Tag Archives: social media

Choose Carefully: Politics Over Friendship

Since my Twitter rant turned into a somewhat thoughtful blog post, I decided to do the same for a Facebook rant . I think this one is still pretty ranty so take it for what it’s worth. Mostly, let’s be kind to everyone.

Perhaps I am the last person in the world who hasn’t unfriended or unfollowed everyone with whom they disagree politically or religiously. To you, this  post will seem a bit outdated and naive and maybe even dangerous as I haven’t written everyone on the other side off as immoral and unethical.

Forgive me. Despite the political and religious divide in the world, I have attempted to maintain friendships with folks from the whole spectrum. And, while I don’t share overt political posts or rants on social media, I suspect my own politics are pretty clear from what I do share. (Let’s just say a lot of stuff from The Zinn Project and The Equal Justice Initiative.) I will admit to using the mute button liberally.

Mostly, I try not to be judgmental. We all have pasts and stories and cultures that define who we are and are difficult, and perhaps, impossible to shed.  I genuinely care about the people I follow, and I try to put relationship ahead of politics or religion. But, yesterday, as I scrolled through my Facebook feed, two posts, in particular, just seemed incredibly out of line: a ridiculous “I’m just sayin” kind of conspiracy theory post and then one that showed real hatred towards those on the other side. Mean and ugly posts about people like me from people that I regarded as friends. Granted, they did not originate the thought, but they shared it and pretty cleared agreed with it.

One of the women who posted checked in with me via Messenger almost every day as I was recovering from my surgery last year. Yet, her rhetoric in a public forum was really hateful. She genuinely seems to find people like me repugnant. While I am no snowflake, my feelings were hurt. Had she considered me at all before sharing the post? She knows me to be a good person, I think, and must be aware that her post was going to hurtful.  She has chosen politics over our relationship. I considered a confrontation, but I pressed mute for now. It is tempting to try to engage her, but if her ongoing posts and comments are any indication, she does not appear to be open to ideas outside her echo chamber.

I guess I feel a little betrayed: I stuck with these friends even though we disagreed on larger issues because I wanted to know about their lives and support them as friends and even be aware of what others outside my own echo chamber were thinking. Part of the reason I don’t do “those people on the other side are horrible” kinds of posts is because I do care about their feelings. I know I’m not going to change their minds and it would just be hurtful.  How could we still be friends if I took that path. I wonder if these women stopped to ask that question of themselves?

Here’s my plea: can we, just for a little while, focus on what connects us. I love the posts from families about surviving quarantine and doing simple gardening at home. I look forward to the posts from a friend who is asking daily questions about what we are learning or cooking or thinking.

Today, we all shared pics of meaningful art from our homes. Here’s mine: my favorite poem from Wendell Berry seems so appropriate now. It is done as a collage, and I know I purchased it at an art festival in Corolla, NC, a very long time ago. There doesn’t appear to be an artist’s name on it:

If you have managed to maintain any friendships with people with whom you disagree, try reaching out in a positive way. Or at least unmute them for a few days to wish them well.

Be safe out there.

 

 

Social Media Tip for Readers

I think one of the coolest uses of social media comes from The New York Public Library. Each Friday from 10 – 11 AM, they use the NYPL_Recommends Twitter account to suggest titles for future reading based on your favorite titles.

I just finished the most recent title in Deana Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell mystery series. If you haven’t read these mysteries, I can highly recommend the series. A bit of breathless Victorian kitsch with tongue firmly in cheek. I am caught up with the series, and I need some more feisty Victorian heroines so I asked the New York Public Library.

They recommended Caro Peacock and Tasha Alexander:

If you would prefer to connect with them more directly, their website features staff picks in a long list of genres.

Short Bits: Nuance

For now, in order to get in the habit of blogging, I’m going with pieces I am calling “short bits.” Basically, what I am thinking about it. Sheri Edwards, the blogging mentor to us all, calls them blog shorts and has a wonderful introduction here.  So, my short bits are blog shorts.

This one is simply about the seeming lack of nuance in all sorts of places, due I think, in large part to our continued distraction with media. We want quick answers and memes to share, diving into the ever flowing stream of stuff, generating quick comments but never really digging deeper than the surface. We label things good and bad, and certainly there are examples of both of those in the world, but there are also nuances of good and bad. Events are often more complicated than they seem. Zero tolerance policies almost never work. And, teachers and students and content and pedagogy overlap in complex ways that do not always lend themselves to easy charts or frameworks or continuums or, for that matter, 280 characters on Twitter.  Whenever someone says you should ALWAYS or NEVER, I want to shout, “It depends!”

