Social Networking Cmte.

4.27.11

Proposed Agenda:

  • Debrief Social Media Use since 3.17.11 meeting
  • Using Social Media for May 5 Recruitment & Engagement
  • How Chapter s Might Choose to Use Social Media (Added by Joan)
  • Developing Plan to Educate Ourselves

Attendees:

Staff: Fran Clark (chaired meeting), Peter Hogness, Albert Munoz , John Tarleton, Naomi Zauderer

Open Flows: Eric Goldhagen

Members: Kathleen Baker, Pennee Bender, Bill Friedheim, Joan Greenbaum, Andrea Vasquez

Andrea Reports on Twitter

Andrea:PSC CUNY had 30-40 Twitter followers before March 23rd action, 140 now, most came in run up to and day of the CD action. Tweets during the day included comments from members on the bus ride up. All agreed that to-the-minute updates and tweets of media coverage were exciting.

After the event, Andrea reports tweeting at least once a day. She tweets one item from This Week but has also other updates, and some forwards (retweets).

Mike Fabricant forwarded impressions to Andrea from March 30 occupation of the Capitol. Fran reported seeing retweets of some of our postings from other groups that were tweeting the action.

Andrea reports seeing our tweets about May 5 retweeted by AQE and other groups.

Andrea reminds us that twitter etiquette requires that we not just tweet self-promotion and “official business,” but that we also tweet related news, announcements from coalition partners, and updates about local chapter events.

Peter suggests that we need a streamlined decision/vetting process so we can post related article and partner-groups’ announcements in a timely fashion.

Andrea (and others) discuss lack of clarity re thresholds/criteria that warrant a post from the central twitter account about chapter events—Andrea chose not to tweet an event from her chapter because she thought it was unfair that she would highlight that event for no reason other than that she was our “tweeter.”

It was suggested that we email Andrea with articles that might make sense to tweet.

It was decided that Twitter ideas should be added to the weekly communications meeting agenda.

Joan suggested that we might want to ask chapters to set up twitter accounts.

Andrea notes that expanding the number and types of items that we tweet may require more tweeters, and suggests that we consider divvying up tweeting duties.

Bill:The Twitter feed block on the website seemed successful. Others concurred, and Peter noted that it’s a good way to drive people back to the website. Bill reminds us that it’s easy to turn on and off.

Peter :Twitter is also a good organizing tool for organizing groups at events. Example: communicating a meet up point at a rally. Fran suggested using Twitter as a means to facilitate marshalling for May 5. Others thought it was an interesting idea. (The organizers didn’t use Twitter. Fran didn’t get a chance to ask them if it could be helpful.)

Fran Reports re Facebook

Fran felt Facebook didn’t do much for turnout but that it did a lot to increase the visibility of the March 23 action, and it offered an easy way for members to show support when they were unable to attend. We posted some photos of the event as it was happening but not many. The best use of the Facebook page was the quick updates of media coverage that went up throughout the day of the 23rd.

Statistics from the March 23 FB page: 270 “likes” (followers), 11,300 views, 53 posts by members. Traffic spiked on the 23rd and fell off completely after that.

Facebook has been much less helpful for May 5, partly because we can’t migrate the followers from the March 23 page to the May 5 page. We have to start from scratch. Page stats: 72 likes, 361 views, zero posts by members (except for two very negative posts added after this meeting took place, which compared BB and Marcia Newfield to Pol Pot, Shylock and Iago. Fran deleted the post comparing them to Pol Pot but left up the post that was critical without being outrageous.)

After a question from Joan about why we chose fan pages, we discussed the need to start and maintain a PSC Facebook (FB)page, rather than one-off fan pages for events. The usual concerns about creating a forum for opposition to badger the union was discussed. Fran acknowledged the risk but said he believed that positive posts would outweigh negative posts and that negative posters could end up getting lots of replies from supporters if we can establish a real online community. Kathleen brought up the possibility of the page being used for internal union politics (elections).

Kathleen also brought up worries about privacy and was concerned that many faculty won’t use Facebook because it provides another venue for students to be in even more touch with faculty when some/many of us are already deluged with emails.

There was discussion, prompted by Bill, about doing a survey to determine FB use among members—just a paper survey handed out at chapter meetings. The value of the data we would collect was questioned and the amount of work it might take to do a survey well didn’t seem worth the trouble. Andrea made the point that even if our members are slow to join (it’s not clear that they are) we need a FB presence because it has 500 million users. Fran pointed out that older women are now the largest growing demographic among FB users and that many older faculty would use it, at least, to look at family photos.

Joan and Andrea and others suggested that we explore asking chapters to start Facebook pages too.

Naomi said that she thought it was time to create an official PSC page.

Bill Reports on the Website

The web site has a comments function that can be turned on for most postings. We have entered into this area slowly for the same reasons that we’re careful about FB. We’ve started with the Polls feature. We have posted several polls with an eye toward prompting comments and have gotten very few comments. (We have promoted some of the polls in This Week).

Bill raised the idea that Andrea originally brought up of setting up a moderated space where members can comment on an issue that we choose.

Workload was suggested as a topic. We could set up a space where members can post and comment about how workload requirements are affecting them. Bill said we should ensure that junior faculty are able to post anonymously. (They can identify themselves as anything they want but they have to give a name.) Naomi suggested that we encourage posters to use pseudonymslike in Dear Abby (Exhausted at Brooklyn College and so on). The idea had general support, but all agreed it should be brought to the leadership.

Joan suggested that a social space on the site would be good for Health and Safety topics too, and cited the experience of doing the Workplace Violence Prevention walkthroughs. Members could post stories about their health and safety concerns and feel supported by their colleagues. Also, the union would have a repository of these stories to act on and use in campaigns.

Bill made the point that the social spaces on the website should also connect with the intellectual pursuits of our members. All agreed.

Educating Ourselves

Fran pointed us to the Facebook Training outline from Organizing for America that he emailed out before the meeting.

Pennee suggested that we investigate other unions’ use of social media on FB and on their sites and twitter. We named the WFP, UFT, NYSUT, AFT, AAUP, UUP, CFA, NEA, PEF and CWA 1180as organizations that we should look into—Bill, Naomi and Fran agreed to do some research on that.

Questions to answer:

What do we want to ask of our members?

How do we protect ourselves from negative attacks and avoid ugly politics while making the site and our other social media efforts truly social?

Other ideas

Joan agreed that these were serious concerns but said that she though social media could be a critical part of a contract campaign.

Fran pointed out that posts about innocuous, even silly, subjects would be helpful too—that you’ll often see 50 replies to a post on an organization’s FB page that just asks what are you doing for Memorial Day. He suggested a post asking members to recommend union-friendly/progressive children’s books or favorite union-themed movies. There was agreement that this would be good.

Bill suggested that we ask members to recommend themes or movie for next year’s Labor Goes to the Movies series. Members could vote on the entries that they see posted.