social media

Today's topic: oversharing. I will admit I'm a repeat offender. I can't count the number of times I've been enjoying a meal with a new acquaintance and inexplicably started sharing personal information in excessive detail. Before I know it, the words are just rushing out of my mouth like water from a broken dam, and there is literally nothing I can do to hold them back. Usually my oversharing is forgiven; occasionally I'm delighted to find it matched, or even one-uped, by the person across the table; and, yes, every now and then, it's met with visible discomfort and the notable lack of a follow-up get together, but overall, it's a relatively harmless vice.

Having slightly more potential for harm, however, is the habit of oversharing online. It's no secret that we at Social Citizens are all for being active online. We love to see people blogging, tweeting and posting videos about their thoughts on issues, brands, and experiences, but is there a point where all that social networking is TMI?

When I helped my dad sign up for Twitter over Christmas break, we had an exchange which demonstrates what I think is a common generational difference. He was a little bit horrified by the public nature of everything he was being asked to post on Twitter. He was not so sure about sharing his location, his photo, nearly anything he was doing or even his real name. ("Kristin, you have heard of identity theft, yes?")

According to the recent Pew study on Millennials, we're actually more wary of others than previous generations. Perhaps our penchant for transparency and our comfort online overcome this stated mistrust and lead us to post too much information about ourselves online because I hadn't really given much thought to the dangers of talking about myself in such a public way, and based on some of my friends' online activity, apparently neither have they. Whether it's airing private grievances, posting pictures I wish I'd never seen or just making your daily routine public, oversharing online can lead to discomfort and danger.

Foursquare is a fun application encouraging people to check out new places in their city, but we might need to think twice about how we use this and other location-based applications. Perhaps in an effort to rack up badges, some users have taken to checking in literally everywhere they go. (I am of the opinion that if someone cannot join you there, it's not kosher to check in.) In addition to annoying their twitter followers, these overzealous check-ins are also establishing their itineraries by chronicling when they get to work, when they go out for lunch, back to work, at the Dupont Circle metro (where they're clearly starting their commute) at the Clarendon metro (where they're clearly ending their commute) and at their apartment building. You do that every day for two weeks and as PleaseRobMe.com tries to demonstrate, you are giving opportunistic evildoers a leg up.

A recent survey indicated that the majority of Americans think it's wrong to friend your boss on Facebook. Likewise, an even higher percentage of bosses (62%) think being friends with their employees online is weird. I tend to disagree, but I'll concede that I have a particularly social media-friendly office environment. But the survey results touch on a common concern about sharing too much via social networks with coworkers, as well as potential employers, clients, students, exes or parents.

This concern is complicated by the fact that many people don't even realize who they are sharing all their information with through Facebook. Every now and then, there's an uproar about Facebook, and the changes to its privacy settings - who owns your information, who can see your information and whether you can really remove your information might surprise you. Nick O'Neill has a helpful list of privacy settings every Facebook user should know, or if you prefer, you can watch the video version. 

Where do you draw the line on talking about yourself online? And how do you take advantage of the utility and fun of social networks without putting yourself at risk?

Last month Allison Fine started an interesting discussion on her blog about women, social media and influence. Allison wondered if social media might be the X factor that would help women make real strides in closing the leadership gap. Among commenters, there seemed to be a general consensus that women, as well as other groups, have been able to circumvent, at least in some instances, the glass ceiling and constraints placed on them by the traditional business world. Women have been able to use social media to get their thoughts out to the marketplace without having to get permission or backing from an organization.

The Women of the Year list by She Takes on the World is full of women who have used social media to champion all manner of causes from the global water crisis and microcredit to idea-sharing and motivating young people to succeed. While all of these women would probably be making a difference without laptops and iPhones, they have been able to multiply their efforts with creative social media use.

Organizations like Blogher work to help women online by create opportunities for exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. A 2009 Blogher study reported that 42 million American women are using social media regularly both to share and find information and advice. The survey also found that more than 60 percent of these women use blogs and social networks to find information about social activism.

A recent Vanity Fair article, America's Tweethearts, discusses how previously unknown women representing different sectors and interests have been able to use social media to gain a unique kind of fame on Twitter. In the article (whose author doesn't seem to be entirely sold on with Twitter) one of the "twilebrities" featured, Felicia Day, points out: “Doors were closed to us before. Now the tools for success have been democratized. It’s just me and whoever wants to talk to me, wherever they are in the world.”

