative conversations seldom connect to action, which can mean that they’re even worse than non-participation, because they give people the feeling of having a stake, when they really do not. She calls them “one-off affairs, not tied to governmental practices of agenda-setting, policy-drafting and decision-making.”

And she’s right.

But we know that officials don’t need to be sole decision makers, that, in fact, we’d come up with better policy solutions, and better paths to implementation, if more voices were included, in meaningful ways, in that process.

And that’s when Noveck’s essay gets really interesting. She lays out a practical framework for micro-participation, of sorts, that would allow the public, writ large, real involvement in government decisions, in such a commonsense, pragmatic way that it’s really hard to find much objection.

Don’t think about other experiences in “participation” that you may have had–she’s not thinking roundtables with colored dots, or advisory councils galore. She points out that we don’t need large numbers of people to work on issues and that, in reality, relatively few government officials make many very important policy decisions today. And she’s not talking about some high-tech public comment or voting system on every piece of legislation, either. At least to begin, she focuses on regulatory action as policymaking, and envisions a mechanism of crowdsourcing in which a few dozen experts and enthusiasts would handle these regulatory issues by providing their consultation in the ‘action stage’ of governing.

There’s certainly no reason to think that these lay experts couldn’t craft regulatory policy as well as the current bureaucrats do, and involving the 5 or 10 or 100 people who know best, a percentage of whom will want to contribute to solving community problems, would not be an insurmountable technical or logistical challenge, either, especially in light of today’s technology.

She makes a compelling case, too, that such a system would be no more prone to corruption than current practice, and that the openness and transparency that would come more naturally to such a participatory model would, most likely, serve as a deterrent to corruption.

I love this idea.

I’ve met dozens of social work students and practitioners whose passion is something relatively obscure–rules about when foster care providers can also serve as foster families, for example, or restrictions on voting rights for those with mental illness, or reimbursable services for Medicaid recipients struggling with post-partum mood disorders.

I WANT these individuals engaged in policymaking, directly, on these topics. They know them, and they care about them, and they would do a better job than I would, or than an elected official balancing hundreds of different policy issues, none of which dovetail very well with the above.

But even more importantly than the substantive policies that could emanate from such a system are the skills and competencies that participants in such a crowd would develop, skills that would enable them to not only advocate more effectively in disparate topics, but also to leverage their voices and relationships in the legislative policy realm, too.

I agree with Noveck that it’s time to move participation beyond talking. Our government would be better off, and so would our citizenry. If you’re intrigued, check out the Democracy Design Workshop, a “do tank” oriented around projects that seek to build such tools. There’s an awesome e-rulemaking interface to improve public participation in federal regulatory policymaking, a policy wiki for collaborative legislative drafting, and ‘clickable statutes’, which creates interactive diagrams to help lay people better understand legislation.

Government by the people…maybe it really is possible?

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With you, not “of” you: Free agents and your nonprofit

Posted on February 28, 2011 by | Leave a comment

While we may not often refer to them this way, most of us who have worked in community organizing have had encounters with the people that The Networked Nonprofit refers to as “free agents”. They’re the folks out talking about your work, lifting up your causes, and even bringing in dollars, just because they have a passion for what you do.

The authors of The Networked Nonprofit make a convincing case that new social media tools make it easier for free agents to operate (they have access to more information about nonprofits and their work, and they have improved ways to communicate and share that information with an ever-wider set of potential converts, through expanding social networks), and also provide traditional nonprofits and the folks who staff them with new ways to find, reach out to, and even “organize” free agents, too.

Kanter and Fine understand how to approach free agents, without scaring them off, but social workers, administrators, and even community organizers used to working within set structures, and with established roles of engagement, are often less comfortable with the ambiguous and fluid ways in which free agents can add value to our work (starting with, of course, the fact that they’re seldom preoccupied with adding value to our work, but rather passionate about an issue that happens to overlap with our efforts).

If you’re asking yourself why you can’t get people to “take more initiative”, or if you yourself feel stunted by the confines of organizing committees or certain protocols, thinking about free agents and how you might pull them into your orbit, without expecting to put them under your wing, may open up new, untapped fonts of energy and, in the process, help you rethink how you approach the “agency” of each and every individual alongside whom you labor for social change.

I’ve done some additional reading and talking and contemplating about these ideas, and here are my takes on the list of dos and don’ts, so to speak, from the book (pp. 19-21). I want to hear from free agents hard at work on causes of all kinds: how do you find organizations worthy of your efforts, and do you attempt to reach out or coordinate your work in any way? If so, what kinds of responses have you found? And, organizers, how does viewing your leaders through a lens of “free agency” change how you approach your leadership development? What have you found that works, and doesn’t, in collaborating with these independent operators?

