Community At the Speed of Light

The rather plot-driven democracy we have been used to for decades is quickly giving way to a new dynamic of instant citizen engagement that is effectively redefining what it means to be in community. Professional political agendas, replete with their election timelines and policy manuals, are now being confronted by a rather more loose group of citizens using social media that reacts instantly to community developments.A clear example of this is the aforementioned instance in London, Ontario where a local city councillor used Facebook to overly pry into the motives of a citizen who raised concerns over a budgetary item. The details are no longer as revealing as the fallout resulting from the incident in question. Non-profits are even more reticent to speak up about concerns affecting their clients lest city funding be cut. Some wonder whether their official spokespersons should be made to sign a contract prohibiting them from speaking publicly with personal opinions. Efforts have been made to prohibit a local reporter from attending City Hall meetings for one year because the Councillor took exception to being asked why she said what she did on Facebook.All of these machinations are, in fact, unnecessary and unwarranted. Our city has developed a respectful paradigm between politicians and non-profits for decades. Spokespersons have felt free to speak up on issues and civic politicians, whether they agreed or not, supported the rights of citizens to raise their voice. One councillor who violated that arrangement by questioning a non-profit executive director as to who he was speaking for when she herself had “Councillor” as part of her Facebook ID, and who then withdrew her comments shortly after they were uttered, is hardly cause for non-profits to rethink their operations.Facebook and Twitter are now parts of civic life, and when the councillor took down both of her accounts, she purposefully isolated herself from the domain where many of her constituents are in discussion. In a word, traditional politics is getting “outflanked” in an instant by a digital medium far better equipped to permit citizen input into political decisions. In this instance, traditional politics chose to intervene in citizen life in inappropriate fashion, used digital media to do it, and then withdrew after the damage was done. This is not political accountability but a mild kind of – perhaps unknowingly – subterfuge. Non-profits, or the larger community in general, must never accept this kind of meddling.What we are witnessing is the birth of a new kind of community. The power of social media lies in its ability to create a comprehensive environment for organizing a strategic blend between our personal and public lives. Social discourse is being re-invented even as the traditional forms of public accountability and conversation are losing their effectiveness. This is how societies adapt to decline and we shouldn’t be surprised when new strategies and tools arise to replace outmoded models. Some politicians get this, reimagining ways to converse with community; others think that social media is a one-way street where one’s political activities or opinions could be posted, only to discover such information only makes it easier to hold that person to account.Here’s how the social media is building communities along new lines that can be as fascinating as they are complex. Marketing consultants Richard Cross and Janet Smith have assisted us by breaking down this new phenomenon into four main stages of “building communities of interest.”The first stage is awareness bonding. The idea is to make citizens aware of an issue unfolding around them. Twitter is ideal for this. The second stage is what they call identity bonding, where the citizen begins to identify with the particular issue at hand through following or engaging with the digital conversation streams. The citizen begins to detach from their regular activities in order to devote special time to what they are experiencing and learning. Stage three is relationship bonding. This is where things become interactive and the citizen enters the stream of conversation, becoming personally empowered in the process. He or she might never have met any of the others in the stream but they are energized regardless because they have been following the dialogue. Citizen intimacy begins to be formed and it will eventually prove overpowering.Finally, we reach stage four – community bonding. Shared interest eventually ends up forging citizens together in ways that become politically and publicly important. Corporate action is often taken, even though as yet the members of the conversation have yet to meet one another. This so counter-intuitive to regular politics that it is, in fact, revolutionary.This is community in the moment – messages branching out in countless combinations that serve to galvanize a citizenry in ways that challenge regular political activities. In fact, traditional political practices simply can’t keep up with it, can’t cope with the amount of citizens joining the cause in real-time and with real effects.When Caterpillar abandoned our community, the emotional damage was enormous, but digital media acted instantly to build citizen support in ways that were remarkable. And when a Councillor chose to intervene into a citizen’s life, Twitter and Facebook are once again bringing citizens together to remind the powers-that-be that citizens won’t abide by such actions. Either way our community is coming alive at the speed of light. Love it.