There has been a lot written in the last few months about Gov 2.0 and using social media to connect constituents to government. What happens if governments aren’t listening?
If you’ve been following any of the popular social media outlets in the last few days (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Digg, ArsTechnica, etc.) you’ve seen the online kerfuffle that’s erupted over the new TSA security procedures. Although they’ve been in use for months at some airports with relatively little fanfare, the new backscatter x-ray devices are suddenly the heated subject of social media conversation. Why now?
On October 30th, 2010 the TSA instituted new “pat down” procedures for those opting out of the new scanners. Prior to then, the TSA would perform a relatively benign wanding and partial pat down of travelers opting out of the x-ray scans. While annoying, the older pat downs weren’t particularly personal, nor did they take much time. That all changed a few days ago. The new pat downs are indeed quite personal (I’ve experienced them first hand…traveling with an artificial knee is so much fun!) and apparently a very vocal part of the public feels we have reached a tipping point with airport security.
I’m not going to get into whether the new security procedures are worthwhile here (although I have talked about it on my personal blog). What I did want to talk about was the role of social media in influencing government behavior.
Are social media outlets an appropriate place for protesting government actions? Historically, citizens upset with governments have taken to the streets to protest. Sit-in’s, marches, and mass gatherings in public places (like the Mall in Washington DC) were seen as a peaceful yet visible way to express one’s displeasure with government policies. On occasion, these protests even work (it might be argued that the civil rights movement would not have occurred otherwise).
Does social media have the same political impact? Faced with what many see as a choice between two very personal, intrusive security scans, travelers have taken to the social airways en mass to express their displeasure. The question is: does government listen? They’ve certainly heard—the head of TSA and the Director of Homeland Security have both taken to the airways to publicly state that they’ve heard the complaints—but hearing and listening are two different things. Time will tell, but it’s my perception that online actions seem to carry little weight with politicians and bureaucrats. Phone calls, letters, in-person visits are all apparently much more effective with elected officials than email, tweets or postings on a Facebook wall. I’m waiting to be proven wrong, but it seems to me that today, social media is more of an avenue for the public to vent amongst themselves rather than serve as a serious conduit to public officials.
On October 30th, 2010 the TSA instituted new “pat down” procedures for those opting out of the new scanners. Prior to then, the TSA would perform a relatively benign wanding and partial pat down of travelers opting out of the x-ray scans. While annoying, the older pat downs weren’t particularly personal, nor did they take much time. That all changed a few days ago. The new pat downs are indeed quite personal (I’ve experienced them first hand…traveling with an artificial knee is so much fun!) and apparently a very vocal part of the public feels we have reached a tipping point with airport security.
I’m not going to get into whether the new security procedures are worthwhile here (although I have talked about it on my personal blog). What I did want to talk about was the role of social media in influencing government behavior.
Are social media outlets an appropriate place for protesting government actions? Historically, citizens upset with governments have taken to the streets to protest. Sit-in’s, marches, and mass gatherings in public places (like the Mall in Washington DC) were seen as a peaceful yet visible way to express one’s displeasure with government policies. On occasion, these protests even work (it might be argued that the civil rights movement would not have occurred otherwise).
Does social media have the same political impact? Faced with what many see as a choice between two very personal, intrusive security scans, travelers have taken to the social airways en mass to express their displeasure. The question is: does government listen? They’ve certainly heard—the head of TSA and the Director of Homeland Security have both taken to the airways to publicly state that they’ve heard the complaints—but hearing and listening are two different things. Time will tell, but it’s my perception that online actions seem to carry little weight with politicians and bureaucrats. Phone calls, letters, in-person visits are all apparently much more effective with elected officials than email, tweets or postings on a Facebook wall. I’m waiting to be proven wrong, but it seems to me that today, social media is more of an avenue for the public to vent amongst themselves rather than serve as a serious conduit to public officials.
Unless governments (State, Local as well as Federal) learn to adopt social media as a valid channel of constituent communication, they will miss a golden opportunity to transform society. And we, the people of an increasingly social nation, will be missing the opportunity to use social networking as a channel for crowdsourcing effective governmental change. Those of us in the social media industry must keep pushing for this transformation to occur.
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