One of my wilder ideas is this: bring mobile social networking to marginalized groups of people to help them connect more conveniently at least to one another, and ultimately to resources and people wherever they happen to be in the world. Matthew Bennett‘s question in the @Israelconsulate Twitter press conference on Gaza just brought it back up for me:
We KNOW that social connections broaden horizons of opportunity. Integrating more and new connections into everyday routines using commonly available tools like mobile phones make those connections more readily available for help, support and having questions answered when and where it needed. It weaves a new fabric of interdependence, access and support.
I want to launch a project to give prostitutes and other sex workers mobile access to Twitter, and I don’t mean to improve the effectiveness of their marketing. This came to me as I sadly watched the fifth mobile billboard (girls to your room in 20 minutes!) pass while waiting to cross “the strip” in Vegas this year. I turned to my friend Howard and just blurted it out “I want to get hookers onto Twitter.”
A person with connections is a person with options. A person who is less alone. A person who has access to more ideas and support and more opportunities. A person whose talents and abilities would otherwise go underutilized – a terrible loss to all. Better networked, some who are in difficult situations would still remain in those same situations, but others would not. Others would reach outside of themselves and be reached and become more in the process. Consider HBS Professor Andrew McAfee‘s reflection on 2008′s top technologies:
By definition, marginalized people do not have a whole bunch of options coming their way. Could we launch actual aid projects to work with locally available infrastructure and better connect people to one another? What it we intentionally applied mobile social networking to more and different situations where otherwise disaffected people could have a voice and connect to one another?
What if children in drastically different (and in particular, warring) cultures grew up with pathways of connection and friend-of-a-friend loose ties to one another and to people both like and unlike them?
What could mobile social networking become one day for the homeless, migrant laborers, at-risk teens, sex workers, refugees…? You may laugh, but mobile phones are becoming a ubiquitous and potentially powerful tool for social change.
Twitter’s no panacea. Efforts like this have probably been attempted and are being attempted still. Even if when these networks flourish and grow, there will be those who use them negatively and harmfully.
But I know in my heart that opportunity and learning lie this way. It can be done better. We’re learning something, every day, on Twitter. We know that whenever truly mobile, short-burst, socially-networked microsharing becomes a widespread reality for isolated people, the proverbial thousand flowers blossom.
…And if nothing else was gained, when I tweeted my ideals of connection between warring cultures, all of these these inspiring examples were reflected back to me. Twitter has a lovely habit of teaching us about whatever topics we share there.
Arava Institute || GazaSderot: Life in Spite of Everything || Mideast Youth: Thinking Ahead || Olives of Peace || NYT Jerusalem Journal video about teen peace concerts || Israelis and Palestinians Launch Web Start-up || West-Eastern Divan || Seeds of Peace || Why I Wish I Was My Son
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I think we’re closer than you think to funding creative projects like this …
“What could mobile social networking become one day for the homeless, migrant laborers, at-risk teens, sex workers, refugees…”
… minus the “sex workers.”
I appreciate the Twitter fundraising campaigns that @Pistachio has made me aware of. Those of us at http://4Grants.Net are planning to offer tele-fundraising events in 2009.
So, we’re not that far … here in Nevada … from making this a reality … perhaps even with SW’s if Hugh Heffner wanted to help us with a tele-fundraising event. Is Hugh on Twitter?
Thanks!
Phil Johncock
http://twitter.com/PhilJohncock
There are people who have started to use twitter to these kind of ends. I met @hundreddollar on twitter, and she was using twitter this last week to help a homeless shelter in Portland, OR. The shelter was over crowded and severely lacking in funds to help everyone. She started a campaign using twitter to direct people to one of her blog entries where they could use the “chip-in” widget to donate money.
Here’s her tweet:
“please retweet: raising funds to help CityTeam care for & rehabilitate PDX’s homeless, donations matched 1:1: http://tinyurl.com/83jv8r”
There was also another news article about how people in Vancouver, Canada who were arranging a meet-up. However they decided to gather their old warm clothes and hand them out to the homeless. Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/N7ZU
Hope you find this interesting.
Of course the major difference between my previous comment and your point is that this was a mobilization effort to help the people as opposed to a effort to get those in need on twitter.