  • Get to know free agents: in many ways, this comes back to the whole question of listening; if we’re only putting our advocacy message out, without listening to what others are saying in the same issue space, we’ll never find people who could be potent allies. Going beyond the online world, though, we need to look for free agents in our physical organizing, too–the person who has shown up at your last three protests without saying much (because, also, it could be someone doing opposition research, so we need to get to know him/her!), the volunteer who’s faithful behind the scenes, the soccer league coach who has access to thousands (from my own work–he turned into a turnout machine!). If we’re so focused on what we’re producing, or on who didn’t come to an event, we’ll miss those who are obviously motivated by some internal fire to contribute (relates to “Don’t ignore the newcomer”, another piece of advice from the authors.)
  • Break out of silos: Again, this has offline applications as well; we need to do our listening, and our outreach, not just among the usual allies, but in unlikely places, too. I made a point of skimming the letters to the editor in a very conservative religious publication in Kansas, to have a sense of how issues of immigration were resonating in this particular faith circle. That’s how I found an evangelical pastor fervently committed to justice for immigrants, who, while he never became a core part of our organizing work (and never developed really strong relationships with the other, mostly Catholic, mostly liberal clergy), delivered the votes of several conservative members of the legislature, out of his own (supported and shaped by our work) advocacy.
  • Give free agents a place to learn about issues and sort out their feelings about them: We too often expect advocates to arrive “converted” and ready to recite our talking points, instead of remembering that people feel most strongly those values and positions to which they come on their own terms. We need public events on our issues that are really for the public, and blogs and discussion boards where people can ask questions and forge their own beliefs, even when that makes us uncomfortable, or even when they don’t “come around” as quickly as we’d like.
  • Keep the welcome sign lit and Let them go: These related mantras remind us that free agents really are free, and must be, to come and go as their passions wax and wane, and as life intervenes. But, really, this is how we should regard all of our leaders; if people are only engaged out of some sense of obligation to us, not a commitment to community or cause, it’s hollow leadership at best. We need to structure organizations, and campaigns, so that there are roles that people can play in various capacities, and not take it personally when others have different parameters for their involvement.
  • Don’t be afraid to follow: I like this final piece of wisdom the very best. Unfortunately, I’ve seen more than a few organizers feel really threatened by the outstanding leaders in their midst, and, when good ideas get ignored because they came from outside instead of in, or when leadership gets squashed because other leaders are intimidated, it’s our causes and the people most affected by them who lose the most. We’ve all got too much to do, right? So why, again, are we worried about being the ones to direct every action or develop every strategy?

    Finding free agents, and working with them, even if they won’t work for us, should, after all, make us all more…free.

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    Crowdsourcing your Board?

    Posted on February 16, 2011 by | 1 Comment

    What if you didn't need a chair to have a 'seat at the table'?

    While I wrote about some reflections on The Networked Nonprofit in December, it has taken me quite awhile longer to think through Chapter 11: Governing through Networks, where the authors make some recommendations about how integrating social media thinking, not just the tools, can improve the performance of Boards of Directors and, in the process, revitalize nonprofit organizations in some critical ways.

    I’m not a governance expert, although I’ve certainly had a lot of experience with nonprofit Boards, as an employee, consultant, volunteer, and Board member. I’ve seen a few really effective Boards create powerhouse organizations that excel at achieving their mission, and many more lackluster Boards that fail to do much except eat the free lunch they’re given every month.

    It’s the latter kind of Board that Kanter and Fine argue social media principles, such as transparency and equality and collaboration, can help to avoid. Importantly, this doesn’t mean just friending your current Board members on Facebook, but, instead, an emphasis on how to truly transform governance to make it more congruent with today’s social media climate of openness and fluidity.

    This means, of course, that we stop looking only to the ‘usual suspects’ for potential Board members, and that we think, instead, about how members of our crowd can participate in shaping our organization’s future.

    And I believe that this orientation to Board recruitment, development, and process could, in turn, create new kinds of nonprofit organizations that would, among other things, be more open to risk-taking and stand-making, which the nonprofit sector desperately needs.

    The book is worth reading for Chapter 11 alone, really, especially if your current Board is anything less than spectacular. Here are a few of the authors’ key suggestions about how to begin to open up a Board within the social media space, with my commentary about the implications for creating advocacy-friendly nonprofits, too.

    I want to hear from Board members, employees, volunteers, and students within nonprofit organizations. How does your Board currently operate, and what might applying some of these principles mean? What are your Board’s guiding imperatives today, and how might those change under a social media perspective? How would you crowdsource governance at your organization, if you could?

