this recent article http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=117581 is intriguing, as it is part of the discussion that started the idea to have this conference in the first place: social media, web 2.0 tools, gaming, might attract audiences to participate, but don’t just casually “fit” in to consciousness raising, action provoking, emotionally heavy but inspiring content. So, a session on how we as a community can measure success using social media in our unique circumstances just might be interesting. for a short time on a Saturday. Thoughts?
Tags: evaluation, metrics, proposal
Rebekah –
Two thumbs up on your idea for a discussion on setting and measuring against specific performance goals for our media, social or otherwise! This is a topic near and dear to my heart…count me in for a corroboree.
If measuring social action (and by extension, social change), some of these metrics could lead to identifying such but may depends on the actions desired. For example, Facebook, twitter, phone calls and texting were used during the flood here in spring 09 for emergency calls for community volunteers. While I (nor anyone I know) was rigorously measuring effects in terms of people responding to calls for help/sandbagging/food, etc., I did witness (and participate in) actions resulting from such calls. Not that I want another spring flood here in Fargo but if one does happen in the near future, I will be doing a rapid response research project on this!
One thing to discuss is “click-throughs” or “fan/joining” and other kinds of social media actions as a) forms of social action and/or b) replacements for actual physical action – when we talk of effects in the world, how do we assign value to particular kinds of actions? This needs to be theorized out in some way… some have worked this through in terms of other forms of consumer culture (e.g., buying organic, sweat-shop free, green as replacements or stand-ins for physically laboring day-to-day in the world for justice and the environment, not to mention the real capital needed to do so.)
I think the Obama campaign tells a great story about this topic, and might be of value if you can find someone who worked on the campaign who could contribute to our conversation (I know one person who did some of the web stuff for the campaign if this helps)