Deanna, Welcome to the Lake.

Amanda, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Welcome to Firedoglake – glad you could join us!

Welcome, Deanna! Welcome, everyone! Thanks for coming to talk about politics, activism, and social networking.

Hey everyone! thanks for the welcome. And thanks to Amanda for such a great intro.

Let’s start with a question for Deanna. In Share This!, you explain why there’s a real problem with the aggregation of influence and suggest social networking has the power to undermine the often unearned authority of the already powerful. Can you explain how a bunch of people tweeting away can chip away at our ideas of who is in charge of the official narrative?

Good afternoon and welcome to FDL this afternoon Deanna and welcome back Amanda.

Deanna, I have not had a chance to read your book but can only say that Facebook has been quite interesting for me. Ever since Jane Hamsher suggested folks join, it has allowed me to meet other FDL folks in person (like Amanda) :})

But even more, it has allowed me to re-connect with folks from just about every phase of my life from folks I grew up with, high school classmates (small military high school), college, military days, and about half of the jobs and projects I’ve worked over the years.

(Now to go back to lurking)

@Amanda. Sure.

The short version is that with each of us being connected to one another in unprecedented ways, we have the ability to refer and recommend information like never before. We no longer *have* to rely on Roger Ebert to tell us which movies are good, or wonder if we’ll really like them based on his institutional opinion. (tho of course, you’re welcome to continue doing so, he seems like a fine chap.) We can use our networks to seek out solid, relevant information.

That challenges the way many of our power structures, especially media, are set up– in the past, many business models relied on their word as the word of God. But we are, intentionally or unintentionally, subverting that model.

@dakine1: Absolutely! And what we find out about each other when we make those connections is what’s changing our culture so dramatically. We start to participate in each others’ lives, passively and actively, and over time, we care about one another more.

(de-lurking) As a technical note, there is a “Reply” button in the lower right hand of each comment. Pressing the Reply will pre-fill the commenter name and comment number being replied to (saves a few keystrokes of typing)

Note: Some browsers do not like the Reply if it is pressed after a browser refresh if the page has not completed loading completely.

Bringing things to the present, do you have thoughts on the resignation of Dave Weigel from the Washington Post? This seems to be the direct result of a clash between the old media structures and the new world of social networking—not just because Dave resigned because of private comments on a private listserv, but also because social networking was the primary means by which people discussed the situation. Does this bode well or ill for the future of politically oriented social networking when things like this happen?

Yeah, not only to connect with friends but to occasionally send messages to the wing nuttier acquaintances from over the years (without being too obtrusive when doing so)

@Amanda: It’s interesting because people forget that email is a social tool, too. And it bothers me that private conversation was used publicly, but it doesn’t surprise me.

One thing that I often say to folks in these kinds of situations is that we’re only at the very, very beginning of these tools, and we have neither nuanced features nor understandings of how they should actually be used. Thus, it’s a pretty painful transitional moment that we’re living thru, frought with all kinds of silliness and brouhaha.

Clearly people working in media are going to have to be careful about what they share. But while this is all still so new, we have the opportunity to decide how things should be– so I’d still encourage people strongly to be in there having the conversations and shaping them.

Btw, it kind of reminds me of what happened when blogs first went mainstream and people found out that [insert journalist or whomever here] HAD A BLOG! OH NOES! THEY HAZ OPINIONS!

@dakine1: I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for cross-pollination across both social and ideologically boundaries.

Welcome Amanda and Deanna!
Bev, thanks as always.

What seems like years ago, I saw Steve Jobs’ keynote presentation at MacWorld, where I first saw the idea of Twitter. My first thoughts were, who would want an unlimited audience to know that you were leaving your barber and heading off to the grocery store, who would care, and who would invest in such a…

Who knew!

Speaking of, do you have advice for those uncomfortable Facebook situations, where you innocently post a politically loaded link and then sudden chaos and debate breaks out on your Facebook page? Should we welcome this? Sometimes I worry it’s going to make Facebook a hostile space.

@Amanda: Two angles to think about here.

One, I think the same rules for general discourse apply in those situations. Don’t feed the trolls (they go away when you don’t), and stop conversing with people who clearly aren’t there to have a healthy, two-way conversation.

