Consumer & Citizen Usage of Social Media Tools

We’ve written a number of posts on our research into social media usage across many demographics and market segments. With our two core practice units; public policy and marketing, we decided to see if there were similarities in how the “citizen” uses social media (i.e. for public policy issues) versus the “consumer” in marketing terms (i.e. purchase investigation and general content.) And, perhaps unsurprisingly, we see similarities in the use of the tools; what changes of course, is the nature of the content and the engagement between the two.

Citizen Vs. Consumer – Passion for Speaking Out
When it comes to topics and issues of “public policy” (e.g. taxes, government policy, roads, schools etc.)  we found that in a ratio of passion, citizen issues get shared and discussed far more than product or service discussions at (citizen:consumer) 7:3, which we term as “passion” out of the 2,500 use cases we looked at. We’re more likely to be engaged over issues of our society than just products. For those of you despairing we are nothing more than some kind of “buying machine” – take heart. When we looked at the four layers of concern, we found local issues to be first, followed by national, then global, then regional in the U.S., Canada and UK.

A Trend Line Appears
It seems that there may be hope for our “purely consumptive society” that we feel we live in. People as “citizens” are more apt to share and be passionate about issues of civil society in social media channels than they are about brands and products. As we looked at data from 2006 up to the end of October, we can see that since 2008, people have been more active on “citizen” issues than consumer products. We suspect that in 2011 the Occupy movement has been a part of this. We did not exclude Occupy as it is a serious component of civil society dialogue online at this time. We also note the rise of the Arab Spring. The trigger seems to be 2008 and the rise of the global financial crisis. Our sample size was 4,000 identities tracked over this period of time in public social media channels (we do not look at private content, nor do we release or share information on individuals.)

Conclusion
To draw deeper conclusions we would have to delve a lot more deeper into the issues. But in general, we have a clearer indication that people are discussing issues of Civil Society more than brands and products today in Western nations. We did not look at non-Western or non-English speaking regions/countries. What are your thoughts? Are we seeing an increase in citizen concern filtering through social medias?

Activists and the Challenges Faced by Corporations

We’ve written before on how activists are using social media tools to target corporations and/or governments. Here we look at some of the subsequent challenges corporations face in dealing with these groups. Not dealing with them can result in board governance issues, a failure to attract star talent, legislative changes to industry that increase operating costs and cut profits, demotivated staff (thus lower productivity) and a PR nightmare. Yet large businesses and many governments have a hard time responding. So what are their challenges.

David Vs. Goliath: An oft-told fable in business circles. David won because he was smaller and nimble and able to adapt quicker. As it is with activist groups. Even larger, multi-national ones have localized “cells” that have a fair bit of freedom and can quickly cause a local or regional set of troubles to a large firm. Sheer size of the larger companies means it is harder to turn the boat around.

Management Process: Certainly part of the “size” issue. Large companies need scaled processes to run effectively. Systems for manufacturing, production, marketing and delivery. Governance for shareholders and investor relations. That all means people. Lots of people. And people have different views framed by their profession or function. At the top levels, awareness of trends and issues in the trenches is not always what it could be. With so many steps to a key tactical or strategic decision, it adds to the slowness to respond.

An Ever Changing Corporate Memory: Turnover is a factor in long-term, protracted battles with activist groups such as in the extractive resources sector. People leave and move about in large corporations. Skills and historical knowledge that can help deal with these protracted issues can be lost. Activist groups are very adept at passing knowledge on tactics used. This is in large part due to the use of social medias by activist groups. This provides them with “memory” as members come and go.

The Legal Opinion: The larger the organization the greater the legal exposure. Lawyers always prefer the “less said the better” approach. A legal review takes time and costs a lot of money. By the time a response may be created it can be entirely inneffective and too watered down to have any impact. Activist groups are well aware of this factor.

The People on the Front Line: Most often, corporations will only assign their PR folks and some lawyers to deal with the issues of activists. This is certainly part of the team needed, but not the whole. Government relations, marketing and members of the C-suite should also be involved. They can add additional minds and the marketing team might add some creative juice for response measures. These teams then need to be empowered to act and act swiftly.