It doesn't take a celebrity spokesperson or even a twilebrity spokesperson to leverage social media for wide reach. Like an online flashmob, scores of women (and oddly, some men) began posting one-word status messages yesterday. "Black," "lavender," and "red" were littered among our news feeds, and quickly people began asking, explaining and commenting over the colorful posts, not only on Facebook, but on Twitter and other social media platforms. The Case Foundation's Allie Burns wrote a post discussing both the buzz and the criticism around the campaign. Whether a quietly orchestrated awareness by a breast cancer organization or a prank by a group of young women, it has created a discussion carried on by common women which has permeated the social media world.

It's exciting to see that social citizen gals are using social media to share their ideas and passions and to advocate for the causes that are important to them. And since Millennials may be the most active and engaged online, Millennial women - as individuals and as groups - may have a greater opportunity to be heard and wield influence at a younger age than the women before us. I hope, and trust, that we will continue to take advantage of this opportunity - not to grab self-serving fame for it's own sake, but to change the world with our creative approaches, open and transparent conversations and inspirational acts.

For better or for worse, globalization and innovations in technology continue to make the world smaller all the time. As we grow more connected, our issues and causes are less defined by our physical neighborhoods, cities and countries. Millennials are more globally aware and invested than were our parents' generation and we have already mobilized to fight genocide, malaria, human trafficking, climate change, water shortage and other global issues for people they have never met and may never meet.

We are reading the Economist along with the Washington Post, moving around every couple of years, and using social media which enables us to take part in global communities with people who care about the same causes we do – whether it’s Israeli-Palestinian peace, technology for good, empowering women in developing nations or supporting our alma maters.

As demonstrated by tools like peace.facebook.com, social media has the power to connect  people with very different backgrounds, religions and political beliefs to allow them to work toward solutions in global communities. Some of our community members we have met in person, some we have not, but we interact with them, collaborate with them and support them all the same. And as a result, Millennials increasingly see ourselves as citizens of the world, rather than just citizens of our local communities, and future generations are only going to move further in that direction.

With this changing definition of community and our concern for global issues, the definition of civic engagement and participation can also be more broadly defined. Most people say you have to move online activity to offline action to have real value and impact. I've said it myself. But are we moving toward a time when our goal, instead, will be to keep people online, but move them up the online scale of engagement? Civic participation basically includes efforts to work with a community to solve a problem – like volunteering, donating money, discussing community issues, staying informed and connecting with civic or religious groups. All of those things can happen online, and as the communities of Millennials and generations after us are decreasingly defined by location, much of our civic participation in those communities may have to be online.

What if these one-click actions like greening an avatar, adding a twibbon, voting or buying a virtual gift are embraced as low-level civic participation in global communities, rather than condemned as slacktivism? Does that change the way we think about their legitimacy as awareness techniques and moving these people up the scale of participation? I don’t hear people criticize efforts to raise awareness offline – like passing out flyers, putting campaign signs in yards, or wearing Livestrong bracelets – in the same way, but is it really different?

We now can volunteer online, donate money online, participate in online discussions and forums, ask questions in livestreamed events, shop online and therefore boycotts online, and soon we could be voting online. Obviously people still want offline interaction and opportunities, but it might not always be that way. Just as we are phasing out snail mail a few decades after email first became popular, many offline opportunities may be eventually phased out as well. Meaningful action is already taking place online, so instead of putting our effort toward converting online to offline, should we put our effort toward getting people comfortable with staying online and getting highly engaged in global communities there?

According to a recent study, the biggest barrier to increased support of causes online is a lack of trust – trust that their efforts would really help the cause. Embracing more online communities and forms of engagement does run the risk of increasing our feelings of isolation, detachment and distrust, as suggested by Robert Putnam, but further technology innovations may hold an answer. Jocelyn Harmon and Allison Fine wrote posts recently suggesting that social networks are beginning to rebuild our social capital and decrease isolation by increasing trust between the people we work with online. If rather than being critical of the current challenges of mobilizing people for a cause online, we should spend more time considering the solutions and opportunities. Not being able to gather in person is still seen as a challenge (among others), but if we continue to find more ways to increase real trust and reciprocity through social networks and other technology, we have the potential to form unstoppable global communities of action.

What do you think? Is this the beginning of more global communities and the beginning of the end for offline action in our global communities? What are some of the other challenges, opportunities and implications of thinking about online actions the same way we think about offline actions and not as simply a poor man’s civic action?

Guest blogger Brannon Cullum is a graduate intern at the Case Foundation, working on a Masters in Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University.

If you regularly tweet or follow users on Twitter, you may have noticed a particular hashtag popping up frequently over the past week. No, not #balloonboy, but #BeatCancer. The #BeatCancer campaign was one of the first successful efforts using a hashtag in an effort to raise money for a worthy cause.