Two, I don’t think Facebook can become the level of hell that some comment spaces have become. I talk about this in the book, about how who we’ve chosen to be in our networks, as well as cues like personal pictures & whatnot, will prevent that from happening.

(btw, @dakine1: the reply button doesn’t always work, so i’m using @ as well.)

Deanna, Welcome to the Lake…

Are you doing anything special to market your book to “the younger set”?

@newtonusr: it’s wild, isn’t it? One thing I talk about in the first part of the book is the thing that Clive Thompson referred to as “ambient awareness” of one another– how each of those little posts paints a portrait of someone’s life.

You took my question!
I think I have lost a friend because of this. I didn’t say anything in response to her outburst. I did begin to feel ‘jumped on’ whenever I posted an article less than laudatory to the current president.

(As I mentioned, some browsers don’t like Reply if it is pressed before the page finishes loading after a refresh) :})

@Elliott: How young? :-) I have some educator friends who are working on getting into a few classrooms, and will be speaking at a bunch of universities in the fall. Other than that, haven’t thought of anything interesting to do– suggestions welcome!

@Margot: I dunno, people who are willing to stop talking to you over politics might not be the best friends in the first place. Actually, I take that back. I didn’t speak to a longtime friend for several months because I felt he was being egregiously sexist on his blog, and he disagreed. The fight went gangbusters on Facebook and we silenced each other.

One of the parts of the book I liked the best was your discussion of relationships over numbers. Our culture is one that wants to quantify everything, and social networking is really a victim of that. You get a lot of people talking about how many Facebook friends, how many Twitter followers. But you argue for quality over quantity, having effective relationships over just accumulating numbers. My question is this: How can we know that we’re achieving quality? The nice thing about quantity is it’s easy to understand it.

One of the areas of Facebook (and I assume Twitter as well) is the generational differences. I cringe sometimes when I see the status updates and comments from some of my younger cousins in high school and college today providing way more information than I would ever dare post in public.

What do you think will be the impact for these younger generations going forward who have grown up with Facebook/MySpace/Twitter/Etc as standard parts of their lives?

@Amanda: In the workshop that I do (my other life is that I consult with organizations on their online strategy), I offer a section on “social media ROI.” One thing you can do is look at how much people are sharing what you share– retweeting, for example. For orgs, they should look at this report from http://peashootapp.com/ (lower left, put in your email address). For individuals, it really depends on what your objective is, and what you want to get out of social networks.

Hi Deanna! Congratulations on the release of your book! Can’t wait to read it. Question – what online places / outlets, etc. do you recommend (and utilize) to stay on top of ‘all the latest’ going on, new tools for the internet & in relation to social media, to be aware of the most current applications/web sites/design/methods? Basically, to stay on top of things as they change so quickly. I’m sure there’s lots … but ?

@dakine01: What’s interesting is that folks under 20 are *more* likely to be concenrned about privacy and to have changed their privacy settings than older folks. Check out this report from Pew: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management.aspx They have a far more nuanced view of privacy than we older people (I’m 35) do.

Privacy has never been a binary operation, much as we like to think that way. It’s now just clearer to us that there need to be multiple, nuanced levels of it.

@cathrynbe: hey you!

Well, unless you’re working in the field, I actually wouldn’t worry about staying on top of the latest and greatest. You can read http://mashable.com and be firehosed with new stuff, or you can wait till your friends are using it. :-) It’s much more important (to me) to understand how the culture of social networking works, and why your overall participation is so important.

For a lot of us, the potential of social networking to help us get away from the “pale, stale, male” power structures of media is a big part of the draw. How can we best use social networking to escape the usual prejudices about whose opinions and ideas count?

@Amanda: is the the pomegranate martinis or are the questions getting harder? hee hee.

One of the most exciting things about social networking is that it gives voices that previously largely went unheard in public discourse– women, people of color, queer folk and more– a huge opportunity to share their stories, their values, their experiences. I can’t say enough how radical this is, compared to gatekeepers of the past mediating all public discourse.

You look at things already– on most major social networks (except for Digg), women comprise more than half their memberships. And an African-American person online is more like to be on Twitter than a white person… that’s wild!

That’s where referral and recommendation come into play– people can use their influence to direct attention to the voices that aren’t the usual suspects droning on.

good start. But gee, you’re t he expert on social media LOL

Any contact with campus political parties? And, gee, contests work… Free book for retweets?

