Why internet forums, facebook and social media don't change much

Amhran Nua

A lengthy but well researched and thought-out article here on why facebook, places like boards, twitter, and other new wave social media aren't having the impact on protests and activism you might think. I don't necessarily agree with all of the conclusions, but its food for thought.

Some of the highlights:

Are people who log on to their Facebook page really the best hope for us all? As for Moldova’s so-called Twitter Revolution, Evgeny Morozov, a scholar at Stanford who has been the most persistent of digital evangelism’s critics, points out that Twitter had scant internal significance in Moldova, a country where very few Twitter accounts exist.

Nor does it seem to have been a revolution, not least because the protests—as Anne Applebaum suggested in the Washington Post—may well have been a bit of stagecraft cooked up by the government. (In a country paranoid about Romanian revanchism, the protesters flew a Romanian flag over the Parliament building.)

In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation.

“Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”

...

The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

...

The civil-rights movement was high-risk activism. It was also, crucially, strategic activism: a challenge to the establishment mounted with precision and discipline. The N.A.A.C.P. was a centralized organization, run from New York according to highly formalized operating procedures. At the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the unquestioned authority.

At the center of the movement was the black church, which had, as Aldon D. Morris points out in his superb 1984 study, “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement,” a carefully demarcated division of labor, with various standing committees and disciplined groups. “Each group was task-oriented and coordinated its activities through authority structures,” Morris writes. “Individuals were held accountable for their assigned duties, and important conflicts were resolved by the minister, who usually exercised ultimate authority over the congregation.”

...

In Germany in the nineteen-seventies, they go on, “the far more unified and successful left-wing terrorists tended to organize hierarchically, with professional management and clear divisions of labor. They were concentrated geographically in universities, where they could establish central leadership, trust, and camaraderie through regular, face-to-face meetings.” They seldom betrayed their comrades in arms during police interrogations.

Their counterparts on the right were organized as decentralized networks, and had no such discipline. These groups were regularly infiltrated, and members, once arrested, easily gave up their comrades. Similarly, Al Qaeda was most dangerous when it was a unified hierarchy. Now that it has dissipated into a network, it has proved far less effective.

gollem_1975

hmmm. don't know about facebook and twitter.

but I definitely owe some of the guys who posted on boards.ie, aam, propertypin a pint for helping me not to understand that "rent is not dead money" and "property prices can go up as well as down"

I would never have encountered the above views had I not been lurking on online forums while I was supposed to be working

facebook, twitter,youtube ( youporn ) and the www generally could be a reason why people aren't out on the streets though.

1) they have an outlet to express their feelings
2) they can be entertained very cheaply from the comfort of their own homes.

silverharp

it depends on your definition. Getting a placard and walking down O'Connell St. is such old hat. Its excellent on a personal level as the new media takes the passivity out of trying to digest whats going on around us. God help anyone who depends on RTE and the Irish Times!

dan_d

I'm not entirely sure about facebook and Twitter, but in terms of internet forums, I can kind of see why they don't have much of an impact.

As sources of information they're not bad - you're likely to hear/see things on Boards before they hit the headlines. Whether you believe every single thing or not, of course, is up to your own discretion, but often Boards, anyway, is quite accurate.

However it doesn't change the fact that people are in a room somewhere, in front of a screen. They don't feel any particular obligation or allegiance towards other posters. It's a damn site easier to hide behind an avatar on a site like this than it is to stand face to face with people, and go out and make your presence felt. Posting here takes a few minutes (or a few hours!) of your day. Going and trying to organise something and getting involved takes much, much more.

The one thing I will say that I'm finding a lot lately here, is that things are over-discussed, over-done on forums. Personally I'm unemployed, which is tough enough as it is. I often float around the politics forum during the day. But lately I'm finding I can't read it anymore. It's too depressing. Everything is doom and gloom, extreme reactions to everything, worst case scenario in everything. Anyone who suggests anything otherwise is almost instantly squashed and told not to be so stupid (reminiscent of the boom, when those who warned against getting out of control were told something similar - have we not learned?). Things are bad, but when you get up and walk outside your front door, and look around - REALLY look around - everyday, there are so many people out there trying so hard to keep things going...setting up groups, looking for volunteers, trying to run courses for the unemployed, trying to set up small businesses....there are still people out there who really, really care, and who are trying so hard to keep this whole show on the road, who are getting buried under the piles of misery and anger.