The biggest challenge for corporations dealing with activists leveraging social media is their sheer size and inability to move effectively and swiftly. If a company can find a way to enable a faster response and empower a team to engage, the chances of countering false negative messaging is improved dramatically. And don’t forget the security issues, but that’s another blog post.

Are Digital Diaspora Communities Politically Engaged Online?

This blog entry is an update on our ongoing research into digital diaspora communities and how they are using social medias and technologies to engage with their country/culture of origin and within their new host/home country. In this quick snapshot we endeavor to partly answer the question of digital diaspora’s levels of political engagement in the host country and country/culture of origin.

The answer would seem to be “depends”. It would seem to depend on a number of factors which include; size of diaspora community in a given nation, number of generations, political atmosphere in the country of origin and the political climate and structure within the host nation.

Generational Engagement
In host countries where a diaspora community is fairly well established with at least three generations existing, we find that the second and third generation will tend to be more vocal in political issues relating to their country of origin from first generation arrivals. This tends to change when a diaspora community has recently (within a 10 year period) seen rapid growth due to conflict or humanitarian crises in the host nation. The recently displaced will tend to become more vocal within their host nation.

The Citizenship & Power of Influence Equation
Where a diaspora community is established for two to three generations and the majority of the community has either dual citizenship or adopted the citizenship of their host nation, diaspora communities would appear to feel more stable in protests and political engagement. For example, the Tamil community in Toronto, Canada, is well-established and with a large number being Canadian citizens, they hold significant voting power in two federal political ridings. They were active in urging Canadian government support and policy changes regarding Sri Lanka during the civil conflict period.

Applicability to Host Nation Political Influence
It is rather hard to participate in a protest when you are 3,000 miles away. Diaspora influence politically is most often through influencing host nation foreign policy. For their country of origin it is usually a support role through remittances, but also by providing materiel where possible and “hosting” revolutionary or anti-government content. We know that during the failed “Green Revolution” of 2009 in Iran that less than 10% of the “tweets” coming from Twitter actually originated in Iran. Of the 92% or so outside Iran our research indicates less than 40% were by Iranian digital diaspora. Perhaps the revolution wasn’t tweeted after all?

More Questions Than  Answers
Digital diaspora are politically active but as the graph indicates below, they are focused on other topics as well. This graph indicates time periods where there was little political unrest or major political events taking place in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and Haiti. We do note a significant spike in digital diaspora activity just before and  during a crisis period. Which begs the question “do digital diaspora contribute to creating or driving activity back in their country of origin?” We are working on that, but have no definitive answer at this point. We took a sample size of 1,500 individually identified diaspora in Canada, USA and England analyzing text in English and native languages with our AI Engine and human analysts.

Methodology
Complete details can be found here on our page providing details about our digital diaspora project. For more information or questions you may have, please see our contact page or email giles-at-mediabadger.com.

This information and content is Copyright 2011, MediaBadger Public Affairs Ltd. (Canada) and MediaBadger Ltd. (UK). Content may be linked to or otherwise shared with attribution.

How Online Behaviour Impacts Real World Behaviour

It’s probably one of the biggest questions of business and governments; just exactly how does what people do “online” in Cyburbia, translate to actions in the real world? The evidence is overwhelming that it does. The challenge is that it’s changing our real-world life so much and in so many complex ways, that it can be a challenge to wrap ones head around it.

Online communities, Cyburbia, social medias or Web 2.0 – whatever you want to call these new channels of communication, are first and foremost the domain of “ideas”. It is from ideas that we develop plans and strategies that translate into actions. Through our past, current and ongoing research projects and from what many a pundit has written, we’ve broken down online activities into 4 key functions of how we use these new, hyper-connected tools to translate to real-world activities;

1. Ideas: We have ideas all the time. A new way to do something online or in the real-world. An idea about new laws, buildings, saving energy…anything and everything we do has human beings comes from an idea first.