@Elliott: Yes, good ideas! One thing that’s really challenging, as I’ve learned the hard way, is that it’s hard to promote and work on something when you’re in the middle of it. I’m a shameless self-promoter, too, and it’s just overwhelmingly weird to think of cool/interesting things to do.

You have a ton of great examples of social media being used to grab hold of political conversations in the book, but as with every book, stuff happens between when you send it to the publisher and when it comes out. Do you have any recent examples of interesting social networking activism events that caught your attention?

@Amanda: I’ve been really interested in watching how crisis events play out, like with Haiti and the oil disaster. It’s an interesting phenomenon, because we all want to feel useful in those awful moments, to perhaps distract us from our horror at the suffering… but we’re not always successful.

I’m thinking in particular about the One Million Shirts campaign. Very long story short: a guy in Florida had a business with a bunch of leftover tshirts. And he started this social media campaign to “send them to Africa.” But he didn’t take the time to think about the logistics of the whole operation, or in the big picture, if it was even a good idea. Are tshirts really going to save Africa? Or is that our privileged view of an entire complicated continent that Americans largely don’t understand?

It’s our job to understand what our role, *with our privilege,* is– especially when it comes to technology.

That reminds me of the whole thing where women were posting their bra colors on Facebook and claiming it was about breast cancer.

More on One Million Shirts, btw: http://texasinafrica.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-alternative-ideas-to-donating-t.html

@Amanda: Yeah, that and turning your avatar green… awareness raising only goes so far. The rest is slacktivism. I talk about this in the “Tips for Organizations” section of the book; this is a post that I refer to in that section: http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/05/from_slacktivism_to_activism

Another thing I’m excited about is something Katrin Verclas of MobileActive.org started– it’s called Fail Faire. It’s a gathering where people get together and discuss their failures in tech & activism, so that others learn. http://failfaire.org/ Without social media, we wouldn’t have that opportunity, either.

Wonder if there are a lot of people who have a majority of their social life online.

@egregious: I’m sure, like an activity, there are a buncha people who do that. :-)

Define “majority”. I’m suspicious of anyone who snarls at friends who keep in touch on Facebook, but thinks it’s legitimate to maintain a friendship primarily through letters and phone calls.

@Amanda: hee, I’m totally stealing that.

But it does raise an interesting question: A lot of activists are wary of social networking because they see it as less “real” than other forms of activism. And while they may see some benefit, they also see it as a massive time suck. What do you say to people when you encounter this attitude?

Have at it!

@Amanda: I make it clear at the beginning (and throughout) the book that these tools shouldn’t replace other forms of organizing and media. They’re meant to be complementary to the other work we do.

In a workshop that I do, I show how, while social media take time when it comes to relationship development (which is absolutely key), it can cut down on time spent on other activities. I get less email because of social media, for example; organizationally, folks can use the tools to curate and filter information, too.

Someone on Twitter—wish they had the energy to click the button and bring their question here—asked for comment on the current hashtag on Twitter #g20report. It’s mostly folks who are at protests in Toronto for the G20 summit:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=g20report

Thoughts? Feelings? What are the benefits and drawbacks of recording events like this on Twitter?

For breaking news where it’s not clear what’s going on, twitter can provide some good information, in a sea of guesses.

It can be incredibly beneficial to give people outside of the event a picture of what’s actually happening on the ground. I’m afraid I wasn’t paying close attention to news or social media this weekend– I was with extended family on a stop on the book tour.

But in general, we also have to be aware that these tools can also be used for misinformation, and activists have to be aware of that. We can’t perpetuate the idea that these tools can take down dangerous regimes, for example. That started to happen with the Iranian stuff last year, and it gives activists other parts of the world the wrong (and dangerous for them) idea.

Overall, in places like the US and Canada, Twitter has been incredibly useful in spreading information quickly and efficiently to participants in protests, and for showing others outside of them what’s actually happening. Nancy Scola of TechPresident.com tells a story of following the RNC in ’08 in Minneapolis, and getting in touch with a tweeter who was curating information and retweeting it. And it turns out he was in Arizona, and not even at the protest– but he was in touch with good sources of information, and could participate from a distance.

