Social Technology & The New Tension Between Citizens and Government

There’s a “connectivity gap” between governments and citizens when it comes to social media. That’s no surprise and it’s well known. But why and how did that come about? Through projects in our Public Sector Policy Research practice, we’ve come to gain some insights into the reasons. At a high-level, this is what we’re seeing for developed state governments.

Catching Up
For the last century or so, the interaction between citizens and government was rather well established. Policies were in place based on an understanding of where citizens, government and economics intersected. This was because the routes of communication were clearly defined; mail, phone, fax and personal meetings. Industrial news media had a defined role and the rules of connection were known, the players and their roles established.

Social media technologies and the Web as a whole changed the roles and rules. Governments however, are still catching up. “Well, of course” you say.

It’s The Citizens Fault
Governments are large. They know they have to, and are, trying to catch up. But the technologies move so rapidly and more to the point is that “how” the tools are used changes even faster. As citizens, we adopt tools like Facebook and Twitter and often end up using them in ways the original inventors hadn’t planned. It is unrealistic to expect government agencies and departments to adapt as quickly as citizens. When governments implement new ways of connecting with citizens and the private sector, there are implications. Without proper consideration that can mean breaches of privacy for people, companies and other organizations.

The Bigger Challenge Is
Governments understand a need to adapt and adopt a lot of these new technologies. But beyond the issues of privacy or management of information is an even bigger challenge – the changing expectations of citizens regarding their input to the process of governance and the expectations of governments transparency and performance.

These new social technologies and more critically, the digitization of vast amounts of data with  subsequently powerful new ways of visualizing and interpreting such data creates a new set of tensions. Governments are increasingly releasing data to the public allowing them ways to manipulate and interpret that data (the Sunlight Foundation is a great example.) And so citizens are. As they interpret this data or add other data sets into the mix and then use social technologies to communicate and drive change, it creates a challenge for government. How to then respond and make use of that data.

This is the underlying set of tensions, we believe, that governments in developed (and some developing) nations, face. Private sector businesses and organizations are also finding themselves in a similar space. This also translates into the political sphere; thus the relationship between the citizenry, economy and polity are undergoing immense levels of tension where they connect. And as usual, the economy and the citizenry are the moving faster and adapting. This set of tensions will create enormous pressures on governments at the political and operational level in the coming years. The US federal government recognizes this and has formed the CIO Council and has a chief information officer; certainly a vital and positive move to adapt. Similar measures are underway in the UK, but few other countries have taken such a significant step.

What do you think?

Civilizations and Social Technologies

If you’re still in the mindset that it’s just kids using social media, then you’ll more than likely entirely miss the point of the rest of this blog entry. And if you think social media is just about marketing and silly videos, images and text, you’ll completely miss it. If you also don’t think a tweet in China makes a difference in the world, it’s time to buy a cabin in the woods. Way far away.

Last Saturday, Saudi Arabia unlocked Facebook after reviewing what it called “moral concerns” with content. Pakistan and Bangladesh have done the same. The government of Belarus shut down the mobile network during elections. A young mayoral candidate in Calgary won recently by leveraging social media tools, Obama use social media tools to raise vast campaign funds.

In our ongoing research across many geopolitical sectors, we are increasingly finding a growing influence by both secular and religious groups looking to influence political affairs. Nothing new. But what is interesting is how various groups are beginning to harness the power inherent in these tools. And how they can expand their influence both online and into the real world. For those that might dismiss many of these displays of activism as mouse-click protests only, that too is changing.

Such groups all start with ideas and concepts that are refined into dogma and positions. With social technologies they can be better defined and shaped through collaboration or seeming collaboration. From there they seep into the real world through petitions, organized street protests and lobbying of governments.

Today we’re in the opening acts of how these technologies might be used. Countries like the Ukraine, Belarus, Iran and others are figuring things out quickly, yet still nascent in their application. Yet they have impacted foreign policy decisions by governments – such as the US State Department requesting Facebook delay its server maintenance during the Iranian elections.

Social technologies are about society, not just organizing parties and sharing silly photo’s and videos. The questions then become – when and how will things change?

Top 10 Hottest Topics on Societal Issues in Social Media

Social Media is nowhere near being used braodly for bigger social change in developed nations, like it is in Iran or Sudan or the Ukraine. Eventually it will be. We wanted to look at what were the hottest societal topics in Social Media channels.

