OurBlook interview with Rob Salkowitz.
Editor's Note: Rob is author of "YOUNG WORLD RISING: How Youth, Technology and Entrepreneurship Are Changing Global Business" (forthcoming from John Wiley and Sons in 2010).
 How are social media shaping the relationship and role between government and citizens in the U.S.?
RS: Social media are changing the expectations of how we interact with institutions and people. They inject an immediacy and informality into the way we discuss issues, by taking the conversations that people used to have in small groups around the water cooler or the family dinner table and making them open and public to interested parties anywhere, anytime. People who approach political discourse from the perspective of reading blogs and engaging in online debates via social networks, Twitter, and so on, tend to value authenticity in those interactions, and are less patient with the niceties of the one-to-many broadcast model of communication.
A lot of bloggers, for example, started in 2002 and 2003 out of a sense of frustration, feeling left out of the official discourse. A few have gone on to become extremely influential as political opinion-leaders, organizers and fundraisers. I think that our government and our political class, including the political media, are starting to feel the pressure of these new expectations of transparency, candor and accountability.
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?
RS: Social media amplify forces and voices already present. In most cases, with respect to the Millennial generation (b.1980-2000), that’s a good thing, because this is a generation that has been socialized to recognize challenges in a global dimension, express their ideas, and work together to solve them. For example, volunteerism is extremely high among this group, and social entrepreneurism classes are oversubscribed at most universities that offer them. This is a cohort that, collectively, is interested in innovation and sustainable growth. So social media provide an extremely powerful outlet for people by making it really easy (and cheap) to organize around issues, share information, connect to resources, and get the word out.
The downside is that social media do not distinguish between good and bad causes in terms of whom they empower. There are support groups for anorexics (that is, groups that encourage young women in their anorexia by promoting it as a good lifestyle choice); there are communities of white supremacists online that have a great deal more reach and visibility. There’s also a lot of misinformation masquerading as authoritative data ... sometimes put up by well-meaning groups or individuals, and sometimes a deliberate attempt to confuse people about issues. Because social media are so small-d democratic, there’s no editorial authority to help people sort fact from fiction, or to help sort out all these competing claims to truth. That kind of fragmentation of the discourse has led to a real polarization of opinions, with each side clinging to its own set of facts.
Which forms of social media do you think will endure, and why? Are there any you see as fads that will fade away?
RS: I think blogs will continue to evolve, especially through the integration of rich media. Social networks, micro-blogging (Twitter, etc.), real-time communication (instant messaging, texting, etc.), geo-location services, and online gaming are all gradually converging into a larger concept of “social presence,” where people are able to constantly keep their network of connections in their peripheral vision and engage with them spontaneously and opportunistically. I started noticing this effect myself once I really started using Twitter ... it becomes almost an extension of your central nervous system to have the daily status of everyone constantly updating in the timeline.
I’m not sure that short-form video like you find on YouTube has much of a future as a standalone medium. I also see Wikis and online communities moving away from this idea of crowdsourcing and more toward a classic power curve, where a very few number of contributors are actually engaged in creating content, compared to large numbers of consumers.
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?
RS: The business of media in the 20th century was to aggregate a mass audience and sell that audience to advertisers. The value-add was that mass media companies were the only ones with the resources to reach that audience. There were economies of scale, and it was very profitable. Social media have completely disrupted that by creating so many niche markets and communities, and by making it possible for anyone to reach anyone without having to own a broadcast studio and transmission tower.
The consolidation of media in the broadcast age also changed the sociology of journalism by turning it into much more of a profession for educated people and, at its highest levels, an extremely powerful and prestigious position. I think an increasing portion of the audience for mass media, especially at the young end of the demographics, is turned off by the self-importance of highly-visible mainstream journalists (as demonstrated by the success of media parodies like the Onion and the "Daily Show"), and resent the inability to talk back in any kind of meaningful way.
This creates an appetite for the more down-to-earth approach you find in blogs, where comments and conversation are usually encouraged as part of the site features. Members of the Millennial generation in particular find the pomposity and stuffiness of traditional media less engaging than the give-and-take of social channels. I think the broadcasters sense that and are trying to adapt to the new environment by doing things like scrolling a Twitter feed under the news broadcast, bringing bloggers on the air to discuss their ideas, or setting up Facebook pages for the on-air personalities, but those efforts don’t seem terribly authentic or credible.
