The role of social media in civic engagement has been a hot topic ever since the Arab Spring brought the role it can play to the attention of the world. Earlier this year the Pew Research Center produced a report into how social media impacts civic engagement.
It found that 40% of adults used social media as part of a political campaign during the 2012 presidential election. Interestingly, online engagement was largely found to have been done by the well-educated and affluent amongst us.
I have doubts about the nature of this engagement however. Whilst attending an event at Facebook earlier in the year, we heard from the Facebook employee responsible for their work with both presidential candidates, and it was telling how it wasn’t really engagement at all. He spoke almost exclusively about the advertising power of Facebook. In other words, it was a great platform for talking at voters rather than listening to and engaging with them.
Given the interesting projects being done around the world on participatory democracy it was all a bit disappointing.
Some new research took a deeper look into how social media influences our civil engagement and perhaps explains why Facebook was used just for preaching to the converted. It explored how different personality types react to social media in a political context. It found that there were distinct differences between how extraverts and introverts used social media politically.
Extraverted people, whilst open to new experiences, were found to use social media to reduce the heterogeneity of their social network. In other words, they used social media to engage with people just like them, thus further entrenching their views.
Introverted people by contrast were found to do the opposite, utilising social media to increase the heterogenity of their social network and thus take in a more diverse range of opinions.
Report abstract
“Using original national survey data, we examine how social media use affects individuals’ discussion network heterogeneity and their level of civic engagement. We also investigate the moderating role of personality traits (i.e., extraversion and openness to experiences) in this association. Results support the notion that use of social media contributes to heterogeneity of discussion networks and activities in civic life. More importantly, personality traits such as extraversion and openness to experiences were found to moderate the influence of social media on discussion network heterogeneity and civic participation, indicating that the contributing role of social media in increasing network heterogeneity and civic engagement is greater for introverted and less open individuals.”
So given that Facebook tends to attract the more extraverted type, it’s perhaps not all that surprising that there aren’t too many floating voters lurking about the place. Of course, this doesn’t get away from the failure of many in political life to do real engagement rather than one way communicating, but that’s for another discussion.
I don't know if social media users are better citizens, for I am not even sure what a "better citizen" truly means: one that gets involved politically? one that votes or lends a helping hand in community chores? one that participate in public forums, helping discussions or advancing specific opinions?
One thing for sure, though, is that social media gives a voice where there was none in the past, except for that one day every four years where one could express one's opinion through voting. I agree with the findings you mention in this post, and your disappointment attending the Facebook event. From what I've seen so far, politicians use social media mainly as yet another platform to send unidirectional messages to wider or different audiences. There is very little "engagement" on true conversations, for that matter. Nevertheless, there are odd exceptions that I hope will become more mainstream, where politicians and their communications teams, actually take time to answer or survey what folks think via twitter or Facebook. But for now, good examples are still few and far in between…
I think a fascinating new trend is the rise of crowdfunding sites for civic projects. There are a whole host of them popping up, and they seem a really good way of engaging people in what's happening locally. That'll be the topic of my next blog 🙂
Exactly. Too many politicians use social media to talk at people rather than listen. To be honest though, most companies do the same thing. They're probably both advised by the same social media 'experts'.
Social media was once an iffy area to venture into for many business. Many companies asked themselves whether it was even worth the time and resources or was it really a viable option. Well that ship has sailed and it has become increasingly important to really push your way through the online social media space.