  • Include your Board members in a public social network: While it’s not the end of the process, making sure that your Board members play an active role in your organization’s online presence can help to communicate your mission and objectives (and, for example, policy priorities) while also providing a vehicle for others to weigh in.
  • Create an open invitation to Board meetings: It always baffles and alarms me when students say that they’re not invited to even participate in their own agency’s meetings. What’s the big secret? I can’t help but hope that organizations would take stronger stances on advocacy issues, in particular, if they had to do so with clients and the public listening.
  • Post draft agendas online: Your crowd, including donors, volunteers, and clients, will be much more engaged in conversations about how you can enhance your work if they see a meaningful mechanism through which their participation will matter. Allowing the public to comment on Board agendas won’t generate a groundswell of retweets, certainly, but those who do care will know that you do, too.
  • Make sharing the default: Instead of expending energy trying to keep things private, Boards should be oriented towards opening up real conversations with their stakeholders, not in controlled bursts but as part of a larger dialogue about the change they want to be in the world. This may mean, as the authors suggest, meeting outside of the Board room (like your state capitol, during the session!), or including online participatory tools in your strategic planning process, or having ad-hoc or standing committees that include not just Board members but also interested members of the public, or inviting leaders and clients to interface with your Board, or asking for Board nominations through social media channels, or…all of the above.

    Aren’t the functions of a real nonprofit Board–setting the course, monitoring the progress, providing the tools–too important to be left to just the Board?

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    Social media: democratizing the Internet, or talking to silos?

    Posted on February 15, 2011 by | Leave a comment

    There’s a debate going on right now, among those who talk about such things, about whether social media are revolutionizing the way people connect across divergent networks or just adding to the echo chambers, and, further, about whether that question really matters so much after all.

    I don’t know that I have anything terribly insightful to add to those debates, but I do think that the whole discussion has import for community organizers and policy advocates thinking about how social media can play a role in our social change work.

    Because, the reality is, no technology makes human beings stop behaving like human beings, and we wouldn’t like one that did, anyway.

    And so we have to understand human nature in order to accept the limits of social media for community organizing or transformational engagement with the most compelling challenges of our day. And we have to organize and plan with and around those limits, so that we have a chance at the transcendental human community that motivates our organizing (or should).

    First, some context. In an essay for Rebooting America, David Weinberger acknowledges that only low double digit percentages of links in social media forums point to opposing viewpoints. He reminds us, though, that such behavior mirrors how we live and think. He asks, “how often do people read the columnists they disagree with? How much time in the day do you spend talking rationally and calmly about matters of state with people with whom you disagree?”

    Again, we can’t expect Twitter to overcome human nature.

    He almost sounds like a social worker talking about how our conversation about the issues that matter most to us is seldom “an isolated exercise of pure, unfettered rationality in which we suspend core beliefs in order to think again about what those beliefs ought to be.”

    We come to these endeavors shaped by who we are, and who we know, and, while new technologies can tweak around the edges of both of those constraints, they certainly do not erase them.

    He argues that this is not only ‘normal’, but, indeed, quite helpful. He points out that “conversation among people who are in basic agreement builds relationships and foments political movement.”

    We certainly see this in the offline world, too; activists get most inspired in rallies with other ‘converted’ allies, new leaders are cultivated through relationships with like-minded peers, and momentum is built through focus on core values with those who share them.

    And, it’s not like talking to those likely to agree with us is a waste of time.

    Just a few weeks ago, when I was giving a presentation about immigrant rights to a group of immigrant youth, I acknowledged that their life stories made them a particularly sympathetic audience. But I make no apologies for spending some of my organizing time in such venues. I say often, “I’ll stop preaching to the choir when they start singing.”

    Our causes are littered with silent allies.

    In the same volume, though, danah boyd raises some concerns about this “echo chamber” effect, both profound and almost technical.

    She reminds us that alienated and uninterested people mainly know people like themselves, and so we are closing ourselves off to vast swaths of the population if we rely on established networks (online and offline) to cultivate new leadership.

    She speaks for every worthless activist email ever sent when she illustrates the difference between organizing virtually and physically; “at least, offline, you know when a door has been slammed in your face, whereas online, it just goes into the abyss.” How many of us have consoled ourselves with all of our organizing “work”, when our reliance on tight, insular networks gives us the false impression that our message has taken hold to a much greater extent than it really has?

    So, then, some thoughts on what this means for organizers and activists, in the offline and online realms. And, those of you organizing in either “world” today, how do you work around this silo tendency? Or do you? Where do you draw the boundaries of your “community”, and how does that definition influence how you reach out and engage? What practical strategies have you developed for reaching beyond your usual suspects?

