Before this summer social media was something I participated in for the sol purpose of making people laugh, complaining about my day, and admiring celebrities from afar. While these are all good reasons to be active on social media accounts I never thought there was much affect from a tweet or Facebook post. This July I found out that the affect may not come from a singular person, but rather a collective group.
HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership) is a non profit organization that I have volunteered with for the last four years. It begins as a leadership conference for high school sophomores and then as an alum there are a multitude of post conference opportunities including the World Leadership Congress (WLC), participating in international service trips, attending Global Youth Summits, and volunteering with the local alumni association. I attended my local leadership conference as a high school sophomore and then attended the World Leadership Congress, hosted in Chicago, the following summer. HOBY in short, has empowered me, motivated me, and quite frankly, changed my life.
This summer I had the extraordinary opportunity to be selected as a volunteer to go back to Chicago for the World Leadership Congress. While I was all geared up and ready to volunteer for ten days, the seminar chair asked us to start using #WLC14 in preparation for the week. In the beginning I thought a hashtag was just a clever way to get volunteers to find each other on twitter, but in the end it was much more than that.
Before the conference had even started students and volunteers alike were connecting through various forms of social media including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Before you could even think about it, people were expanding their social capital without even attending the leadership conference yet! As alumni of the organization, they had previously formed exclusive bonding social capital with their local HOBY and local alumni association, but then they begun to bridge their connections with a diverse group of students that they had not even encountered yet!
As the week of the conference moved along in the program there were specially designated times for what we called “Social Media Blitzes”. During this time students and volunteers would get together and use their social media to tweet about the great speakers, panelists or activities that we had participated in throughout the day. Often they were direct quotes that moved the students or a thank you to a panelist, but each post always included #WLC14 and often “mentioned” a specific person or organization. These organizations then started taking note of how many students were impacted by what they were hearing. Students immediately started tweeting and direct messaging with these organizations to make a difference in their local communities through fundraising and events. They had already made contact with organizations all the while still being in Chicago!
Over the span of a week, #WLC14 trended four times nationally because of these social media blitzes. Volunteer organizations all over the country started following students and the social capital of 402 students and over 50 volunteers was immensely growing. As a group we had reached out to Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education for the US, and cool enough, he replied back with a video message about his support of HOBY and the World Leadership Congress. It is with the help of a large group that the message got across to Duncan.
When watching the “Is Social Media Sparking Civic Engagement?” video with Cary Booker, I couldn’t help but remember this experience I had this summer. The idea that a group of people who wouldn’t normally be seen as having a voice (urban communities in New Jersey as the case with Booker and the youth of America as in my case) now have the power to reach out to institutions and governmental figures in order to engage in civic life and influence others. Like Booker said, times are changing and the traditional government is now adapting to new social standards. Because of this idea, a group of individuals from all over the world were able to reach out to people on social media and not only expand their social capital, but show that a group of people, and a simple hashtag can reach others.
I challenge you all to think of your personal experiences with social media and in particular, hashtags. Have you ever reached out to an organization or governmental figure on social media? Have you ever become civically engaged with a hashtag? And finally, do you think having the resources to reach out and engage with these individuals or organizations on social media make it easier to be civically engaged? I’m interested to hear other peoples thoughts and experiences!
I really like how you emphasized the contrast between the initial opinion you had on the role social media plays in civic engagement, to the opinion you held after participating in the World Leadership Conference. Due to the "challenge" you presented to readers in the last paragraph, I found myself pondering over what personal experiences I had involving social media and civic engagement. I found myself able to relate your story to one of my own in high-school, where our volunteer organization was able to utilize social media to in order to bridge the gap between high school students and volunteer services. Your blog post perfectly depicted how social media can be a tool for civic engagement, rather than an obstacle. What I actually found most interesting about your blog post was that ironically enough, I believe I've seen the #WLC14 hashtag trending before on twitter and have wondered what the tag was all about.
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