But it seems that for Social Media to be the underlying technology that enables broader social change, as a society, we aren’t mad enough about a major topic; it’s just too fragmented. Yet. The undercurrents are there. Here’s a look at the largest social issues we see trending in Social Media channels (Sept. 2008 to March 2010);

1. Financial Crisis: It remains top of the list across the U.S., Canada and UK (where we conduct our research.) A number of sub-topics feature in here (i.e. lending practices, citizen and government debt.)

2. Corporate Greed: Ties into #1 but is more related to issues around corporate leaders, their bonuses and making too much money; perception or otherwise. The volume of discussion was high enough to warrant it’s own segment.

3. Aid Relief: Over the past two months this has mostly been focused on Haiti, but China’s recent earthquake trended upwards for a few days.

4. National Politics: It’s hot, but not that hot. In the U.S. it’s Tea Party related, in Canada it was Proroguing Parliament and ongoing scandals and in the UK it was MP expenditures followed by the election. Debt related we placed into the financial crisis.

5. Iraq & Afghanistan: Perhaps this can also be said of foreign policy of U.S., Canada and UK. But it mostly focuses on Iraq and Afghanistan – in a negative manner. Broad public support is not there.

6. Energy: This is trending upward. Discussions revolve around alternative energy sources such as solar power and are negative towards our reliance on fossil fuels.

7. Healthcare: While this ranked very high in the U.S., Canadian and UK discussion is there but brought the overall ranking down.

8. Food: We see a lot of discussion going on around food, namely the source of our food and then as it relates to our health. This is fairly equal across the U.S., Canada and UK.

9. Climate Change: Could be categorized with energy, but we see this as a separate issue since it covers energy, industrial pollution, foreign and domestic policy and the G8. While discussion goes on across Social Media channels, it is surprising to us it is not higher up the list.

10. Privacy: It’s out there, perhaps on the low side, but the launch of Google Buzz and other apps has kept it simmering in the background.

Methodology:

Using mediasphere360, we looked into the blogosphere, newsgroups, forums, microblogs, social networks (10) and 256 non-profit websites for traffic rankings. We used a set of common keywords around the issues above. Keywords were identified by using Google Insights. We then filtered out celebrity discussions and entertainment properties. The search methodology and analysis as it relates to our technology are proprietary to MediaBadger. Searches were refined to U.S., Canada and UK (colonies and territories excluded.)

Ad Agencies Biggest Challenge With Social Media

Social relevance. Social Media is constantly evolving with meme’s, brand discussions, product rants and raves, funny concepts and ridiculous to the sublime for content. Generated by people as we know. Yet advertising has traditionally been a reflection of society.

Social Media, with so many channels (there’s over 60 different types of Social Networks) and so much happening so fast, it’s increasingly harder for an ad agency or market research agency to keep up. Funny and innovative content on the Web changes so quickly that by the time a creative director finds a clever way to tie in a product to a TV, radio, print or online ad, the concept is stale and the ad flops. No matter which medium it is carried in.

Then an ad appears or some form of campaign, it goes viral and reaches even beyond the original target audience that in effect it has no real effect on product sales as it was intended.

Print advertising as with radio, are still key elements for real marketing. Perhaps more so in one sense. Yet they are challenges for the ad agency who wants to find something of relevance across all mediums, in a timely manner.

Agencies will be under increasing pressure to generate creative concepts ahead of the consumer who is creating the content themselves.

What do you thunk?

(Author: Giles Crouch)

Will Social Media Kill Marketing As We Know It?

One of Canada’s top marketing minds, Mitch Joel, rightly asks that if the big companies and marketers have truly delved into the Social Media sphere, then is Social Media dead?

I wonder if perhaps the reverse is more true? Is marketing dying as a result of Social Media? Let’s face it, marketers walk an uneasy line of stretching the truth and so it’s no wonder that only 14% of people trust advertisements. As marketers, we’ve gone and shot ourselves in the foot.

Social Media is a ray of sunshine into media channels previously controlled by gatekeepers (editors, journalists, broadcast network owners)…and don’t they say sunshine is the ultimate disinfectant?

Each company that has waded into Social Media channels with a heavyweight or heavyhanded approach has suffered; Motrin, Nestle with Facebook (just this past week!), JetBlue, Rogers and so on.

It’s still far, far too early to make any concrete predictions when it comes to Social Media (no one is truly an expert yet in this space) and perhaps all we can say is that it will change. Quite significantly. People are only just finding their voices.

I suspect Social Media will thrive, while it is marketers (I’ve been one for nearly 20 years) will be the ones to suffer and businesses will adapt in whole new ways. Eventually. In the meantime, it’s going to be a rocky road…

What do you think?

(Author: Giles Crouch)