Looking at the stuff that’s at the top of the Toronto feed, I’m reminded of my own experiences at the RNC in ’04 in New York. They kept blaming the “black bloc” for violence and for setting this paper dragon on fire, but everyone I knew who saw it said they were clearly undercover cops who were instigating and who started the fire. We had blogs then, but I wonder how different it would be if we’d had Twitter and the ability to quickly disseminate pictures and video.

Sorry for the possibly 101 basic question, but as a filmmaker trying to both engage a film-audience and violence prevention folks and the uninitiated to feminist activism, it was relevant: how can you make sure your social media platform is in best alignment w/your cause & audience?

As I noted in the post, your early advice to me about using a mix of personal information and political information on social networking was incredibly valuable. I’ve been doing this for awhile now and have built up a feed of a few thousand followers, but even I sometimes can’t decide if it’s a good idea or not to tweet what I had for dinner. How can someone who has specifically set out to run an activist feed make these decisions better?

Hey, that was me with the hashtag report there. Toronto’s in police state lockdown at the moment – unbelievable police violence, mass arrests of journalists (independent and mainstream!) and activists, secret laws passed by the legislature to give police sudden new powers of detention – something that none of us expected. People have been using Twitter to update others on the streets and off about what’s happening, with people from different vantage points using their perspectives to inform a better picture of a single city block. A lot of people have also been using Qik and Ustream to livestream the increasingly tense situations at peaceful demonstrations. Right now I’ve also been using it to draw any and all media attention to the situation here at the moment, as no one really expects this kind of thing to be happening in Canada. I apologize for my haste in writing that reply, Amanda – a number of my friends and acquaintances have been arrested, and I’m just trying to get the word out elsewhere at the moment…

@jordanclaire (52) do you have a twitter feed or site that others can follow and share?

@thelinecampaign: Good question! First, kudos to you for even asking it– most people just think that they can get on Facebook and everything will be fine, without investigating whether their community is even there to begin with. No good!

It’s going to be a different answer for each campaign or group, but there are a few things you can do. One is to look at the 2010 nonprofit e-benchmark study– http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/ It’s a broad study, but it’s a good place for advocacy peeps to start and look to see how their doing in comparison to their peers.

Also, really figure out what you can do to see where your community already is hanging out, and meet them there. It might not be social media at all that works, or at least it plays a more minor role.

#g20report is the most useful hashtag at the moment – 2010.mediacoop.ca has also been aggregating tagged content from flickr, youtube and twitter throughout the week.

@Amanda: The best guidepost I heard comes from Susan Mernit, founder of http://oaklandlocal.com/ … she says, “If you’re unsure about whether you should post something, you probably shouldn’t.” That’s a good guidepost for many of us.

We also learn through trial and error. For a long time, I never posted anything publicly about health concerns. But then I was just so frustrated one day, that I blurted something out. And as it turns out, I both got a bunch of good advice, and connected on a deeper level to one of my favorite aunts, who has the same problem I do. It taught me to not feel so squicky about stuff like that.

On the other hand, sometimes we post things, and get unwelcome responses. So maybe we decided not to post them again. It’s up to each of us to decide.

@jordanclaire (52) I’m Twitter @alevin, alevin.com (real person)

@jordanclaire: good luck with what’s happening up there– unfortunately it’s the same every single time. Your role as a curator of verified and important news will be vital.

One last question from me: You’re beginning to see mainstream media reluctantly but inevitably embrace social media as necessary to their continued survival. But they still don’t trust it, and I think there’s a lot of unnecessary heartbreak over that. How can we supporters of social media help legitimize it?

As we come to the end of this Book Salon,

Deanna, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book and social networks.

Amanda, Thank you very much for Hosting this great salon.

Everyone, if you would like more information,
Deanna’s website – http://www.deannazandt.com/
Amanda’s website – http://www.pandagon.net/

Thanks all.

@Amanda: Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any one or two things we can do. Like any major cultural shift, it’ll take time, and our continued participation. There’s just no easy answer there. (tho I’m happy to hear others’ thoughts, too.)

@BevW: Thanks so much for having me! Continue the conversation, if you like, with me on Twitter: @randomdeanna

And of course, be sure to check out the book!

http://deannazandt.com/sharethischange/

Thank you!