Does Social Media Really Empower Local Communities?

Does social media really empower local communities?

Social media can help to connect communities but it is not a shortcut to higher participation, says MandeepHothi

Picture: Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, presenting at a conference

Social networks, such as Facebook, are useful tools for connecting communities but they are not a shortcut to higher community participation. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

By: MandeepHothi

Thursday 1 March 2012 01.30 EST

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Social media has the capacity to alter traditional power dynamics. Consumers can influence the buying decisions of others by sharing their experiences of purchasing products or services online. Major industries find themselves disrupted by file sharing and citizen journalism, while governments have been challenged by citizensmobilised with the help of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The Young Foundation wanted to test whether social media could empower local, geographical communities. So we set to work with several community groups in Huddersfield, King's Lynn and north Kensington.

Across these areas we supported residents who wanted to use social media to develop relationships between neighbours, increase awareness of local news and events, and ultimately encourage more people to get involved in community action.

So three years on, what have we learnt?

Our experience suggests that social media is not the shortcut to higher participation that we all hoped it might be. On the websites and social networks we helped residents set up, the numbers of people who are engaging in conversation with each other is quite small. It varies amongst sites, but the highest is around 10% of network members.

Community activity online seems to be driven by a handful of committed individuals, just as it is in the offline world. Why is this?

Well, participation is about people, not technology. Social media may remove some barriers to participation, such as time, but it does not really affect more important determinants of participation; our motivations, values, desire to belong or have influence (read the Pathways through Participation report for more about this). These factors underpin our sense of efficacy and if you believe that you can change things, you are much more likely to act.

For local communities, this sense of efficacy is also influenced by the attitude and capability of agencies like the local authority to listen to local people and act. Most local authorities actively engage with communities, but all too often it is through tiresome meetings where progress is slow, so only a few residents get involved.

We hoped that the spread of social media would change this; just as with major industries, citizens would use social media to force more interesting and responsive channels of decision-making, rather than waiting for local authorities to change on their own accord. But I do not see much sign of this happening anytime soon.

This conclusion is liberating. It means that we can free social media from the constraints of grand aims like reviving local democracy and concentrate on more humble ways it can help communities – of which we have found plenty.

We found that social media really helped activists to network and communicate better with one another. It meant that information flowed much quicker than it did before, with activists no longer dependent on meetings or chance encounters on the street to share news.

It makes community activity much more visible. Simply being able to observe means a wider group of people are informed, even if they choose not to take their involvement further.

We also found that email and SMS messaging should not be ignored in favour of newer social technologies. Email and SMS meet the needs of most residents, who want to regularly receive local information but do not want to use the web to make contact with neighbours. This finding is reinforced by the results of a survey we conducted in two London neighbourhoods, where only 8% of people said they contact neighbours online, but nearly 50% use the web to find local information.

On those occasions where residents do need to make contact with their neighbours, it can often be to request help or support. On one of the community websites we helped create, a girl joined up specifically to ask residents for help finding her missing dog. What followed was a fantastic show of support from several active members of the network; they didn't find the dog, but they tried. The site had given the girl easy access to a small group of people who were willing to help.

These are the kind of things that social media can do for a community. There will be occasions where social media amplifies the unexpected – a story that mobilises a community or revelation that shocks the establishment. But most of the time it will form part of a communication network that spans email, SMS and face-to-face which helps underpin existing activity, strengthen and broaden it a little. Not a shortcut to empowerment, just a really useful tool.

The Negative Effect of Social Media on Society and Individuals

by Brian Jung, Demand Media

Social networking allows users to easily meet and communicate.

Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to find and connect with just about anyone, from a coworker in a neighboring cube to the girl who played Emily in your high school production of "Our Town" thirty years ago. Browsing these sites can make you feel connected to a larger community, but such easy, casual connection in an electronic environment can also have its downside.

According to Cornell University's Steven Strogatz, social media sites can make it more difficult for us to distinguish between the meaningful relationships we foster in the real world, and the numerous casual relationships formed through social media. By focusing so much of our time and psychic energy on these less meaningful relationships, our most important connections, he fears, will weaken.

Cyber-bullying

The immediacy provided by social media is available to predators as well as friends. Kids especially are vulnerable to the practice of cyber-bullying in which the perpetrators, anonymously or even posing as people their victims trust, terrorize individuals in front of their peers. The devastation of these online attacks can leave deep mental scars. In several well-publicized cases, victims have even been driven to suicide. The anonymity afforded online can bring out dark impulses that might otherwise be suppressed. Cyber-bullying has spread widely among youth, with 42% reporting that they have been victims, according to a 2010 CBS News report.

Decreased Productivity

While many businesses use social networking sites to find and communicate with clients, the sites can also prove a great distraction to employees who may show more interest in what their friends are posting than in their work tasks. Wired.com posted two studies which demonstrated damage to productivity caused by social networking: Nucleus Research reported that Facebook shaves 1.5% off office productivity while Morse claimed that British companies lost 2.2 billion a year to the social phenomenon. New technology products have become available that allow social networks to be blocked, but their effectiveness remains spotty.

