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Social Change and Social Networks: Their Relationship is an Obvious One, Right? Right? ...
I was happy to see Change.org get itself into the business of content creation and broadcasting by way of its shift towards blogging last November. Not ony do I think that they're doing a great job, and that the blogs are generating some quality content, but with regard to rallying around Internet organized social change, I feel that it makes more sense to get people to rally around and discuss issues first, and then to organize and mobilize them second (and where they are on the web).
It's difficult to understand where, exactly, the overarching, general concept of "social change" fits in the commercial realm of profile-based social networks. For a while, it seemed as though there'd be a collection of friend-based networks, change-based networks, politics-based networks, and so-on. Over time, however, it began to appear as though the success and the sustainability of social networks appear to rely on either:
a) targeting a relatively general group of people based on lifestyle (friends/the like-interested who want to stay connected)
b) addressing a specific interest (get Barack Obama elected / Bush out of office)
Thus, we see most social good groupings occuring as manifested by:
- sub-interest or lifestyle in the former model (groups/applications/pages on Facebook or Ning.
- addressing a specific issue (again, get Barack Obama elected), in as is the case of the latter model.
This is ultimately the reason I feel Change.org's decision to shift towards creating media portals makes the most sense. Rather than bringing everyone in the social change realm over to where Change.org is, they are instead working hard on informing action in the many places that it's taking place.
[Full Disclosure: I have, in the past, worked for Change.org as an outreach operative. Further, I'm friends with it's founder, and the company sponsored a research project I worked on last year.]
Questions!
- What do you imagine the future of social change on the SocNet to look like?
- Will there one day be a social network that is authoratative as Facebook and connects change-makers, or is the nature of our work a little too abstract for that to ever be the case?
- What does your engagement in the social change 2.0 sphere look like?
- What are your thoughts?
- alexsteed's blog
- Login or register to post comments
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Future Social Networks will be about mutual self interest
The power of the connections of the internet will be when people are able to come together in interdependent, self regulated, groups that begin to pursue enlightened self interest. As times get tougher people will be looking to take care of themselves more and will be less able to focus on taking care of others in the traditional robber baron philanthropic mode.
One necessary evolution is the incorporation of democracy. Our very survival may depend on the application of American democratic principals to economic structures. Monarchies are necessary evolutionary steps in the development of nations or corporations however they are not the most high tech organizational structures available.
It is possible to imagine a social network that functions like the pubs and town halls of pre-revolutionary America to galvinize, mobilize, and organize people to pursue the democratization of capital. I forsee the constitution for this alliance of Democratic Economic Nations beingwritten in an online constitutional convention and citizens engaging in proxy representative government via their online account.