Following the President’s lead, social media get their gay on

President Obama’s announcement that he supports marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples may be almost two weeks old, but the impact on the Internet is still reverberating. A recent AP story indicates that both posting and viewing of YouTube videos related to marriage equality rose sharply and remains strong.

In fact, on the day of the President’s interview, searches for “gay marriage” and “Obama” spiked 458% between 10 am and 6 pm. According to the AP

Following Obama’s announcement, more videos with the key words “gay marriage” were uploaded on YouTube than ever before, drawing more than 3 million views and 100,000 comments.

In fact, a quick look at a few search terms on YouTube and its parent company, Google, is very informative. Searching the term “gay marriage” (which tends to be the most common term used although the LGBT community prefers the more accurate “marriage equality”), YouTube has over 6,800 videos uploaded in the past month, accounting for 17% of all relevant videos. On Google, the term yields nearly 28 million hits in the past week. For the same week (May 15 – 22) in 2011, the number was just over one million. Interestingly, that week also had big news, with a Gallup poll showing majority support for marriage equality for the first time. Searching related terms like “same sex marriage” and “marriage equality” finds smaller numbers but similar trends. For those of us on Facebook, the issue of marriage equality has become a dominant theme.

The intersection of gay rights and social media is no surprise. The LGBT community were early adopters, as isolated or closeted people found powerful new ways to build social connections. Age is also a factor. While interactive online sites and tools are hardly the unique province of the 18 – 25 set, younger users tend to be more embracing of and more deeply engaged in them. This same demographic is also more broadly supportive of gay rights in general and marriage equality in particular as well.

Social media also allow a broader sense of engagement with the stories, which allows topics that might not otherwise rise to national attention to go viral. Iowa student Zach Wahls wound up creating his own website to handle all the attention he received when he made an impassioned speech asking lawmakers to recognize marriage for his lesbian moms. Nerdy Apple, aka “Daphne’s Mom,” got the surprise of her life when a sweet post about her son dressing as a female cartoon character for Halloween got the attention of gay rights supporters and opponents both.

Even people in the news can benefit or suffer from exposure of their civil rights stands on YouTube. Former presidential candidate Rick Perry’s ad “Strong” — in which he opposes the active service of gays and lesbians in the U.S. military — has over 8 million views. Likes = 26,448; dislikes = 768,696. He also inspired dozens of parodies and responses.

Marriage equality is hot topic like never before. Strong popular (and Presidential) support is at odds with ballot box success. Upcoming votes in Maine and Minnesota and possibly Washington will either continue or break the trend. Whatever the case, social media and personal engagement in the story is finally driving a narrative in the “mainstream” media and that’s a good thing.

Wednesday Word of the Week, October 26: Epistle

Where is the SEND button?

This week’s word is EPISTLE

a piece of writing in the form of a letter

Over the past week, I have had two separate experiences which have caused me to ponder the value and relevance of written communication in the modern age. Both of these events are related to my work as a tutor for college students in the Boston area.

Although, at 29, I am barely a half-generation (at most) removed from most of the students with whom I work, the gap in communication strategies is wide. I willingly own a piece of this given my willful resistance to most social media, but as someone who participates in this online community and keeps in touch with many friends by email, I was surprised by how starkly the moments struck me.

The first event involved a conversation with a student about the novel Dracula. It was her first experience with an epistolary novel and she found the experience jarring. She understood the principle of writing letters and obviously knew that the Victorians had no email, but the art and value of letters as communication and persuasion was lost on her. Her entire context for communication was texting and occasionally exchanging emails. The results were immediate and the need for lengthy description and explanation was utterly absent.

Surely, she opined, the author was taking liberties with the form and no-one would ever have written letters like this in real life. This led to a fascinating discussion (and a good thesis for her paper, fortunately) about the very different requirements for communication in a pre-electronic age. Not only could weeks or even months pass between messages, but one party to the communication might well be in a place that the other would never see at all. This required a sense of description and a sensitivity to the information conveyed. It also meant that the writer of a letter had to reflect on his or her content in a way not required by modern communication tools. The result of the communication was INTIMACY

a close personal relationship; something personal or private that you say or do

not immediacy. Such reflection certainly prevented many of the consequences of thoughtless typing that we’ve seen in recent months.