I don’t think any medium has a monopoly on good or bad journalistic practice. A few blogs like TalkingPointsMemo and Firedoglake do very high quality original reporting and investigative journalism. There are increasing numbers of local sites that are better and more engaging sources of local news than TV or radio, and much better venues for advertising as well. There are ways that traditional media can survive in this environment, but I don’t think the industry has accepted that it won’t be quite as profitable an enterprise as it was in the old days. They haven’t quite found the imagination to re-invent their business models or internalize the profound changes that have taken place.
You make the point that "social media put nonsense at eye-level with serious analysis, and force individuals to bear a lot of the critical and filtering burdens that editors used to do." Also, with staff stories in newspapers, they are certifying that their reporters are trustworthy, though that isn't always the case. Will Americans ever be able to trust social media, and are there any safeguards that could be introduced?
RS: Social media have certainly played a part in mainstreaming what used to be fringe views and in pumping a lot of nonsense into the public discourse. However, it’s not exclusively a problem with social media. Walter Cronkite died, and it’s already a cliché to say that media objectivity and authority died with him. In pursuit of profits, the old media have blurred the line between reporting and opinion, because opinion is sexier and also cheaper to deliver than stories that require legwork, fact-checking and research. So trustworthiness is a problem all around.
Social networks actually have some self-regulating mechanisms that can help provide context, assuming people are interested in getting closer to the truth rather than just confirming their pre-existing opinions. Reputation systems that let people rate the quality of content, comments and contributors can provide some guidance as to what people find valuable. Wikis and other kinds of crowd-sourced collaborative content environments tend to be self-correcting because the extreme views cancel each other out (as they say about wikis, they don’t work in theory, they only work in practice).
Viral distribution actually does a pretty good job of finding quality content among all the stuff being produced on the Web, whether it’s that YouTube clip of Susan Boyle singing on "Britain’s Got Talent," or those chilling Twitter posts coming out of Iran. Both went from a very narrow audience to a global one in a matter of hours. It’s not clear that a top-down editorial filtering process would have been as efficient.
Your forthcoming book will explore how social media are changing global business. How are they?
RS: I believe that a lot of the future of the global economy, and the solutions to our various problems from global warming to poverty and education, rest on the efforts of entrepreneurs, both social and commercial, applying new ideas and ingenuity. Social media have become a huge empowering platform for entrepreneurship by giving people all over the world access to information, social connections, resources, attention and encouragement. It’s collapsed many of the old barriers that made it difficult for young people with ideas to take charge of their future, and it’s also made entrepreneurship a global pursuit, open to anyone whether they are in Silicon Valley, in Hyderabad, India, or in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria.
It’s not clear whether coordinated, bottom-up action and collaboration can solve the problems ahead of us, but it seems to me that the only way to address unprecedented challenges is to marshal unprecedented resources. There are billions of mouths to feed, but, for the first time ever, there are also billions of minds connected and engaged through the medium of social technology.
From a business standpoint, more entrepreneurs means faster innovation and more competition, everywhere, all the time. But as indigenous entrepreneurs grow their businesses and employ others in their communities, it creates more income, raises consumer aspirations, generates new market opportunities, and provides more opportunities for partnership. We’ve seen how the spread of social media has transformed economic, political and social institutions in high-income economies, despite the concerted resistance of legacy institutions and large “pre-digital” populations.
Now these networks are spreading most rapidly among low-income countries with huge populations of young people desperate for new opportunities, and the effect will be even more dramatic. Businesses need to be ready for that scenario, which I call "Young World Rising."
Is there anything else you'd like to say about social media?
RS: In my opinion, the best way to try to understand this stuff is to look at the human activities taking place, rather than focusing on the fast-changing technology. That’s why I like to focus my work on the intersection between the social behaviors, social institutions, and social attitudes that have always existed, in the new context of the always on, always connected world.
Rob is also the author of "Generation Blend" and co-author of "Listening to the Future," a collection of white papers on the intersection of globalization, demographics, networked connectivity and transparency on the future of the workplace, produced for Microsoft in 2005-2007. He has worked with leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, HP and nGenera, to forecast social and technology trends, formulate market strategy and articulate business goals. He writes a weekly column for www.internetevolution.com .
In 2003, Rob joined the board of Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), a New York-based nonprofit that does technology training and workforce development for people over 50. He is a founding partner of MediaPlant, LLC, a Seattle-based digital communications firm, where he serves as director of strategy and content development. Throughout the 1990s, he helped launch seven new businesses ranging from online training to travel information to online resources for potential immigrants. Rob earned a B.A. in international relations from Columbia University.
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