  • First, I don’t share danah boyd’s lament that most social media publics today are organized around personal connection, not issue or topic. That’s the way we live, and that’s the way we should organize, too. Relationships are what draw people in to issues, and keep them there, and, while we can’t assume that the relationship is, in and of itself, sufficient, it’s certainly the best place we have to start.
  • Language matters, especially when trying to straddle communities. Even if we’re spending a lot of time talking within our own silo, we have to know that those in the next one over will at least know what we’re talking about when we reach out, and that means having enough connection that we develop messages that make sense beyond our narrow frame of reference.
  • Most obviously, if social media are segmented, we need to have an online engagement strategy with a presence in multiple ‘silos’. I think there’s a lot of truth in Weinberger’s assessment that the insular nature of a given channel isn’t that problematic, but that reassurance falls apart if we’re only listening in that one channel. Just as we’d never think to skip all of the renter-occupied houses in a neighborhood organizing campaign, we can’t focus on only one online ‘cluster’, either.
  • Finally, my ubiquitous note on power. Because, after all, what makes a certain community, or cause, prevail, quite honestly isn’t always its superior rationality, or even better communication strategy. That’s not the way that our political system works. It’s not the case that change happens once a majority of people have had a vigorous discussion about the pros and cons of a certain approach and decided, “let’s do it this way.”

    We win with power.

    And, truthfully, we can build power by strengthening the relationships within our silo, if it’s large enough and strategically connected to those with influence over the decisions at hand.

    Even if we never have coffee with the folks in the next silo over.

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    Blogs I love. Happy Valentine’s Day!

    Posted on February 14, 2011 by | 2 Comments

    My husband and I have never been big Valentine’s Day celebrants. In fact, he often jokes about the time that I tried to convince him to tackle this huge house project that I wanted to start, saying that since it was “Valentine’s Day weekend”, he should really do it for me. He laughs at my willingness to extend a holiday for which I previously had never even bought him a card to an entire weekend, when it suited my purposes.

    But, I love you, fellow pursuers of social justice, social workers, students, and kindred spirits.

    And, so, a gift for this day of love: some other blogs (and people) I have come to love, along with a cool place to find many of them.

    After all, what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than by spending hours reading about social change, being inspired to take action yourself, and connecting to awesome people committed to the same purpose, whom I’m sure you, too, are going to love?

    Exactly.

    This list is in addition to the blog rolls that I’ve published here before. I still read many of those blogs, along with these newer finds (some of which I’ve been reading for a year now, anyway), although, I’ll admit, my RSS feed has been a little lonely as my consulting practice has accelerated, and the kids’ naptime has gotten shorter.

    As always, I’d love to hear about the blogs that you most enjoy. What voices particularly resonate with your issues? Who do you find most informative about advocacy, nonprofit organizations, or social change strategies? To whom do you turn for inspiration?

  • One of the coolest resources I found recently is the List of Change. It aggregates nonprofit and social justice-oriented blogs, with power rankings based on transparent criteria; anyone can submit his/her blog for consideration. Many of those I’ve read for a long time (A. Fine Blog, Beth’s Blog, Have Fun Do Good) are there, but I’ve also discovered some new ones that I’m going to check out.
  • Community Organizer 2.0: I appreciate Deb Askanse’s willingness to narrate her own learning about organizing offline and online, her integration of her community practice with her thinking and blogging, and her generous spirit of learning and sharing. It’s a good introduction to social media for organizing to those exploring, has a wealth of case studies and some great expert guest posts, and provides even seasoned 2.0 organizers with new ways of thinking about their work. Plus, she’s fun and friendly.
  • America’s Voice: This is my first stop for immigration reform-related news and commentary. I especially appreciate the synthesis of Spanish-language news coverage of immigration, the analysis of poll data and traditional media coverage, and the integration of action into the blog (you’ll get a “take action” pop-up pretty soon after you start reading). The video clips of Jon Stewart taking on the “anchor baby” idea are pretty awesome, too.
  • Philanthropy 2173: I’ll admit that it takes me awhile to get through some of the posts here–my percentage of unfamiliar words and concepts is much higher than on some of the other blogs; I just don’t live in a philanthropy world, let alone philanthropy of the future, that often. But I make more notes about posts here than just about any other, and I appreciate how it makes me think, and how many new ideas it introduces.
  • Kim Klein on the Commons: I love people who reflect on whether having a fenced backyard makes them a hypocrite, and who think about surviving the recession together, rather than “every family for itself.” If you think about the potential of tax policy to build a new understanding of “us”, then check this out.
  • Fighting Monsters: This is one of my favorite social work blogs. Even though I don’t do older adult community work in England, as does the author, I feel a lot in common, at least in terms of her approach to the value and ethical dilemmas of our profession. Her writing is honest and engaging…and how can one not love a social work blog named after a quote from Nietzsche?
  • MomsRising: The MomsRising blog features news, commentary, personal reflection, and, sometimes, heated debate about policy issues that touch the lives of every family in the country. Even if you’re not a mother, the stories of those who are, and how they’re working for a better nation for all of our kids, will inform and inspire you.

    Happy day to you, those you love, and what we all love…allies on our shared journey to justice.

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