The second event was a conversation with a student regarding his settling into life on campus. I asked, perhaps naively, how the transition from old friends and family to new acquaintances was going. He indicated that he hadn’t met many people outside of his roommate and casual classroom acquaintances because he was still so well connected with his friends from high school. This ought not to have shocked me, but it did. The prevalence of electronic communication (through a device always on one’s person) has evaporated the sense of DISTANCE

the fact or feeling that two people or things are far apart from each other

This student was accustomed to communicating frequently and consistently with friends by text and tweet. The physical distance matters to some extent, but the nature of the communication is not particularly jarring. Looking again at my own experience, things were quite different. I was certainly able to communicate with people via email, faster than the postal service and cheaper than the phone, but I had to be at a computer and had no expectation of an immediate response. That made electronic communication a poor second choice. As a result, I had to turn to the people around me for ENGAGEMENT

the feeling of being involved in a particular activity or group

I had left one home and was building an new community. That experience helped me mature as a person and develop new ways of thinking. The friends who remained from my life before college did so in new ways, reflecting their maturation and growth as well. Based on the conversation with the one student, I later discussed this with others whom I tutor. A significant percentage (not quite a majority) are at least as engaged with their pre-college friends as with any aspects of their new communities. This certainly provides a level of comfort and security, but it also stifles the valuable need to make the most of a new experience. One value of a college education is the development of coping and growth skills. How will people who have never truly needed to fully engage with a new environment succeed when thrust into a work situation that demands participation with new people? It will be interesting to see what employers are saying about this trend in three to five years.

Please do not misunderstand me. I believe that most modern advancement is a good thing. The abilities to maintain connections and receive rapid feedback can be worthwhile. I fear, however, that we are losing our sense of the art of communication. If all one’s friends are old friends and every message is a fixed length, where do we have room to grow as humans?

All definitions courtesy of Macmillan Dictionary Online.

The Perils of a Virtual Community: Take Three Breaths

The Perils of Social Networks

As a blogger and someone who participates in several social media networks, including Facebook, I have been able to celebrate camaraderie and people joining together in solidarity to work, via the keyboard, to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, I have also seen a darker side of humanity, where people seem to leave their manners aside when commenting, thus at times leaving a rather acrid taste in my mouth for human connection in a virtual world.

I am often surprised and disappointed seeing people’s comfort level leaving comments on people’s post(s) that are sanctimonious, disparaging, and presumptuous.  Existing in a virtual community also means that one often does not have the advantage of knowing a person’s background or history, nor does one have the benefit of hearing an accent, cadence, or inflection. I have seen this result in people commenting while operating without a full picture or context and in a very ungenerous manner.  I have seen people threaten others with: “Change the title of this post or remove it,” “Change the title of this post and when you do, I will remove my recommendation to hide your post.”  Unfortunately, even a group of people that purport to be interested in making the world a better place can get caught up in their own egos and fall into a mob mentality, resulting in bullying behavior that feeds off of itself. Here is a pair of related examples that demonstrate how immediacy of information in social networks can be either dangerous or beneficial: Chris Rock’s ill-considered Twitter defense of Tracy Morgan and the really quite wonderful Twitter response from Wanda Sykes.

Solution:

I wonder if it might be helpful for people (myself included) to take a few breaths when leaving a comment for another person. To keep in mind that we may not have the full context or backdrop for each person we interact with and it may prove beneficial to give each person the benefit of the doubt.  I wonder, if at times, it is best to say nothing at all, rather than say something ugly which you cannot take back. There is great power in social networks–in these virtual communities we have created, but there is also the equal power of damage and bullying that can occur.  I wonder if the anonymity of social networks gives voice to social bullying. Take three breaths.