Brave New World

In March 2009 the Guardian reported about the draft for a new curriculum for primary school. It intends that pupils should be taught on how to use social media tools like Twitter and Weblogs as well as how to use Wikipedia as an information source. The worst on this proposal is that it is not an additional subject rather than a replacement for traditional lessons. It is thought to put less emphasise on science, history and geography.

That does not sound good to me to be honest: although a huge part of our communication might be transferred to the Internet, I do not really see a reason in not knowing where we come from and how the society and the world we live in developed to what it is now.

Would it not be important to have knowledge about other parts of the earth, other cultures and how history unifies and separates countries? Especially regarding the Web, where communication happens all over the world easily and where lots of different culture can be unified in communication.

As a research revealed, one in six children spend more than three hours a day in the Internet and a quarter of five-years old have Internet access in their rooms.

This shows that social media has become a naturally part of our lives, as well for young people. They will use these tools anyway, but they will possibly not teach themselves about history. When teaching them something about the Web, I think it would be much more important to make them sensitive for the risks the Web holds for them. And maybe on how to communicate outside the Web…

A few weeks ago I joined Twitter – finally. But still, I do not really get the point of it to be honest. Maybe that is why I am a quiet infrequent user of it. And that again might be the reason why I do not get the point of it.

But now I have learned about a new tool in combination with Twitter which ranks the popularity of the political parties in Germany with regard to the “Bundestagswahl 2009”, which will take place in September.

Here is how it works: if Twitter users in Germany post their tweets, they put the name of the party at the end of their tweet and combine it with the hashtag and a minus or plus, depending on their opinion. This is then used to create a bar chart, which can be viewed on a weekly or daily basis.
I found that quiet interesting, as I generally believe that as a massive part of the general communication moved to the Web, the political communication should as well. And like Barack Obama proved, this can be very successful.

The Wahlgetwitter (election twittering), what it is called, might not be very representative yet, but regarding the 27.000 people who use twitter actively in Germany, there is definitely potential for an effective use of it.

Using twitter like that seems a bit more to the point and might encourage an actual communication about something which really matters and where everybody could profit from.
It might be platitudes, which make twitter looking a bit pointless – although that is what it actually asks for: What are you doing?

Maybe that should not be taken too literal…

On March 28th 2009 at 8.30 the whole globe was mobilised to switch off the lights for an hour. Earth Hour, what the campaign is called takes place every year since the first time in 2007 in Sydney. The campaign is set up by the World Wide Fund for Nature WWF to raise awareness of the environmental issue of global warming.

As a main communication tool to gather all the people and to organise some kind of grassroot activism served several social media. An Earth Hour group was created in Facebook which has 900,131 members, Youtube videos were distributed (amateur as well as professional ones), Twitter was used to distribute the message and several blogs were posted about the campaign.

Using Clay Shirkey words: “It takes a village…”

For this kind of cause the use of social media seems the best way to engage people, especially when taking into account that the campaign took place all over the world. To quote Clay Shirkey again: “A story can go from local to global in a heart beat”. A group of people can be mobilised very quickly for the right kind of cause.

Another advantage of the use of new media in this case is that people were encouraged to tweet or blog about it and upload pictures and videos about their experiences during the actual event. Therefore the basis for the next campaign was already set.

George Marshall regards this campaign as the most mislead one of its kind. He calls it a small, simple act, which is easy to publicise. What is wrong with that?

Well, it might not reduce emission significantly but it raised awareness, especially when important places like the Eiffel Tower in Paris switch off their lights or Coca Cola agreed to switch off their billboard at time square for an hour.

It might be a small and simple act, but through an easy worldwide distribution of the message the main aim of the campaign was reached: creating awareness. And it is an event which not only gathers lots of people but it has promotion opportunities for organisations as well.

This will raise awareness on the one hand for Earth Hour itself and its cause and on the other hand serve as an incentive for the organisation to take part. Again Clay Shirkey: “Without plausible promise, all technology in the world would be nothing more than all the technology in the world”. 

As it is said in the Earth Hour group in Facebook: it’s about joining together and creating a vital conversation about the future of the planet – it’s as simple as a flick of the switch. And nothing more…

Clay Shirkey (2008) Here comes everybody. The power of organizing without orgnaizations London: Penguin Books Ltd.