I'm going off the point, but what I'm trying to say is that I can no longer read Boards - this section - because it's hard enough being unemployed and trying to keep yourself optimistic without reading the yards of anger, misery and scorn that are written around here. I'm all for debate, but lately....there's not much debate, there's just depression. Added to the media and radio, it's too much to be honest.

The conclusion being that I can see why social media have little effect. They create and feed hysteria alright, but unless there are some well-organised people out there, who create groups or whatever, and then go out and follow up in the real world - the majority of people are quite happy to limit their involvement in events to posting on the internet.It requires very little of them.

Amhran Nua

Thats it Dan, its the weak ties versus the strong ties that the article is talking about.

Eliot Rosewater

Amhran Nua, I don't think you should lump boards.ie in with wastes of space like Facebook and Twitter. The latter two are useless in terms of debate; the former because of its culture ('grt nite last nite xx lol') and the latter because of its highly restricted format (I still can't get why people use/like Twitter).

Boards.ie is different because it offers a good opportunity to have proper debates with interesting and informed people holding views that are more diverse than one is used to encountering. Because of the democratic anyone-can-join nature of the forum no one view can monopolise a person's attention, and meaningless spin can be fought against.

The power of this is that it gradually creates informed people. The average boards.ie politics poster is, I think, better informed than the average man on the street. And this provides a problem for politicians, who are used to getting away with spin and meaningless rhetoric. Perhaps some day the political system will be forced to take note of the generation of informed voters this site has created, and get it's game together.

dan_d wrote: »

I'm going off the point, but what I'm trying to say is that I can no longer read Boards - this section - because it's hard enough being unemployed and trying to keep yourself optimistic without reading the yards of anger, misery and scorn that are written around here.

I see where you coming from dan_d, and it's something I feel myself. However I think a lot of this "doom and gloom" is a result of the economic times we are in rather than the specific attitudes of those posting here. When it comes to broad government policy I feel absolutely and thoroughly hopeless, and it's hard to ignore that.

Amhran Nua

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Amhran Nua, I don't think you should lump boards.ie in with wastes of space like Facebook and Twitter.

While I see what you're saying the general gist of the article was that in order to produce real activism, real social and political change, you need a dedicated and professional core of well organised people. So in that regard boards falls as far short as twitter or facebook, strong versus weak ties.

jmcc

Gladwell? 'Nuff said!

Regards...jmcc

Amhran Nua

jmcc wrote: »

Gladwell? 'Nuff said!

Regards...jmcc

I'm strongly tempted to register an account called "Gladwell" and post "jmcc? 'Nuff said!".

jmcc

Amhran Nua wrote: »

I'm strongly tempted to register an account called "Gladwell" and post "jmcc? 'Nuff said!".

Have a read of this then:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/30/malcolm_gladwell_no/

Gladwell has a certain appeal to people who like to think that they are smart - the Guardian readers and their Irish Times reader equivalents.

Regards...jmcc

Amhran Nua

jmcc wrote: »

Have a read of this then:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/30/malcolm_gladwell_no/

Gladwell has a certain appeal to people who like to think that they are smart - the Guardian readers and their Irish Times reader equivalents.

Regards...jmcc

And yet clearly enough people think he's got something worth hearing to prompt the register (which also has stories about how ginger hair may be a product of "crap" weather) to write a three page attack on him. However instead of insulting hundreds of thousands of people, I prefer to actually read the article and see does it make sense. And to a great extent, it does.

So instead of going after Gladwell, whose prior reputation, positive or negative, I was unaware of, maybe you might take the more constructive approach of reading what he actually wrote and criticising that instead?

jmcc

Amhran Nua wrote: »

And yet clearly enough people think he's got something worth hearing

Probably the same demographic who read the Irish Times technology section and believe some of rubbish that they read there.

However instead of insulting hundreds of thousands of people, I prefer to actually read the article and see does it make sense.

I would have thought the figure was in the millions.

And to a great extent, it does.

No. It mixes the usual Gladwell happy-clappiness anecdotes with sweeping generalisations and stupid mistakes.

The section on networks and hierarchical structures shows how utterly clueless he is about both. Wikipedia, despite its deceptively open nature is utterly hierarchical in nature. Some networks are quite hierarchical in nature and he tries hard to avoid this fact. The evolution of terrorism shows how little he understands that problem too. This is really the development of Asymmetric Warfare and Fourth Generation Warfare. But that stuff is probably a bit too unsettling for the happy-clappy audience for which Gladwell caters.