2. Organizing: When an idea takes hold and we (and perhaps others) decide to take actions by translating that idea into reality, we have to organize. That could be meetings, protests, writing, creating a website or opening a restaurant. This all requires a number of steps and processes – this is organizing. There are a number of tools for organizing online; for one person to thousands of people. The key is that these new digital tools allow people to organize as groups quickly, anywhere in the world, at any time across multiple devices.

3. Collaboration: While your organizing the idea into actions, you’ll likely connect with others. Humans must work together as groups to make big things happen – like building a shopping centre. This is collaboration. Just as with organizing (and often they are integrated) these new tools enable a group to shape an idea, expand on it, refine it.

4. Communication: Once you’ve shaped your idea, you then communicate it to many or a few people. Once you’re team or group has formed, collaborated and organized, you then communicate again to drive awareness and action. You will likely create all kinds of communications content to get action (video, images, brochures, documents, blog posts, tweets etc.) Just as online tools enable collaboration, development of ideas (writing and research) and organizing, they facilitate communications that are faster, almost no cost and easier than ever before.

It is these 4 elements that combine to result in the actions that change our world; whether that be political or business. If you’re seeking to understand the translation of online activities into real-world actions, apply these elements to any groups and you’ll have a framework to understand how these interested parties are behaving and what may happen in your area of interest.

Perhaps you have some thoughts on this? Anything to add? Let us know.

Dialog or Conflict: Social Media and the Next Century

No one argues much today that the invention of the printing press was a wonderful thing for humanity. We could suddenly share ideas which turned into better human rights, forms of democracy and a more civil society. Eventually. Then along came the telephone and radio. A new revolution. What followed was one of the bloodiest centuries globally. Today, conflict is declining all over the world…although somedays that may seem a bit unreal.

Use of the Internet and other “Liberation Technologies” such as social media, mobile phones and such, have aided the tranisition of ideas and opinions into political action. Both positive and negative. The Orange Revolution of the Ukraine used SMS messaging via mobiles to organize. Two years later Belarus shut down the mobile networks to prevent such a revolution. The intense protests of the Iranian elections in 2009, although democracy seems to have failed so far.

The online newspaper Malaysiakini has arguably lead to increased democracy and improved human rights in Malaysia. Certainly it has tread where no other traditional newspaper can in Malaysia. China recently battled with Google and in ways, subtly continues to do so. Reports out of Pakistan indicate that Taliban leadership has “gone quiet” in Social Media channels and are resorting to human transfer of messages; although a recent Twitter battle between the State Department & a Taliban spokesperson suggests otherwise.

Personally, I rather hope that these “Liberation Technologies” such as social media tools and the devices that enable their operation, lead to greater democracy worldwide. In fragile nations however, we are increasingly seeing a fragmentation between Elites and the lower classes. Yet both are using social media services. Then we bring in the diaspora and their interconnections between the “home country” and their new “host country” and influence over foreign policies of the host country.

These interactions mean more information reaching the hands of the citizens, being shaped by citizens and communicated into the larger populace, even where Internet access is limited. That foments ideas and then change. Such change in fragile nations is rarely conducted (successful or not) without conflict. Anecdotal y, I suspect we may see less chance of global conflict than before, but an increase in more localized or regional conflict in fragile nations. It is not only Elites that are accessing these Liberation Technologies, but the common citizen. And some governments are becoming clever at using these tools to counter those who want democracy.

International relations have always been complex. With social technologies, they are going to become ever more complex. The relationship between governments, civil society, industry and global organizations is changing. Social technologies and the Internet is about human ideas, it is where ideas get developed and evolve. Now ideas and ideologies can evolve faster. Groups can form, disband and fracture faster and easier than ever before. Our research suggests the views and predictions of thinkers like George Friedman have not accounted for these Liberation Technologies – that may be their Black Swan to what does end up happening.

There is no easy answer and no clear path to the future or to what will or won’t happen. The only sure thing; social medias will result in fundamental shifts in international relations. Lets hope that dialogue reins and the values of democracy prosper.