Social Media As a Soft Power Tool in Global Affairs

Based on much of our research, social media is not just a tool for promoting democracy (although that is hotly debated) but we see it as becoming a “soft power” tool on global issues. Perhaps one that even citizens can use to garner influence and attention from other nation states. For those not familiar with hard and soft power, in a very simple way it is this; “hard power” is the use of military forces in a direct way (i.e. bombing Libya recently to aid democratic forces) whereas “soft power” are tools like sanctions (economic) that can impact a country (e.g. sanctions against Syria’s dictatorship.)

Social Media and The Art of Political Perceptions in Soft Power
Perhaps one of the best examples of using social media tools in the ongoing game of “soft power” is the US State Department. Closely followed by the UK government. On the dictatorial side is Iran with it’s army of counter revolutionary bloggers and the likes of Hugo Chavez using Twitter (given all the coffee Chavez drinks Twitter would seem to suit him.)

These tools become just another part of the arsenal of persuasion and perception development/management as part of a governments communications strategy. But they are not insignificant as some might think. In ways small and large, these messages enter the Cyburbian stream of concsiousness, they are shared, edited, discussed, debated and added to. They can also add context to a situation that may not find coverage in traditional news media.

Defining Positioning
Using social media services, governments can define their positions more clearly using text, images and video. This then becomes a relied upon source by academia, think-tanks and other governments. We’re not indicating the “truth” of a statement or definition of a position, just that this is how they can be used. How they are used.

Civil Society Has a Big Voice
The other side of this is that civil society groups (from Greenpeace to PETA to Medicins Sans Frontiers) now have a global voice. They can and do use these tools to shape views, opinions and perceptions. Influential citizens can join the conversation as well and become thought leaders both for an against issues in any language or culture. This new ability for civil society to participate in the global dialogue and have influence is a new dynamic in applying to soft power.

There is a whole new dynamic to global communications and their impact on the use of soft power tools. One that will offer some fascinating areas of study for many years to come.

Civil Society Groups & How They Use Social Media

From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Keystone XL issue and even down to small, localised activities, civil society groups (from radical left-wing activists to the average and necessary protest) have figured out social media and are making increasingly effective use of it. Below, we’ve provided a diagram of how these groups, some that have been around a long time, others that just form for a short period, are using these tools. Businesses would do well to understand them and the processes for marketing, investor and public relations.

In the Management block, we can see how social media tools are used to manage the administrative functions of the group. In this case they may use email, a Facebook group, Wiki’s and other tools, that are a mix of “open” to the public and private. In the second block, Communication, we see how they use the various tools to communicate/broadcast the messages developed as a team. All forms of digital content are used across multiple platforms (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr etc.) Once the content and creative has been released it moves to the “Engagement” phase, where the grassroots group enters into dialogue with the general public, answering questions and ensuring the message is consistent and understood by the public and hopefully shared. The Actions shows how once the message is out there (i.e. “meet at the town hall, wear your t-shirts and bring signs at 2PM”) it can result in a number of real-world activities. The green circle indicates that if an event in public or online piece of content (e.g. video) is successful, the general public shares the results of the activity that took place in public and the feedback communications loop is triggered (the green line returning to the communications block.) Once news media picks up on a story, such as a highly successful public rally, this transitions the story to a broadcast public, usually significantly increasing recognition for the civil society group and expanding their message. Social Media is a highly cost-effective route to organizing, creating and communicating a mission. Traditional news media then plays a vital role in expanding audience attention and driving further public actions.

We have seen this process used in a number of actions over the past two years. It works and has become highly effective. The gap we often find that our business and government clients miss, is that these social media is simply a set of tools used to galvanize support and actions that take place in the real world. They might see videos after  a protest or action and say “oh well, yeah, we know that happened.” But the same tools were used beforehand to organize the rally. Those affected by these necessary and key parts of a democracy could, however, be better prepared.

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?

Use of Social Media by Unions | Canada & USA

Unions have featured quite prominently in news media lately, mostly through the Occupy Wall Street movement (if it can be called that.) With some pundits and media outlets claiming the power and influence of the union has waned in recent years. We can’t comment on whether this is true or not, but a lot of the research we do often features unions. So we decided here to provide some of our aggregate data on which unions are most active in the United States and Canada.

Social Media Use by Unions in the United States
Unions in the US have, for the most part, adopted social media into their communications. Certainly, America leads the way with union’s usage of social media. This is not surprising. There are many more unions and affiliate organizations in the US than Canada and in this instance we looked only at the most active in social media channels. In the U.S. unions use social media for a) broad communications and b) to actually organize rallies and events. We compared usage between 2010 and 2011 to see if there was growing adoption of social media. There is, with some more than others. The AFL-CIO are the most active in the U.S., perhaps not surprisingly so given their broader reach. Behind them is the IBEW for electrical workers.

Social Media Use by Unions in Canada
Unions in Canada have been slower to adopt and use social media. More so than we originally thought. Also, Canadian unions tend to use social media for communications and far less to organize events like their US counterparts. Canadian unions are more “broadcast” as well; meaning they are less likely to engage in dialogue with members and the public. In Canada, the IBEW is the most active and engaged in social media, perhaps as they have chosen to follow in the footsteps of their American counterparts.

Quick Summary
American unions are far more “discussion oriented” than Canadian unions. Unions in the US accept and engage with supporters and non-supporters and are more open in their dialogue. Canadian unions are less engaging with their audiences for the most part. Unions saw their most increased use of engagement in 2011. Prior to 2010, we saw very little usage. Mostly it was the IBEW and their use of YouTube for videos and rallying support.

We forecast increased use of social media by unions in the coming years and across more channels. Today, they are mostly using Twitter, YouTube, Blip.tv, Facebook and blogs as their platforms of choice. Production values of content have improved dramatically and they are integrating social media with traditional channels.

Methodology
To assess use, we first collected data from across all unions in the US and Canada. From here we parsed down the data and analysed which unions a) used the most channels, b) what was their influence and authority (our own algorithms and 3rd party tools such as Klout for verification), c) frequency of communications and d) participation with audience. These primary points were compared between 2010 and 2011. There was statistical variation allowance for populations and unions size to enable more accurate comparions. Based on the above criteria, we assigned a “rank” from 1 to 15 with a 15 being very engaged and 1 being hardly engaged at all (perhaps just 1 or social media channels with little active use.) The data provided herein is the aggregate of that collected for client research projects and does not provide confidential information given to clients.

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.