I work in a small city of just under 30,000 people. In a lot\nof senses, it\u2019s a bedroom community, as most people that live there commute to\nwork in one of the much larger cities nearby. The city and residents pride\nthemselves on a very strong sense of community, a vibrant downtown and\nexcellent engagement in causes both local and global. As an example, within my\nworkplace, we have nearly 300 active volunteers per year, which calculates out\nto an equivalent of approximately 1% of the city\u2019s residents being active in\nthe library, a rather impressive quantity, given that many other causes in town\nare also well-supported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have frequently observed the impact of social media on\nvarious causes and information-sharing in the city. I am aware of a minimum of\nthree Facebook groups moderated by local citizens used to disseminate\ninformation, share opinions, publicize events, and elicit support for various\ncauses. Various colleagues have joined them as an additional avenue to spread\ninformation about library offerings and have an eye on topics of local\ninterest. I subscribe to one of the groups and can think of many times that I\nhave seen its role in shaping public sentiment or garnering attendance for\nrallies, vigils, or City Council meetings. \nIt can be a dumping ground for people\u2019s negative attitudes, complaints\nabout traffic, bad manners, or local policies. However, it has also been used\nto get word out about local candidates and why they\u2019re running, as well as\ncampaign events for folks to learn more about them. I\u2019ve seen organizers use it\nto get carpool arrangements started for more distant marches and rallies, and\nto share suggestions on how people can comment on upcoming legislation or\npotential City policies before they are voted on or enacted. Local hot topics include\nfracking, intergovernmental relations, and some of the local festivals. All of\nthese have plenty of posts by people sharing their opinions with various levels\nof civility, and also give like-minded folks a place to hear about meetings or\nother gatherings where they can learn more about or further advance their\ncauses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We frequently think of social media being used to organize\npeople that are geographically spread, and that is clearly a major impact it\ncan have to unite people that may never meet. It\u2019s interesting to see it also\nused to streamline communication for people that live in the same place and\nwant to connect in person but may not know about their joint interests or local\nmanifestations of those causes without the medium of these community stream-of-consciousness\nstyle conversations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I work in a small city of just under 30,000 people. In a lot of senses, it\u2019s a bedroom community, as most people that live there commute to work in one of the much larger cities nearby. The city and residents pride themselves on a very strong sense of community, a vibrant downtown and excellent … Continue reading “Social Media as Community Organizing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-change","category-social-media","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joannadunlap.com\/5665fall19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}