But, in the interest of seeing nuances myself,  there ARE good conversations going on within communities, including Twitter. The #clmooc has made long term use of the web to connect around creativity and collaboration. I am sorry I missed the #clmooc book discussion about affinity communities online. Participation in these kinds of groups allows users to access  the power behind the tools when wielded with a mission of authentic connection.

 

An Abomination?

A couple days ago, a well known figure in the digital world posted a tweet calling it an “abomination” that it took so long to open Google contacts.

I chose not to reply probably because of the celebrity of the poster, but the comment stuck with me. An abomination? I actually tried to open Google contacts. It seemed to go pretty quickly over my 7 mbps DSL connection, but I probably have low expectations. But, honestly, an abomination? Live in the first world much? And even in the first world, where the last 48 hours saw two seemingly senseless police shootings, it’s a ridiculous word to use to describe a slow website.

Maybe I’m also overly sensitive as I just finished reading Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson’s indictment of a flawed justice system where poverty and race have more to do with criminal investigations and trials than actual guilt or innocence.

We really need to get our priorities in order, my friends, when a slow website is considered an abomination. Annoying? Frustrating? Sure, but save a word like abomination for things that really are.

 

Why “Teach” Social Media

This post is in response to Maryam Kaymanesh in the VCU thoughtvectors MOOC who is thinking about why high school students should be taught how to use social media for a future job. I wouldn’t have seen the post but Tom Woodward tagged me in his reply to her and I got a ping to alert me to the reference. Why mention this? Because it gets at the heart of why we need to “teach” social media: it IS the way we communicate these days, and we have always taught students how to use contemporary media.

When I started teaching high school English in the late 1980s, my curriculum included formal letter writing and research skills using paper databases like the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. I think we understand better why we need to teach students the research skills, but it’s 21st century writing that we grapple with as teachers roll their eyes when kids use emoticons or Internet slang in their research papers. Case in point: check out the Wikipedia entry on LOL. The authors spend a lot of time quoting the critics of the use of these abbreviations as inappropriate in formal writing. But they certainly have a place in the fast-paced, shortened world of Twitter and texting. So, lesson one for all 21st century writers is how to distinguish between the wide variety of writing outlets and the kind of writing they demand.

The other challenge for contemporary media users is how to use social media to portray yourself publicly. The Washington Post article When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web is one I still share with the adults I work with as it asks the hard questions about sharing on social media. In the six years since that article was published, stories continue to come out of grownups, including veteran teachers, doing dumb things in public using Twitter or Facebook. This incredibly kind interview demonstrates clearly that it isn’t just high school students who need a lesson or two:

But, despite the possible pitfalls, social media is also where we go to connect with others. Whatever your passion or area of study, social media can help you connect with others in the field. I require the students in my educational administration course to get involved in social media professionally by discovering the important voices and publications in education. Who are the bloggers and tweeters and googlers that you should be reading regularly? And, how can you become one of those voices? What can you contribute to the conversation?

There are also important questions for businesses to ask as they move into this hyper connected world. As someone who runs an organization that uses social media to both communicate and connect, I think about how to use it all the time. What do we want to do with it beyond just simple marketing? How can we become a portal to help curate the web for our followers? It is very much a similar kind of question to that for individuals: just how do we portray our company in social media? I can pretty much guarantee that unless your future job is hermit, you will, either as an employee or employer, ask these kinds of questions. 

And, while I can craft a persona for myself and my business, I can’t control the message completely since everyone has a voice. Reactions to a story are part of the story. The Today Show had a clip about getting good customer service and spent a good bit of time offering consumers tips for how to get noticed by a company by using Twitter or Facebook. Companies must be monitoring these outlets to be able to respond and react quickly before something goes viral. 

I’ll end with a recent example from my field of the complexities of being part of this new world. A brutally honest blog post about terrible experiences at a conference in 2013 appeared just as folks were gearing up for the 2014 version. The post, which has been removed by the author but is easy enough to find in an archive, was prompted by the #YesAllWomen campaign. It garnered a strong response from some in the field but others pushed back suggesting that this is a complex issue that requires more than a visceral, black and white response. Some spent time just trying to figure out who she was talking about. A second bog post tried to sort out the writer’s reactions to these different responses while the organization in question crafted its own response.

There are lots of lessons in this one event, not the least of which is that deleting stuff on the web doesn’t always mean it goes away. I’m not sure we can “teach” our students or ourselves exactly how to live in this social mediated world, but these kinds of case studies can help us grapple with the issues in powerful ways. If schools choose instead to ban and ignore, they miss the opportunity to truly prepare their students to live empowered lives in this world.