There are some surprising results in the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey of 4,875 interviews of people aged between 25 years to 64 years. You can read the executive summary here , access more data here or just watch the video below.
There are many different ways to skin the same cat. Some are quick to claim that the influence of our peers is waning and that the results spell the first death toll for citizen journalism and the social media networks that enable it.
I think the survey simply reflects the transient times we live in: new sets of social media tools becoming increasingly mainstream and a global meltdown with inevitable knock-on effects on what and whom we trust. I think the really pertinent trend is that in the uncertain times that we live in, it is becoming obligatory to build a ‘mosaic of trust’ by accessing ‘multiple information systems.’ Within that mosaic, social media networks continue to operate as trusted channels. And as for corporates – to ‘advance reputation.. they need to be everywhere, engaging everyone’ if they wish to building their own mosaic of trust.
I wrote this piece for Wired Temples, the blog run by Malta Media. But I guess it fits in here – because it’s pretty much where my work and research interests currently lie.
In the past 12 months, what’s been perhaps more significant than the number of local social media users is the way people have started to use the new Web 2.0 tools to go beyond just interacting with friends. There has been an exponential growth in the number of local Facebook groups and pages promoting events, businesses and a raft of social issues and causes. In many instances, it has been a set of new voices rising above the parapet – not just on Facebook, but also on blogs, YouTube and Twitter.
We enter 2010 on the crest of an increasingly mainstream social web. In many countries, the recession has spurred consumers to adopt social technologies to become more market-savvy, improve their overall education and brand themselves better to find new jobs to replace the ones they have lost. Many corporate brands waded into social media marketing as core budgets got slashed, seeking innovation and better return on their investments in new media campaigns.
Results have been mixed, as businesses continue to struggle with two-way, interactive communication media that challenge the traditional one-way broadcasting model. The larger social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn have started to share data, raising concerns about online privacy and data ownership – but also helping consumers social experience spread from site to site, enabling them to access their friends’ opinions, and recommendations in real time. We are living in a new era of disintermediation and user-generated content, where citizen journalists are more trusted and influential than traditional broadcasters. In many US cities, newspapers have folded and people increasingly rely on the ‘read-write web’ for the most basic of information. Real-time data is now searchable by the major search engines. People produce content, connect and share with each other at an increased pace, increasingly relying on mobile devices and getting closer to the smart mobs envisaged by Howard Rheingold.
What does this mean to the way we live our lives on these islands? Particularly to the way we interact with individuals and institutions? How deep are the changes that social media appears to be triggering? Are the local rumblings online about censorship laws, politics, religion, murtali, customer service and bad restaurants the tip of the iceberg, the shape of things to come? Or will the Maltese simply end up using social media in the way Neil Postman postulated about TV all those years ago, to ‘amuse ourselves to death’on Farmville or some other online application? To what extent can social media enable an alternative model of living, working and networking for people in Malta, and contribute towards a change in power structures on the islands?
These questions are at the heart of my research. We unconsciously think of Malta as a ’special case’. We’re islanders, a law unto our own, deeply stubborn, conservative, seemingly entrenched in bi-polar, traditional, enduring power systems. You can attribute this to our size. Or to our success story – we’re survivors with an enviable ‘quality of life’ that continues to attract new tribes. We now have access to new tools that can enable the opinions of those we trust to potentially matter more than those of our traditional intermediaries – print media, TV, radio, the Church, people in traditional positions of power with corresponding real life networks and social capital.
Will the social web lead to an eventual flow of power from a small band of people in Malta to a much larger number of individuals who are web literate? Or will we just subsume what is now alternative into the mainstream or the mundane?
One thing you find in the rollercoaster of early research, as you start to plough through the seminal works on your reading list, are strong, entrenched positions. Particularly in my area of interest – alternative models for social media networks. And of course, it’s all part of ’the process’, the 360 degree view you’re encouraged to undertake to raise your awareness of the ‘knowledge’ in your field before you start to focus on, hopefully, one day, adding your own grain of contribution over what has been assembled by others.
And early on, you become aware that the struggle for ‘open’ and ‘free’ in technology and the social web is still very much ongoing and unresolved. Particularly the debate about content, who owns it, and whether it can be monetised. From Google starting to limit free news access, to doubts about Google’s own role as the catalyst of openness versus the ‘evil’ Microsofts of this world. In one corner we have content providers resigned to giving their content away in the hope that freemium model can be wrapped by advertising or paid for by a tiny fraction of readership; and in the other, content-providers trying to find some other way out. Despite the fact that we have now already had years of benefiting from a ‘free web’ and point to point, uninterrupted communications, that have further exploded with the emergence of the social web.