Regards...jmcc

Amhran Nua

There we go, that wasn't so hard now...

jmcc wrote: »

The section on networks and hierarchical structures shows how utterly clueless he is about both. Wikipedia, despite its deceptively open nature is utterly hierarchical in nature.

That's a reasonable point. However, wouldn't its tremendous success therefore support his underlying ideas?

jmcc wrote: »

Some networks are quite hierarchical in nature and he tries hard to avoid this fact.

Would that not make them hierarchies?

jmcc wrote: »

The evolution of terrorism shows how little he understands that problem too. This is really the development of Asymmetric Warfare and Fourth Generation Warfare.

Asymmetric warfare is not a recent development.

DeVore

Boards is awful at cooking me breakfast... its pants at it!!

Thats because its not designed to make me breakfast. Neither is Boards designed to foment protest or revolution.

We are a platform to allow people of all walks and types to educate and be educated. To discuss, share, engage and contradict, thats what we do.

I agree 100% with Eliot, people here, during the Lisbon treaty for example, got to see both sides being put forward in a robust debate. They got informed and informed people make informed choices. You cant hoodwink a man who's friends are cutting holes in the cloth to let him see.


DeV.

jmcc

Amhran Nua wrote: »

There we go, that wasn't so hard now...

I've had to drink two mugs of strong coffee to overcome the lobotomising effects of Gladwell's "arguments".

That's a reasonable point. However, wouldn't its tremendous success therefore support his underlying ideas?

The success of Wikipedia is due to it being free (thus beating other paid-for encyclopedias on the web) and the number of people using it. It is a similar argument to Metcalfe's Law about the value of telecommunications networks (that the value is proportional to the square of the number of connected users).

Would that not make them hierarchies?

And at this point, it becomes a mathematical issue covering graph theory and network theory.

Asymmetric warfare is not a recent development.

But the way that Gladwell does not appreciate the effects of the evolution of Fourth Generation Warfare, especially as it applies to terrorism, shows how trite nature of his assumptions are.

Regards...jmcc

Amhran Nua

That's more of an argument that boards is different to facebook or twitter, which it certainly is. In terms of clarifying information and getting different perspectives, its great. In terms of promoting actual change though, the strong hierarchy that Gladwell is talking about doesn't exist.

I know that's not the point of boards, but when you see so many posters complaining about this and that on so many forums, then stop and wonder why none of these people actually do something about it, you can find at least part of the reason in that article. The commitment and mutual reinforcement isn't there.

jmcc

DeVore wrote: »

Thats because its not designed to make me breakfast. Neither is Boards designed to foment protest or revolution.

We are a platform to allow people of all walks and types to educate and be educated. To discuss, share, engage and contradict, thats what we do.

I think that Boards.ie and sites like it are very much asynchronous whereas Twitter type sites are more synchronous in nature. A forum site allows people to think about and develop responses whereas Twitter is more conversational. Facebook isn't really a communications system so much as a performance/publishing system with a slight tinge of communications. Getting back in touch with people on Facebook would probably lead to e-mail/phone/face to face meetings where much of the real communications will happen.

Regards...jmcc

Amhran Nua

jmcc wrote: »

The success of Wikipedia is due to it being free

Ironically much of wikipedia's success has been attributed to the negative publicity it received after posting inaccurate articles about well known figures.

jmcc wrote: »

But the way that Gladwell does not appreciate the effects of the evolution of Fourth Generation Warfare, especially as it applies to terrorism, shows how trite nature of his assumptions are.

Can you clarify what you mean by these effects? According to the abovementioned wikipedia, they go back to the time of the Roman Empire, and earlier, if there is even such a thing as fourth generation warfare outside the self promotion of Lind. He's referring to the relative success of groups using these tactics as a reflection of their organisational structure.

southsiderosie

jmcc wrote: »

Gladwell has a certain appeal to people who like to think that they are smart - the Guardian readers and their Irish Times reader equivalents.

jmcc wrote: »

No. It mixes the usual Gladwell happy-clappiness anecdotes with sweeping generalisations and stupid mistakes.

