Crowd Sourcing The Big Issues In Social Media: Race, Gender, Generation, Poverty
by
on July 25, 2008,
Over the past 48 hours I conducted a poll of Twitter users. Unscientific? Absolutely. Generic? Of course. And yet I was surprised at the results. What did I ask on Thursday? “Which issue is bigger to you? Gender gap/social media, race/social media, poverty gap/social media or generation gap/social media.”
I must admit I picked a hard time to conduct a Twitter Poll, what with Twitter going down, but I still got a healthy number of responses. When I started the poll, I had a preconceived notion of the results formed in my mind based on the latest bitchmemes (race in the form of Loren Feldman’s video blog, or gender due to the rash of “women in tech” lists and BlogHer). I was so happy when my Twitter list surprised me.
The results: race got two votes. That’s it. I was shocked. Perhaps people are all talked out about it this week after the 1938 Media brouhaha that’s been going on, or perhaps it never was the over reaching issue people made it out to be in the first place. I don’t know. I know I was expecting more of my Twitter list to say it was a hot button topic and only two did. In fact, several of the people I would have pegged for it to be an issue voted for other things.
Intrigued, I moved on down the poll. Gender gap and social media got 1 vote. One! That made me happy. It is a personal peeve of mine when women want to be treated equally and have the same opportunities then cry foul when they are truly treated equally. Equality and “better” are not always the same, after all. I’m more comfortable when race is an issue, but often think that it isn’t really the color of someone’s skin that was the problem but rather the opportunities they were afforded in life. Often this is more of a class or economic divide than one of skin color, however.
The fourth option, generation gap, got three votes. I was not surprised at this, as I think that many of the 20 something crowd (not all, but many) hang out somewhere besides Twitter in social media (FaceBook and MySpace come to mind first here). What happens when these 20 somethings outgrow FaceBook (or when FaceBook outgrows them and makes itself too work centric to appeal to that age level any more)? I’m not sure, but at least on Twitter it was not the winning hot button issue.
What won the poll? Poverty gap and social media had the dubious distinction of “winning” with 47 votes. That’s right - a late night poll to my nearly 800 scattered follows and followers during a Twitter crisis netted a whopping 53 replies, 47 of which said that the issue of an economic/poverty gap and social media was their biggest concern. I must admit I was hoping that issue would win, as it is near and dear to my heart.
Why conduct the poll at all? Because I want to solve the problem, or start to. I want to put the finest minds on the internet together to come up with ways to bridge the gap. Won’t you join me? Sure we have the One Laptop Per Child program in the States, finally, and a few other programs, but it is nowhere near enough. In this time of recession, the economic gap crosses the lines of gender, race and generation. As a collective, the social media thought leaders of the internet could effect real change in this desperate hour.
I am soliciting participants for a series of podcasts on poverty/ecomonic gap and social media. I want to know what you bring to the table. If you want to help, if you have big ideas, it doesn’t even matter if you are an industry rock star or the person in the apartment on the corner with a little too much internet time - tell me your big ideas in the comments. I’ll be hosting the first podcast on Topics On Fire, Episode 1: Social Media and the Poverty Crisis this Sunday at 11 PM Eastern on TalkShoe. I’d love to see you all there. Let’s make this happen.
A topic as big as this deserves a panel big enough to handle it, so without further ado I present your panel for the evening.
Panelists include (in no particular order):
Moderator: Leslie Poston (@geechee_girl ), Editor at Profy , Senior Writer at Blorge , Co-founder of UptownUncorked
Andrew Feinberg (@agfhome ), Assistant Editor/Warren Communications News - Washington Internet Daily / Communications Daily
Erin Koteki-Vest (@queenofspain ), BlogHer Political Director, Huffington Post contributor, and proud mommyblogger
*Erin has moved to “maybe” status because her daughter is ill. She will try to make it.
Sean P Aune (@seanpaune ), Mashable Lead Features Writer and co-host of Mashable Conversations , owner of SeanPAune.com
Steven Hodson (@stevenhodson ), contributor at Mashable , owner WinExtra
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira (@fourlittlebees ), Editor at Profy , contributor at The Industry Standard
Jim Keenan (@heykeenan ) Founder of Cre8Buzz , Social Media enthusiast, Skier
Shireen Mitchell (@digitalsista ) Executive Director of Digital Sisters/Sisters Inc and blogger at WomenWiredIn.com
Profy author and fellow UptownUncorked founder Triston McIntyre will be in the chat room making sure we don’t miss any of your contributions in chat. This should be a lively group!
Edited to change the time of the show so as not to compete with L33t Tech News. 
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Bighorn
kalipso
Mav
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
I voted for non-option education gap. I know that can be annoying but as it concerns digital literacy that is where the gap is the largest and it covers every other category as well.
As digital literacy gains weight in public schools (it hasn’t yet with little or no national benchmarks for it, but that’ll be coming) the gap will begin to be bridged. One easy future problem to spot is that those already inculcated to social media will have to take a few steps back and grab some patience as a new flood of participants comes along to make the mistakes and ask the questions the tried and true have already overcome.
I do have a big idea that concerns bridging this gap as well as the huge valley of vagueness that surrounds the purpose of so many new gadgets and that is for a coalition of developers to form a school (made of multiple charters) that uses their gifts to function. It would entail taking the reins of the future and true collaboration. However, if the long view is at all important, by doing this the participants could virtually program a nation; make inroads into future legislation to their benefit; and secure purpose, bottom lines and a loyal clientele base.
That’s the nutshell. I will try to find that podcast! I would love to hear it. I teach in an economically depressed area and have the interests of my students’ potentials always in mind. However, though many of my kids (and their parents/guardians) former, present are racially and economically diverse, the digital literacy gap is the commonality. And the way I see it, it is in the virtual world where these factors can be overcome most easily and the dream of a level playing field for all children and families can be realized. They will be players one way another in this ether, those who take on the call to make the game have the potential to rule it.
I think I am well known for my feelings on this subject so it was rather heart warming (in a sense) to see that poverty recieved the attention it did in your informal poll and I will definitely be giving your podcast a listen to … and thanks for the time change as this will make my night a little less hectic
I think that it all comes down to the poverty gap. The other gaps are largely products of the poverty gap. The education gap that was mentioned earlier in the comments is largely the same as the poverty gap: people living in poverty tend to be unable to afford higher education. Sadly, there is still a correlation between race and poverty.
Internet connections cost money, broadband connections even more. Many people living in poverty are in rural areas where they don’t even have the availability of broadband even if they could afford it.
I’m glad that the people responding to the poll overwhelming identified the poverty gap, and hopefully with increased attention something can be done about it.
I’m still sticking with my outlier vote of “attention span/social media” gap.
I totally want to be involved on Sunday and wherever this all goes.
Based on how I redefined what it means to have PodCamp “Boston” (where is Dorchester, Roslindale, Mattapan, Lower Roxbury, Roxbury, etc.?) - I’ll belatedly vote for social economic and race. TalkShoe to you on Sunday. Cheers, Adam
@transiit We had three outlier votes, actually, my favorite of which was “reality gap/social media” Heh.
I am impressed with how many people wanted to be on the panel. I ended up going with a “first come, first served” plan with confirmations the day of in an attempt to be fair. If you aren’t on the panel but want to talk, tell me or Triston in chat and I’ll try to get you in.
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