|
OurBlook interview with Prof. Matthew L. Hale, chairman of the Department of Public and Healthcare Administration at Seton Hall University.
 How are social media shaping the relationship and role between government and citizens in the U.S.?
MH: I think the popularity of social media stems in part from the desire of citizens to take some control or even ownership of the news and information they receive. I also think that social media are popular because people have a desire for a greater sense of community. Individuals creating a community and sharing information are fundamental parts of a strong civic life, so there is enormous potential for altering the government/citizen relationship away from government and toward smaller somewhat organic citizen-led groups. So instead of looking to government to solve a problem, it seems that social media have the potential to empower citizens to solve their own problems.
On the other hand, for that to happen, social media communities will need to move away from just sharing information and toward being a vehicle for collective action. It seems that right now people use Facebook to find their high school sweetheart and to pass along little slices of their daily life. Sure, some people use it in a civic-minded way, but for most people it is social, not political. Maybe someday it will get there, maybe not.
Another thing to consider is for government agencies and for politicians, social media networks have an enormous upside. Research shows that people trust the opinions of close friends and associates more than any other source. So when you receive a political message from your friend, you are more likely to act on it. Politicians know this and slowly so will government agencies, and we will see more and more communication from government to citizens coming through social media networks.
What are the positives and negatives that social media have had on our society ... particularly those that haven't manifested just yet (for example with generation Y and younger)? Have they dumbed it down or do they have unlimited possibilities?
MH: We are building communities via social media networks that to me are an incredibly powerful and positive thing. As a society, we need a greater sense of community, and social media networks can play a really positive role in doing that. There is clear evidence that people who have a strong social network of friends and family are better off than those who are isolated.
The negative is that it seems on-line communities tend to contain mainly people who think like you do. Democrats hang out with Democrats, Republicans with Republicans. So while social media help people build communities, it doesn't seem to be as good at helping to build bridges between different communities. To see this. take a look at your Facebook friends and see how many are of a different race or political persuasion or sexual orientation or economic status. I'll bet for most people, the answer is not many.
Robert Putnam from Harvard has a great line about this. He said that there used to be lots of car clubs across America. People who liked cars would bring their Chevy or Ford or BMW and get together to talk about cars. On-line, there aren't car clubs, there are some clubs for people who like Chevys or Fords or BMWs but there are also clubs just for people who like the BMW 2002 model built before 1990 or just for people who like Ford Mustangs built in 1975.
Which forms of social media do you think will endure, and why? Are there any you see as fads that will fade away?
MH: I think social media as a form are here to stay. The cat is out of the bag and it isn't going back. Who organizes or manages it will change over time; Facebook beat out MySpace and maybe someone will beat out Facebook. Obviously, the next big iteration will focus on incorporating social media applications using mobile devices like IPhones. This is interesting and exciting because using mobile social media seems to me to increase the possibility that people will use social media to actually meet in person. People send out tweets or Facebook posts from the back of a taxi that say "meet me at the bar in 30 minutes" ... to the extent people actually go to the bar, the strength of the community may increase.
Do you foresee much impact from social media in major news operations such as newspapers and TV news, or in the future of journalism generally?
MH: Social media make it easy for anyone to become a quasi- journalist. The Twitter posts from Iran prove that. More and more news reporting and information sharing will be done this way in the future and that is hurting and will continue to hurt traditional journalism. Major news organizations will have to figure out a new business model because the old one is dying.
There are two real downsides to this. One is that while everyone thinks being a journalist is just showing up and saying what is going, it isn't ... good journalists ask difficult questions and do an enormous amount of research to make sure they get the story right. They have ethical standards that people off the street don't. Full-time journalists have a breadth of knowledge and contacts that regular people don't. Anyone can point a camera or say what they think is going on but that doesn't make them journalists or allow them to produce quality news.
The other downside is that having millions of individual journalists out there, we lose a sense of collective knowledge. It has been said that the Vietnam war was over when Walter Cronkite said we were losing it. Without a news source that reaches millions and is trusted by millions, we lose a sense of common experience or knowledge that I think is important.
You teach courses in social media. Do you find that your students are heavily into these forms? Would you ever accept a class assignment coming to you via Twitter or Facebook or YouTube ... or is there a line to be drawn someplace?
MH: Just to be clear, I don't actually teach courses in social media, I just look at how social media influence the topics of my courses. In terms of how my students use social media, I would say it varies. Most often by age, all my younger students (under 30) use social media to some extent. I had one how say he tried to quit Facebook and lasted about four hours. My older students know about social media but don't use it much. I've never done a Twitter assignment or a Facebook one, but that is just because I haven't figured out how to make an assignment using them that would help students learn something about a larger topic. I have had YouTube assignments and we create on-line communities in class all the time.
In some ways, this goes back to earlier points. Using social media isn't just about using the technology, it is about what gets done in the "real world" using the technology. The technology of social media is not an end, it should be a means to an end.
You have said that the important issues facing our nation are incredibly complex and cannot be solved by instant answers that come in 140-character tweets. Can you expand on that for us?
MH: In 140 characters, you almost always have to take a side. Universal health care coverage is either bad or good. In the real world, how we get and pay universal health care coverage is what determines if it is bad or good. In a tweet, you are advocating a position and leaving out essential information about that position. I have no problem with using Twitter or any social media to broadcast locations of places to get more information or places to discuss the issue more completely. What worries me is when we let the technical constraint of any technology (140 characters) restrict a full discussion of the real and underlying policy issues.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
