Social Media is Changing the World
In Alejandra Guzman’s blog post, she highlights six different six ways in which social media affects the world and provides links to more detailed posts about each of the six concepts. When reading her article I immediately began to think of my experiences with NAG- the home of new hopes, a boarding and day school for underprivileged children in Kathmandu. NAG has benefitted greatly from social media as donors and sponsors are connecting and raising funds, while networking platforms allowed for communication and coordination of relief efforts after the devastating earthquake of 2015.
Social Media and Disaster Response
As Heather Lesson mentions in her post, the devastating earthquake that hit the Kathmandu valley in 2015 was a prime example of social media aiding in during time of crisis. OpenStreetMap, a large, free and open data set that anyone can use, allowed for over 7,500 contributors to improve digital mapping of Nepal. By looking at pre and post images, they could determine affected areas across the country, which was extremely important for rural areas that had no means of communication (2016). My experience with NAG’s social media use, was much more “micro” and less sophisticated, but nonetheless still very important and it highlights the “two-way” flow of Web 2.0 technologies and the fact you don’t have to be an expert to use them. As half of NAG’s students are day school students, the school leader, Nicole, was able to track the safety of many of students off campus using the “marked safe” feature. Nicole, by her own admission is far from a technology expert, was also able to coordinate teams to find students and mark them safe, as many would not have a smartphone or Facebook to do so, and she was able to organise groups to aid in clean up efforts by posting times and meeting places on Facebook. Whether it’s big tech trouble shooting nation wide issues, or bottoms-up organisations helping at the micro level, social media is now paramount for aiding in times of disaster.
Social Media Disrupting Industry
In her blog on the topic, Claire Wardle notes how freelance journalists social media usage has forced major media institutions to become experts in the field and cultivate their own strategic direction to facilitate media consumption of their brand (2016). My friend and fellow NAG volunteer Andrew, a high school art teacher and artist, has highlighted how artists are advancing their own brand on social media and disrupting traditional art marketing and sales. After creating a large canvas painting Andrew, by no means a famous artist, posted the piece he was selling in order to generate funds for the creation of an Arts Centre at the NAG school. Andrew was inspired by a computer programme, AlphaGo, created by Google DeepMind, which is the first AI to beat a world champion at the board game “Go”. (This revelation is also the subject of an award winning documentary). By using hashtags in his post (#alphago, #deepmind) the painting came across an employee of DeepMind and Andrew received a message about cost and the intended charitable contributions. Today, his painting hangs in the front office DeepMind and this August he is off to Kathmandu to design and build the new art centre. Even though it is a modest Instagram account, with 167 followers, Andrew’s story is proof of how individuals can reinvent consumership and how social media is changing the world.
References
Leson, H (2016, April, 6) How is Social Media helping disaster response? [Blog Post] Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/how-is-social-media-helping-disaster-response/
Wardle, C (2016, April, 6) Is this the biggest disruptor of the news industry? [Blog Post] Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/is-this-the-biggest-disruptor-of-the-news-industry