As you may know, hashtags are keywords used to organize tweets around particular issues and makes searches easier.  #BeatCancer was a social media experiment spearheaded by Everywhere, a social media marketing and content development company. The goal of their campaign was to raise money for non-profit cancer organizations. Over a 24 hour period (from October 16 to October 17), people were encouraged to use the hashtag #BeatCancer in Twitter posts, Facebook status updates, and blogs. For every posting that included the hashtag, Ebay/Paypal and MillerCoors Brewing Co. agreed to donate a penny. It helped that the campaign was launched at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, where influential bloggers and social media users were congregating.

The campaign was judged a success from many standpoints, most notably by setting a Guinness World Record for the most widespread social network message in 24 hours, with the #BeatCancer hashtag included in 209,771 mentions over the 24-hour period. It also raised upwards of $70,000 for cancer research. This is quite a feat, since the launch of the campaign wasn’t covered by any traditional media outlets.

While the campaigns leaders and supporters can celebrate its success, what do we know about the thousands of people who retweeted the message? The skeptic in me wonders how many of them were actually aware of the purpose behind using the hashtag. A quick search of hashtag statistics shows that many people are still tweeting with #BeatCancer today, not realizing that the actual campaign ended days ago. This leads me to believe that these users aren’t exactly clear about the meaning and goals behind the campaign.

At the same time, even if a user retweeting a hashtag isn’t completely informed, he or she could be at a starting off place for learning more about an issue.Jocelyn Harmon recently wrote about using social media tools for advocacy and notes: It's true, there may never be a better substitute for in-person organizing. Face-to-face meetings fulfill a basic human need for connection and will always be central to helping us come together to learn about and care for one other. But newer online tools may be just the complement we need to rebuild and galvanize our American spirit of advocacy, volunteerism and giving.

The challenge of leveraging this new type of advocacy campaign is that hashtags could soon become the new online petition or email forward. How often do you get a request from a friend to sign a petition for a cause they support, but you have no genuine or invested interest in it? In both cases, the cause is something you don't have to know much about, but simply participate in with a click. This runs the chance of becoming another example of "slacktivism." Evgeny Morovoz, a fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, cautions, "People go a little bit too far and they start campaigning on issues before actually thinking them through and verifying that the problem actually exists." (For more on slacktivism, see our previous posts here and here). 

If using hashtags is the next wave of campaigning, should we brace for a deluge of hashtags for any and all causes? With too many filling up Twitter feeds already, hashtags that are part of legitimate campaigns like #BeatCancer run the risk of being crowded out by silly and meaningless tags like #balloonboy. (#balloonboy, by the way, was tweeted over 48,000 times on October 15 alone and is still a Twitter trending topic.)

To successfully integrate the use of a hashtag into a campaign, it appears to work best if the message being retweeted also includes information about the meaning behind the hashtag. Instead of just tweeting, "#BeatCancer," a more effective tweet would be, "#BeatCancer Read more about it on beatcancereverywhere.com" or "Everybody use the #BeatCancer hashtag today. eBay/Paypal & MillerCoors are donating $0.01 every time you tweet it." Mihaela Lica, senior partner at Pamil Vision PR, shared some lessons she has gleaned after monitoring this campaign, including the need for greater transparency and clearer communications. Twitter has also begun defining "trending topics," the most popular topics users are tweeting about, on its platform. When you click on a trending topic, a brief statement appears that clarifies the significance of the topic. This is a step in the right direction. Whatthetrend.com also highlights current trending topics and the stories behind them.

What do you see as the pros and cons of hashtag campaigns? Did you participate in #BeatCancer?

Armed with just $45, a laptop, and a small hand-held camera, Mark Horvath set out on a journey that will forever change the face of homelessness in America.  I had the opportunity to catch up with Mark this afternoon as he made his way back to California following a cross country road trip that documented stories of the homeless through a series of powerful, raw, and unedited videos -- all of which can be seen on his vlog, InvisiblePeople.tv.

So, how do you raise awareness about a cause you are so passionate about with no money and no consistent resources to lean on? You put faith in the kindness of others, you leave a lot to chance encounters, and you leverage social media in ways that you never thought possible.

People often ask me, "what exactly is a social citizen?" it's Mark Horvath. Mark's work and his use of social media is extremely innovative, but it's more than that - he is the real deal. Perhaps there is no other individual that does a better job of explaining the plight of the homeless to the general public.  About fifteen years ago, Mark found himself on the streets of Hollywood and the purpose of his vlog is simple: to make the invisible visible.

I had the opportunity to turn the camera on Mark today, as he shared his thoughts about the power of social media to bring attention to homelessness.  But, recognizing we all have our individual passions, Mark encourages everyone to remember this, "people are listening, and you do have influence." It's what you choose to do with this influence that is truly powerful, and social media gives you the tools you need to take action and tell stories.