I think Gladwell is prone to cutesy theories, and some of his cases (and his interpretation of them) are questionable, but I completely agree with his conclusions. The power of social media's ability to spark fundamental social change is vastly overstated.

I think the Obama campaign is a case in point: much was made of the fact that his campaign used social media to an extent never seen before in a modern election. But this missed the point that what really mattered for Obama were the small clusters of people who recruited their friends and neighbors to donate, make phone calls and go canvassing. The information may have spread online (and the donations flowed in from online), but the entire process depended on individuals leveraging their social networks in order to get people off their couches and on the streets for Obama. And the fact that so many of them also opened their wallets didn't hurt either. There is a huge literature on participation theory on the power of the "ask" in mobilization, and the "ask" means a lot more coming from a family member or neighbor face to face than from a random person or from an online appeal.

jmcc wrote: »

The section on networks and hierarchical structures shows how utterly clueless he is about both. Wikipedia, despite its deceptively open nature is utterly hierarchical in nature. Some networks are quite hierarchical in nature and he tries hard to avoid this fact. The evolution of terrorism shows how little he understands that problem too. This is really the development of Asymmetric Warfare and Fourth Generation Warfare. But that stuff is probably a bit too unsettling for the happy-clappy audience for which Gladwell caters.

Regards...jmcc

Actually I thought his section on networks was quite good. McAdam and Granovetter are the Grand Poobahs of social network theory when it comes to political mobilization. And there is a lot of research on how having 'strong ties' can sustain asymmetrical conflict; Roger Petersen's work on Lithuanian resistance fighters in the 1940s and 50s is an example. I think one issue he danced away from was the power of shared identity as a motivating factor, but nobody wants to hear about that these days...

Yes, Gladwell is selecting his cases to serve his point. But he's not writing an academic article, he's writing a short discussion piece. And it has definitely provoked discussion in the political mobilization networks that I used to be active in.

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

The power of this is that it gradually creates informed people. The average boards.ie politics poster is, I think, better informed than the average man on the street. And this provides a problem for politicians, who are used to getting away with spin and meaningless rhetoric. Perhaps some day the political system will be forced to take note of the generation of informed voters this site has created, and get it's game together..

Lord knows I spend way too much time on boards, and I have heard a lot here, but I might also argue that there is somewhat of a selection effect there. Yes politics posters are better informed, but one could argue that the fact that they are informed about politics is why they would seek out boards, not vice-versa. I do like the level of debate here, and the fact that there are both user and moderator expectations of a certain level of civility and "back-it-up"-ness (for lack of a better term), but I get the sense that people seek out boards because they are political junkies, rather than undergoing an unholy conversion once they arrive here.

jmcc

Amhran Nua wrote: »

Ironically much of wikipedia's success has been attributed to the negative publicity it received after posting inaccurate articles about well known figures.

Probably by "technology" journalists who don't understand what is happening. The paid-for encyclopedia sites generally don't allow search engine spiders to spider their content. Wikipedia actively encourages it to the extent it even makes its content freely available. This also creates clone sites that partially use Wikipedia content. People now tend to navigate by search engine when looking for anything outside of the set of their regularly visited websites. Thus they are going to hit Wikipedia on a lot of these searches. The other factor is that schoolkids and students also use Wikipedia and may exclude other sites because the have become used to Wikipedia providing the answers.

Regards...jmcc

Scofflaw

Having read the article, I'm slightly more on jmcc's side here. I agree with what he concludes about social media in terms of the weakness of links, but the whole "network not hierarchy" looks a bit like he's just bought a social media book - there's a germ of an idea there, but not much development.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

jmcc

southsiderosie wrote: »

I think Gladwell is prone to cutesy theories, and some of his cases (and his interpretation of them) are questionable, but I completely agree with his conclusions. The power of social media's ability to spark fundamental social change is vastly overstated.

Social media isn't so much a media as a communications system. How people use that system effects social change. It provides the tools for change rather than providing the spark for change The same dynamics are at work with the development of the web, mobile phone, television, radio, telephones, newspapers. Each of these reduced the cost, to some extent, of reaching an increasing audience more efficiently. In some respects, social media multiplies the one to one relationships whereas much of the preceding developments multiplied the effect of the one to many relationships. A lot of social media reduces the cost of these connections to the end user. The web had to deal with the per minute metering of connection time as did mobile phones. Television, radio and newspapers all had a very high cost of entry to the market for the broadcaster. The cost to the end user on a lot of social media networks is near zero (not quite zero as there are the background costs of electricity, connectivity).