I’m still sitting on the fence on this one. Like most people, I fell in love with the Internet because it freed me from location and real-life networks and enabled me to learn from open content and connect with my various tribes, wherever they were, for the price of my ISP connection. On the other side, as a content provider with my side-project, Malta Inside Out, I know that quality, hyper-local content does not grow on trees, costs real money and brings value to others.
At times like this, I turn to Kevin Kelly. Described as an Internet utopian, by the self-proclaimed ‘anti-christ of Silicon Valley, Andrew Keen, Kelly is still gently trying to read the tea leaves.
I live on a tiny island. In Malta, social networks extend to neighbours and friends of friends and migrant communities in the four corners of the globe. And always, there has been a hunger for technology, learning and shiny electronic devices. So when social media hit the attention bandwidth, people scrambled to Facebook. Over 25% of the population now reportedly has an account.
And yet, mention social media in business circles and you’re likely to be met with shrugs and visible signs of suspicion and discomfort. It’s not entirely surprising. Like many countries, there are many vested interests in keeping the status quo intact when it comes to marketing budgets: many of these are still spent on mainstream newspaper print, TV and radio. PR agencies continue to play it safe and rely on ‘trusted’ networks and influencers and ’sit on the fence’ until someone forces them to do things differently.
And yet: the new tribes of communicators, bloggers and trouble-makers are starting to quietly mobilise. Every day sees a new Facebook page, a blog and more fumbling with Twitter. I don’t know how long it will take – but in a micro, highly-competitive business environment, it is inevitable that decision-makers will wake up to the fact that their customers and prospects’ attention now lies elsewhere; and that they are going to need to engage with them in a totally different way using the ‘new’ tools.
This is the deck of slides I used earlier this week for a talk at Digital Arts Expo, Malta’s largest digital media event.
Chris Brogan recently wrote an excellent post about why community really matters. And then Valeria Maltoni waded in that ‘being helpful’ should be ‘the new black’. If you’re in Melbourne on the 22nd and 23rd September, you can catch my friend Stephen Johnson and social media luminaries such as Darren Rowse and David Armano over 2 days of conferences and workshops – and it won’t cost you a dime other than a donation to your favourite charity.
Wherever you look, the traditional networking and underlying business models are being turned on their head. Free is in vogue – many of us are also using the downturn to take a new hard look of how we, and our clients, are operating and trying to think sideways.
I came across this post from Rheingold, today: ’When social media grew from a playground and laboratory for a small group of enthusiasts into a worldwide platform for commerce, politics, sociality, I became convinced that knowing how to use and think about social media could influence the final shape of the emerging infosphere. What you know and do today matters because it will be part of setting the rules for who can use these media, how they can use them, who will profit, and who will control tomorrow’s media’.
Even on my island, a bunch of people tool the plunge and are launching Mobile Monday on the 14th September in the hope that they can start a small movement. The planning for this event has been approximately 5 weeks. I’m happy to be involved in this one.
And speaking of helpful – and how sharing and ‘free’ is what I believe will undpin the next wave of innovation (and hopefully, my research), here’s a great deck of slides on post digital marketing. I love Slideshare.
Here’s a July 2009 talk at the Reboot Britain event by the grandfather of virtual communities. He says that we have to get beyond individual skills to acquire 21st century literacies, and that these skills plus community are what is driving social media. This talk focuses on: attention, participation, cooperation; critical consumption (crap detection) and network awareness. And about the future of education.
It’s been on my mind for a while. Like the past 15 years.
One of the things about getting older and moving to a small place, is that you gradually become the peer group. And that’s when you can do one of two things. Cruise into your comfort zone. Or look at the warning signs on the dashboard of your life, and do something new.
A chance reconnection on Twitter has ended up with me registering on the PhD program at the School of Arts and New Media at Scarborough. The provisional research area is the ‘free’ model that underpins most social media applications. But like most people who have gone down this journey before, I know what I’m going in with – I guess I’ll find out more during the research process.
I’d like to continue doing change management work – as a strategist, it’s where I can really make a difference. And in Malta InsideOut, we’ve got a side project which takes a lot of time and commitment to sustain.
But I’m also going to make time to explore new connections and challenge what I think I know.
Yesterday, together with my friend Gege Gatt, I gave a talk to a COMNET-IT workshop meeting in Malta. It was interesting to see public servants start to scramble for their 3G phones and laptops at the end.
I was first attracted to this book by both the title, and the fact that it was co-written by Marcus Buckingham, a proponent of the ’strengths’ philosophy that I have embraced in the work place.
This is a deck of slides I have compiled for the Alt-MBA group that has spun out of Seth Godin’s Triiibes.
UPDATE: Slideshare selected this as a featured presentation. Nice to know it resonated with some.