While Mark's Road Trip U.S.A. may be coming to an end, he will continue to share stories on Invisiblepeople.tv. For more ways you can get involved in addressing homelessness in your community, here are 10 actions you can take from Change.org.

This morning I was in a cab on my way to the airport when I decided to quickly scroll through my email and Twitter feed to see what I might miss while on the five hour flight from DC back to San Francisco. It was very rainy this morning when my plane took off -- nothing like the September 11, that I remember while working on Capitol Hill back in 2001. The sun was beaming off of the Capitol dome and the clear blue skies created a surreal feeling as smoke from the Pentagon billowed in the distance.

The Septmber 11, digital archive is also using electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, and its aftermath.  It contains more than 150,000 digital items, including more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.  For my sister-in-law, a first grade teacher in the Bronx,  a digital archive like this allows her to share stories with her students, many of whom are learning of the tragedy for the first time.

As Millennials everywhere head back to school over the next few weeks, we are going to be thinking and talking about some intersections of social media and the college experience.

Today is the first day of school for many students across the country. After a few months of beach vacations, summer jobs, and lounging around the house, it's time to get back into the swing of going to class, writing papers and taking tests. With its increasing popularity, social media is bridging both worlds - in the classroom and out - and people have begun to study what all this social media is really doing to our brains.

My mom used to tell my brother that video games were going to turn his brain to mush. Many studies now dispute this, showing that gaming can actually improve perception, sharpen thinking and increase patience. Point for my brother. (Unfortunately, I lost interest in video games after they moved beyond the original Nintendo.) Similarly, some have speculated and worried lately that all of this social media use by today's young people is ruining their ability to write. At the very least, they say, Facebook and Twitter leads to time wasted talking about yourself to no one in particular.

And with all our ROTFLs BRBs TTYLs RTs, HTs, and other abbrevs, I can see how our teachers might be concerned that proper spelling, capitalization, sentence structure, and good old fashioned grammar have gone by the wayside. But could it be that our constant texting, tweeting, blogging and facebook posting are actually just as helpful as summer reading and flash cards?

Yes and no. Tracy Alloway, a psychologist in Scotland, recently studied the impact of social media on working memory. She claims that Facebook helps enhance our intelligence because keeping up with so many friends is like a workout routine for our memories, but she warns that other types of social media might not be so helpful. Twitter's character limits, along with the brevity of text messaging and YouTube videos, shrink our attention spans and fail to engage our brains because we don't have to process the endless stream of information come at us. 

So social media's effects on memory seem to be split. What about other skills? The social web has turned us all into content producers, rather than just consumers. In addition to giving us an opportunity to share what we think and voice our love, hate or indifference on all manner of subjects, it also gives us the valuable opportunity to practice writing.

Andrea Lunsford of Stanford University says that her study shows that technology and social media are improving students' ability to write. Like we've always been told, practice makes perfect, and thanks to our habits of constant online communication, this generation of students is getting more writing practice than any group of students ever before. This is because Millennial students are not just writing in the classroom; they are writing throughout the day. Clive Thompson points out that this is a huge paradigm shift - in generations before us, essays were written in class, and that was it. And it is more persuasive writing because they feel they are always writing for an audience.

Not only do they write more, but today's students are also adept at using appropriate tone and style for their audience. Because of the interactive nature of social media, users are more aware of their various audiences. Rather than just writing for one professor, they are writing for friends and peers with whom they have varying types relationships and shared interests. They know not to use the same writing style in a research paper as they do posting birthday well wishes on a friend's wall. Likewise, it's often occurred to me that Twitter helps me to practice a more concise style of writing - a habit which can be difficult to form.

Are you convinced? Is social media the best thing that's happened to the classroom since the overhead projector, or are you still waiting for our brains to turn to mush?

We’ve been busting at the seams a bit waiting to share with you news that the Case Foundation will once again be supporting a new America’s Giving Challenge this fall.  What’s more, throughout the month of September we will be helping individuals and nonprofits “Gear Up for Giving” through a series of online live streamed events, tools, and resources that will be available to all over on the Case Foundation site.

In case you missed it, during the foundation’s last giving challenge here’s how things broke down: 81,000 individual donations totaled $1.7 million for hundreds of nonprofits across the country – all told, with the Case Foundation’s challenge money, more than $2.5 million was committed to organizations making America’s Giving Challenge the largest online giving challenge of its kind (and it still is). 

As Millennials everywhere head back to school over the next few weeks, we are going to be thinking and talking about some intersections of social media and the college experience.