I think one issue he danced away from was the power of shared identity as a motivating factor, but nobody wants to hear about that these days...

That would have created so many problems for his nice bite sized explanations.

Yes, Gladwell is selecting his cases to serve his point. But he's not writing an academic article, he's writing a short discussion piece. And it has definitely provoked discussion in the political mobilization networks that I used to be active in.

The problem with Gladwell's articles is that people accept them and do not bother to do any further reading or research.

Regards...jmcc

Rabble Rabble

Jmcc, are you playing the ball or the man?

The question is whether the social networks are useful for change. You seem to be arguing that

1) Gladwell is always wrong.
2) Social media is not really a media, but a communications system (actually both terms are synomous) and... Are not therefore useful for change.

jmcc

Rabble Rabble wrote: »

Jmcc, are you playing the ball or the man?

I haven't a clue about soccer.

The question is whether the social networks are useful for change. You seem to be arguing that

1) Gladwell is always wrong.

Not always. Sometimes he will get things right but the explanations can be very shallow. It is about social media rather than Social Networks though.

2) Social media is not really a media, but a communications system (actually both terms are synomous) and... Are not therefore useful for change.

It is the techie mind at work here. Perhaps they might be better described as predominantly one-way communication systems and predominantly multi-way communications systems. (I'm a techie rather than a sociologist.)

Television/radio/newspapers are good examples of the systems that multiply the one to many relationships. A presenter, DJ, journalist may have very few direct relationships (they don't actually know or talk to many of their audience in real life) with their audience and the broadcast nature of these systems serves to multiply what is essentially a one way flow of communications. The back channel is carefully controlled (the letters to the editor pages for example). Social media enhances or multiplies the one to one relationships in that the communications become more like a conversation even if the interchange lasts for a few sentences (as with Twitter). Two-way communication is at the heart of social media whereas it wasn't so critical in the previous systems. Social media is a far more powerful catalyst for change because it multiplies the effect of the one to one relationships whereas the others were based on multiplying the effect of one to many relationships.

Regards...jmcc

DeVore

Twitter and Facebook are centred around the PERSON. You have your Facebook/Twitter account and its all about you.

Here you also have a Boards account but after that, its all about the topic at hand.

No one here can measure the impact Boards is having because its vast but subtle... how many people read the threads here every day? Are you telling me they arent challenged by them? Perhaps forced to rethink a position or perhaps enlightened to how someone else out there thinks about a topic. Many dont, because they dont have the intellect or they are stuck in their opinion but many more do. They form a lot of the lurkers and who knows how many minds we have changed, how many eyes are opened, how many people are inspired.

I operate on a simple basis of "more open debate leads to more informed people and thats good."

DeV.

thebman

Twitter is a micro-blog and not likely to be successful at anything else. Politicians/celebrities/companies just use it as a spamming tool for free advertising.

Facebook is a slightly bigger of version of this that allows friends to talk etc... but still has the massive advertising side to it with fake accounts.

Boards.ie is a discussion forum. Yes you won't organise a revolution here but it isn't designed for that. In saying that it can be done using boards if like minded revolutionaries took to PM to organise themselves but they don't.

It isn't that boards doesn't facilitate that but people that want to protest don't talk about it so much as they've already reached the point that they time for talking is over in their minds and they feel there are many like them so they go out and organise the protest at which time the advertising social networking offers might be useful but the like minded people are unlikely to be on there because the time for talking is over as far as they are concerned :P

Nehaxak

Facebook has the ability to handle discussions with groups you can setup. However they're largely/vastly unmoderated and anything usually goes in regards what's said in them.
They could be expanded and greatly improved, moderated well enough they could provide an outlet for constructive debate.
Twitter has no option for such and nor do I "get" the point of twitter either.

What I would like to see, is an option on Boards to "post" a thread link to facebook - which would or could in turn invite more debate from people on that topic posted, who otherwise would never even have heard of these forums.

The Chavez topic recently, although it degenerated and was subsequently locked, could've been posted on Facebook and possibly encouraged users from Venezuela to air their own thoughts on matters.

