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| CLICK HERE – Hobart City Council discussion |
The 'social media' phenomena is beginning to cut through quite a lot of the prejudice surrounding it. We've been here before, many of us, with computer competency when it was claimed that “people over say 50 were generally not computer literate” but it quickly turned out not to be the case.
In fact back when this myth was promulgated it turned out that people in this demographic tended to use computers in their workplaces more than younger people ... thus quite literate.
It was just the case that people used computers for different things. Young people used computers, so it was said, for entertainment and older people for more pragmatic purposes – surprise, surprise. However it was never that simple nor true in any way. It was an understanding that very quickly evolved into a misunderstanding.
The early predictions that said the Internet was going to change lives have been a prediction fulfilled in spades. Yet how that is happening has not been adequately predicted, as neither have the machinations of change. And, it’s all being replayed in technicolour in social media.
We are getting used to the myriad of ways we get our news and information albeit with much of it coming from spurious and purportedly unreliable sources. What’s new? It was also the case with the print press with its malleability, and its biases, and the Machiavellian shenanigans, its corruptibility even.
Social media has no ‘media barons’, just media savvy exponents fewer of whom can be bought it seems. In reality, politicians cannot hire media savvy underlings to do their social media bidding for them. That is unless they themselves are savvy enough to repress unauthorised, massaged or devious messaging. "Trust me I'm media savvy" just does not seem to work.
Gone are the days when “I don’t do social media” is ever likely to cut the mustard. Actually its not a question of mastering the technology, largely an impossibility for most, its more to do with the organic nature of 'the culture’ that needs to be studied.
Yet there are politician and bureaucrats with strong opinions about what can and cannot be achieved with social media albeit they personally lack the wherewithal.
Local govt. is putting its toes in the waters of social media in an attempt to keep up with their constituency. Nonetheless, most are so far behind the game that they’re becoming staunched advocates of the status quo and hiding out behind outmoded thinking and antiquated technologies in order to protect their faltering authority … authority being stolen being back by those who once were subservient underlings.
Watch this space for the advances of the armies of 'citizen activists', 'citizen journalists' and a
citizenry that's increasingly 'street savvy' beyond the comprehension of those who assume to lord it over them.
Count on it, social media is coming to a council near you quite soon!
Count on it, social media is coming to a council near you quite soon!
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