Social Media and “The Great Turning” Part IV: People Interacting with People

Wikipedia talks about social media transforming the traditional media monologues, which were made up of one person or group speaking to a passive audience of many people, into a dialogue of the many people communicating with the many people.

The heart of social media is the interaction of individuals as they capture, produce, distribute and engage with information through e-mails, blogs and web site comments. Social media is the social interaction of people connecting directly with people, rather than with systems, organizations, governments, authority figures, or gurus, to communicate, share, create, collaborate, and participate together to produce media information, analysis and news in words, photos, and videos. The information is received by ordinary people who are the judges of its intrinsic value.

Both Facebook and Twitter have live, ongoing streams of news and information, called “social feeds”, consisting of activities, photos, videos, comments and thoughts from friends who send new information onto the recipient’s home page every second all day long.

Friends on these sites are trusted by the recipient who gives them the authority to suggest what is worthwhile to read, watch and take part in. As one example, in any given day, 200-2000 separate pieces of up-to-the-second information can pass through one recipient’s home page for perusal. The recipient still has the choice of what to pay attention to but the attention is going to social media, not mainstream, traditional media sources. If information is unique, creative, and newsworthy, it spreads virally on the site and it can do so as well over the whole Internet.

With social media, the recipient freely creates her own interconnected web of social engagement from all over the world, all walks of life, and all segments of society so she sees the world through her own prescreened world view. This interconnected web creates a global community that is engaged, interactive and interconnected around the issues that matter to that person. Every single ordinary person now has the opportunity to create her own news organization on the Internet in this way.

Anyone anywhere can witness and instantly report news as it happens with or without a particular perspective attached to it. Social media offers up-to-the-second information on the latest news trends which can go viral instantly. Now first-person social media stories are frequently breaking news at lightning speed before mainstream media even hears of it. As a result, the whole world is now connected, contacted, interactive and on the same page, instantly.

During 9/11 many accounts of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center came from ordinary people who made major contributions to the story. In 2004, videotapes from many ordinary people experiencing the huge tsunami in Indonesia were widely broadcast. During the 2009 Iranian election protests, Twitter played an important role after foreign journalists were prevented from reporting. In South Korea, OhmyNews became successful with the motto, "Every Citizen is a Reporter." Founded by Oh Yeon-ho on February 22, 2000, most of its content comes from an estimated 50,000 mostly freelance contributors who are ordinary citizens. It has been credited with transforming South Korea's conservative political environment.

A much earlier example of the very significant, interactive power of social media, from 1991, is the videotaping of Rodney King’s beating by Los Angeles police. Four LAPD officers were tried in court and acquitted. The acquittals sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots. A later federal trial ended with two officers found guilty and imprisoned. Without that event having been recorded by a plumber, George Holliday, the world would probably never have heard that particular story and the world was changed as a result of that story.

In the midst of the riots, King uttered a statement that is remembered to this day for its simple power: "Can we all just get along?"

An ordinary person interacting with other ordinary people changed the world for the better thanks to the citizen collaboration that was made possible with social media.