Wibbs

jmcc wrote: »

Two-way communication is at the heart of social media whereas it wasn't so critical in the previous systems. Social media is a far more powerful catalyst for change because it multiplies the effect of the one to one relationships whereas the others were based on multiplying the effect of one to many relationships.

DeVore wrote: »

No one here can measure the impact Boards is having because its vast but subtle... how many people read the threads here every day? Are you telling me they arent challenged by them? Perhaps forced to rethink a position or perhaps enlightened to how someone else out there thinks about a topic. Many dont, because they dont have the intellect or they are stuck in their opinion but many more do. They form a lot of the lurkers and who knows how many minds we have changed, how many eyes are opened, how many people are inspired.

I'd agree much more with the latter. I do feel social medias direct power is way overhyped. Like southsiderosie suggests, talking about it, is a far cry from actually doing it. Which one could argue is more an Irish trait in many ways. An example might be a fitness forum. Loads of advice, but equally a regular appearance of those who ask for the advice ad nauseum, but who never see a gym or change their diet.

Indirectly however, it does and will have more and more of an effect. On the lurkers/content readers more than the users/content generators. Even if they never join they feel that they could and it reads like people just like them, which gives it more grassroots power.

IMHO How we'll really know it's working is when the old and controlled media try to fight back. Especially in this country, where for so long, from the formation of the state, the news producers of the state were either hobbled by those in power or directly controlled by them.

Eliot Rosewater

Obviously this particular issue is close to Amhran Nua's heart, what with his setting up a political party etc, so perhaps he might give us an insight into how that is going with particular regard to social media. Was there an expectation of the Internet that never materialised?

southsiderosie wrote: »

...I get the sense that people seek out boards because they are political junkies, rather than undergoing an unholy conversion once they arrive here

That's a fair point, though I don't think it's strictly the case.

Boards has the advantage of loads of non-political forums from which people come in to glance at the Politics forum every now and then (especially if they're angry!). I myself wasn't that into politics before I started looking at Boards.

May I also naughtily suggest that there's a difference between being politically interested and politically informed? I know lots of people (read: students ) who are obviously very motivated politically but who I would not describe as "informed".

thebaldsoprano

I think the difference between boards.ie and Facebook/Twitter echo Marshall McLuhan's catchphrase "The medium is the message". Posting a reply to a lot of the forums here is usually much more involved than an 'equivalent' contribution on Facebook, such as clicking the Like button. The sentiment may be the same for a contribution to each, but it will be articulated very differently.

As has been pointed out, a significant social change is unlikely to come out of a bulletin board, but they're very useful for disseminating and discussing information. It's a fair bet that these discussions have some significance, otherwise there wouldn't be well resourced groups around like the 50 Cent Party and Giyus.

A slightly odd example of the message getting skewed by the medium is the process you have to go through on Facebook to get updates from your local TDs. This involves clicking the 'Like' button and this goes on your profile - I don't particularly 'like' any of them!

Amhran Nua

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Obviously this particular issue is close to Amhran Nua's heart, what with his setting up a political party etc, so perhaps he might give us an insight into how that is going with particular regard to social media. Was there an expectation of the Internet that never materialised?

Initially the concept was to take ideas from all comers and batter them into shape in public discussion, which I roundly support as a good way to work out policies, as long as its fact based and these facts are presented to a reasonably impartial group for final decisions (hierarchical). Also the intention was and is to present these ideas online, and gauge interest. Thus far even as the ideas are developing, we've yet to come across legitimate arguments against the suggestions, in fact on numerous occasions well known commentators have come out with the same ideas, I assume without having heard of us.

Facebook was a complete waste of time, but the No to NAMA guys could tell you a lot more about that than me.

What southsiderosie was saying about the majority of contributors to political discussion sites, boards, p.ie, politicalworld, that other one that got shut down, attracting people who were interested in politics anyway is definetely true. If the idea of getting involved in politics strikes one as out of the way regardless, a discussion forum doesn't provide the impetus to change that in the vast majority of cases.

I'd say it holds true for even situations like the Lisbon vote, most of the people who benefited were the ones who were making an effort to get educated, and even most of them aren't going to have the time to read every in and out, rather picking on the arguments that were going the way they were leaning anyway and being satisfied with that.

What we got from the forums were a wide variety of entryist far left members, various onlookers from other affiliations, and a few people who genuinely wanted to contribute, I'd say it would be very unusual for them to have no prior interest in politics however.