Privacy

Social networking sites encourage people to be more public about their personal lives. Because intimate details of our lives can be posted so easily, users are prone to bypass the filters they might normally employ when talking about their private lives. What's more, the things they post remain available indefinitely. While at one moment a photo of friends doing shots at a party may seem harmless, the image may appear less attractive in the context of an employer doing a background check. While most sites allow their users to control who sees the things they've posted, such limitations are often forgotten, can be difficult to control or don't work as well as advertised.

Psychologist: Social Media Causing A ‘Distancing Phenomena’ To TakePlace

Regina F. Graham

April 16, 2014 2:12 PM

WASHINGTON (WNEW) — With over 73 percent of online adults now using a social networking site, social media has dramatically impacted the world in both positive and negative ways. It has left many people to wonder how and if social media can mentally affect people.

Lemoyne College professor of psychology KrystineBatcho believes that social media has made changes for the better and also not so great for society.

“Overall we’ve benefited greatly from social media as a society,” Batcho said. “But I think there are a lot of fears of what’s happening that we’ve made interactions with other people too impersonal and a distancing phenomena is taking place.”

Batcho explained that what a person does in cyberspace is quite different than what someone can do face-to-face in an actual conversation.

“Cyber-bullying is a great example of how social media communication differs from face-to-face,” Batcho, who has been a licensed psychologist in New York state for over 30 years, stated. “Studies suggest that it takes place in a more extreme way over social media because the authors feel no responsibility.”

In recent years, there have been several instances where teens and adults have committed suicide because of being bullied over social media by their peers, Batcho added.

“They probably wouldn’t engage in bullying activity if they were face- to-face because of the consequences if they were caught in person by authority figures,” she said. “There’s a lot of ambiguity with social media, especially with the next generation developing social media skills.”

In addition to cyber-bullying via social media, Batcho noted that social media usage by teens and younger kids sparks a greater fear for some in society.

“The greater fear of what’s perhaps taking place is that kids are not learning how to behave in a face-to-face conversation,” Batcho explained. “What could be happening in cyberspace may not translate to real life. What you do you in cyberspace is quite different than what you do face-to-face and kids may be losing those important social skills.”

Michael S. Broder, Ph.D., who is a renowned psychologist and bestselling author, agrees with Batcho.

“I think that with kids, it’s a lot easier to communicate certain things online than it is to in person,” Broder said. “Easier, I mean kids who have a problem relating socially have found a way to avoid learning those skills and I don’t think that’s a good thing at all.”

Broder, who is the author of Stage Climbing: The Shortest Path to Your Highest Potential, added that using social media can have numerous negative outcomes that can affect a person’s mental health.

“The bullying, the things that happen that have unintended consequences, sexting in conversations over social media, and sending nude pictures around, are all things that are permanent once online,” Broder explained. “It’s sent all over the place and these are things that can haunt you 20 to 30 years later. That’s the downside of it and I don’t think there has to be regulations, but parental supervision. Kids don’t seem to think long term when they do those kinds of things.”

Broder, an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy, shared that he has seen several situations where social media has mentally affected people, including some of his adult patients.

“I’ve certainly seen situations where people have had adverse effects when things that they posted and thought that they were going to be seen by just their community of friends, somehow winds up getting more main stream than that it,” Broder said. “It can happen easily and I’ve seen people have real regrets about it.

“I had somebody tell me once in a session, that they really thought Facebook was a good thing, but she thinks they should outlaw it because it cost her her reputation at work,” he added.

According to a Pew Research study, 63 percent of Facebook users visit the site at least once a day with 40 percent doing so multiple times throughout the day. The study also found that roughly 71 percent of online adults are Facebook users as of December 2013.

Batcho feels that there’s no doubt social media, including sites like Facebook, can mentally affect some people.

“There’s no doubt that when social media is used in place of real connections, that it can mentally cause a number of things to happen to them,” she stated. “Many people are talking about an addiction to social media and that people have become dependent on it. It has brought on anxiety and has made some people feel nervous or worried when they can’t access it.”

She added that when people start to view social media relationships in place of or better than real life experiences it could be used as an escape from reality.

“The greater the social media use over time, the life satisfaction decreases,” Batcho asserted. “I think why we have conflicting evidence at the moment is because we have to analyze the dynamics taking place. So for one person, social media could be very beneficial, but for another it could have a very negative impact on them. You have to think about what is motivating the internet experiences people are having in the first place to predict whether they will benefit or not on the relationship.”

Batcho explained that psychologically, real-life interactions and social media interactions do not meet the same needs when compared.

“Real life interactions add a whole extra layer to how people benefit with relationships for other people than cyber ones,” Batcho said.

Both Batcho and Broder agree that social media has more positive benefits for society than negatives citing how news is communicated globally through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and also that people can connect with others across the globe.

“Social media has allowed us to reach far beyond the ordinary fear,” Batcho said. “You can suddenly make social connections with people all over the world, people who share different world views, religions, values, and politics. I think the benefits trump the dangers or risks.”