I’m all for that. I’ve been following @thehomelessguy since the day I started twittering. Actually I learned about twitter from his blog. I see a lot of potential to create good in local communities with social media. For me, I have a few local followers who know I am looking for work and have kept me up to date on any postings they hear about. A couple of my twitter friends have actually cleaned up my resume a bit for me for free. While I can’t say that I have found a job yet through social media, I can say I have more support and that helps me stay upbeat about my situation.
I can also add that social media has been my school this past year. I have been able to attend free webinars and other events that I other wise wouldn’t have even heard about. My learning process has moved light years ahead because of all the wonderful people in social media that just want to share their knowledge. Getting marginalized populations into using social media tools may just be the critical difference for them. Now if we can just figure out a way to keep those who use social media to abuse these marginalized folks publicly, we’d have a winner on our hands.
Just a thought, but as well as offering people more options in finding ways to change their situation, tools like Twitter etc could evolve into tools for also making life safer for people in precarious positions e.g. a sex workers could use it to ensure that their locations are always known and be able to alert others in the area if needed, or to share information about dangerous encounters.
This is a little bit on a tangent to the topic, but I would also add the potential to use Twitter, (or a similar ‘kid-friendly’ version) to create a virtual ‘pen-pal’ situation where kids and students in more affluent or developed countries could be matched up with kids from less fortunate circumstances. It could be used to help build awareness and connection, similar to student-exchange, fresh air summer programs, and other types of outreach. The advantage, certainly is the immediacy, the simplicity to deploy, and the incredibly low start-up costs.
In the US, so many of our kids are online or gaming anyway, channeling some of that time and energy to connect and learn from other kids in other parts of the world I think would benefit all involved. Maybe this kind of thing is going on already, I just have not heard about it.
Hey Laura, good post, but I don’t think Matthew’s question is fair nor do I think highlighting it was in the best interest of what you’re trying to convey. In terms of the facts, the residents of Gaza never did NOT have electricity. (I’m not certain about broadband, but I’m guessing they had that too. Either way, you don’t need broadband for Twitter.) What I do know is that Israel lost 3 electricians through violence because these individuals have been sent to the conflict zone to repair reported issues. Innocent civilian casualties are obvious on both sides. Clearly, the Israeli consulate addressed that today.
In any event, I just wrapped up an interview about the actual press conference and I think it would be awesome for the entire world to connect on one single broadcast medium. If I could choose which one it should be, I’d say Twitter. That said, I wouldn’t want to ostracize any person or culture or anyone from using it.
I’m certain that Israel is not ostracizing anyone either. I think Bennett’s Tweet and the fact that it’s highlighted is somewhat extremist.
Interesting, Tamar, I’m afraid I really had not thought of it that way. I thought it was a cool idea to get everyday people in Palestine connecting with everyday people elsewhere, on a human level. I had not seen it in an extremist way at all, but then my knowledge of the Gaza conflict is not particularly deep!
What I found interesting about his idea was the thought that real, individual human voices connecting on platforms like Twitter might erode the hatred and misunderstandings that provide the petri dish in which violence incubates. I feel much violence grows from an unfounded and genetically programmed fear of “the other” that can be much eroded by direct and indirect human contact.
But thanks for pointing out the potential for eroding my own point by treading too close to controversial political ground. Definitely not my intention to take sides in any way about the tragic events going on in Gaza today.
Cool, thanks for the clarification. Yeah – I think the approach (and his question) was a bit biased, especially given the sensitive nature of the events. In directing that question at the consulate, it’s as if Matthew was blaming them for refusing Palestinians from using the Internet and related tools. I’m pretty certain that freedoms are not infringed upon (and when they are, it’s never on purpose) and the only goals at least in this operation are to stop the terrorists involved in instigating conflict.
I hear your point somewhat. I think that there will always be that hatred and confusion, and I think that limiting people to 140 characters is going to make communications difficult in how to possibly erode that hatred. Today’s event was great, but afterward, I followed up with Shel Israel who essentially admitted it was a “failure” because nobody was swayed either way. My thought is that it’s really hard to use press conferences in GENERAL to sway the opinion, and really, the only people truly involved (from my observations, and I watched the conference pretty intensely throughout) were either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine and nothing in between. As far as the involvement in the project, I think it was incredibly successful – the goal wasn’t to sway opinion but simply for Israel to give its view.
Perhaps direct contact really is the best way to fix this problem. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if Twitter will be able to achieve that goal. But in any instance, I think people need to go into it with an open mind.