Conventional mass media, doorstep canvassing, and polishing the parish pump (mostly the latter two) remain the only serious ways to gather political momentum in Ireland today, in my experience. People perceive too much distance between the keyboard and the real world to take real world steps.

The Raven.

thebman wrote: »

Twitter is a micro-blog and not likely to be successful at anything else. Politicians/celebrities/companies just use it as a spamming tool for free advertising.

Agreed, though some links are useful. You can add newspapers to that.

Facebook is a slightly bigger of version of this that allows friends to talk etc... but still has the massive advertising side to it with fake accounts.

Agreed also but with visuals. It is also useful for catching up with long lost friends. Some useful information and links are also of value.

Boards.ie is a discussion forum. Yes you won't organise a revolution here but it isn't designed for that. In saying that it can be done using boards if like minded revolutionaries took to PM to organise themselves but they don't.

You can, and they do. Perhaps the term ‘revolution’ might be an overstatement, but Boards.ie etc. have played a very important role in certain regional campaigns, by providing discussion, awareness, and encouragement to become active. This, in turn, has contributed largely to successful outcomes, though others may wish to claim the credit.

dan_d

In Amhran Nua's case, I'd imagine that the best approach would be to use Facebook/Twitter (preferably one or the other - I just don't understand why a group of any sort would require multiple accounts on the various social network sites), anyway use them to complement whatever you're doing, along with the doorstep canvassing, etc. Something like boards is useful to gauge public opinion, encourage debate and use to inform people of what you're doing, but spearheading a campaign or setting up a group solely by using social media will probably not work.

As I said Boards is an excellent platform for debate. My opinion earlier was just that - my personal opinion, that I'm finding it hard to keep myself optimistic and read the politics section of Boards lately - makes me want to walk out of my house, get on the first plane I find, and never come back! Along with making me feel like I'll never get a job again, with the way some people go on...

Brussels Sprout

dan_d wrote: »

As I said Boards is an excellent platform for debate. My opinion earlier was just that - my personal opinion, that I'm finding it hard to keep myself optimistic and read the politics section of Boards lately - makes me want to walk out of my house, get on the first plane I find, and never come back! Along with making me feel like I'll never get a job again, with the way some people go on...

+1

Sometimes after reading this I go out and expect to see the place in utter chaos. I'm almost pleasantly surprised that things seem almost normal. I get a little bit paranoid and wonder whether I'm doing myself any good reading all this stuff. Then other times I think that I'm in on this secret that nobody else seems to know about. But then when you dig a little under the surface and talk to people you start to notice the cracks. You hear about people losing jobs, or struggling with bills or even just not going on the usual holiday.
if nothing else reading threads here has kept me ahead of the likes of RTE and the papers and for that alone I'm grateful.

Amhran Nua

dan_d wrote: »

In Amhran Nua's case, I'd imagine that the best approach would be to use Facebook/Twitter (preferably one or the other - I just don't understand why a group of any sort would require multiple accounts on the various social network sites), anyway use them to complement whatever you're doing, along with the doorstep canvassing, etc.

True enough, however I'd say the best approach would be to start ten years ago and fix pot holes and fences and deal with local planning issues, that way we'd be in an ideal position to step in around now. The very fact that we're doing this at all should show we're a fairly resilient and resolute bunch, although we're none of us professional politicians, but if you haven't done your time at the local level, most people just aren't interested.

Even the Greens and the Lib Dems took twenty years to get anywhere.

Of course we could just get existing politicians to support us, but thats like getting a bank loan, you can't get it until you don't need it. How much support do you have now is the first question, not what do you stand for.

dan_d wrote: »

but spearheading a campaign or setting up a group solely by using social media will probably not work.

I'm on a first name basis with political editors the length and breadth of the country, we've been published nationally and gotten national and international airtime, and have an invitation to join several more well known shows on radio and TV for a chat and discussion. There's no shortage of interest by the mainstream media, its setting good ideas on the national level against the parish pump and getting people to actually get off their bums where things get tricky.

Anyway, back on topic, boards is indeed great for discussion, but real change? Doubtful.

DeVore

Dan_D.... If there is one person who has inspired me throughout my life its Bill Hicks. People here often parrot what they hear and read in the media.

The start of this if for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKDSQ5Hcds4

DeV.

dan_d

Aww thanks DeVore! :D:D
Having a bad weekend, is all.:o