“With A Little Help From My Friends:” Social Media and Civic Engagement

This week in LIBR599M we’ve been talking about collaboration. At the beginning of the week, we were asked some interesting questions. What role does social media play in democracies around the world? Why might these issues be important in libraries? What role do librarians play in this arena called ‘civic engagement’? Can one get an accurate sense of community in digital spaces? In thinking about these questions, I returned to one of the concepts I explored in the first week of class: civic media. A link to the definition we created in week one is here: civic media is essentially communication which strengthens social bonds and fosters civic engagement. The use of social media for this purpose often allows for an immediacy which I believe can have a profound effect on the way community building occurs in digital spaces.

I keep returning to this quote, from MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media:
“Transforming civic knowledge into civic action is an essential part of democracy. As with investigative journalism, the most delicate and important information can often focus on leaders and institutions that abuse the trust of the communities they serve. By helping to provide people with the necessary skills to process, evaluate, and act upon the knowledge in circulation, civic media ensures the diversity of inputs and mutual respect necessary for democratic deliberation. Some of what emerges here looks like traditional journalism, while some moves in radical new directions.”

The emphasis above is my own. For me, this bolded sentence is the crux –  this is also an important part of what we can do as librarians. We provide information, put hopefully we are also helping to foster the skills which allow people to evaluate, contextualize, and use information effectively. However, the concept of civic media suggests that this is not only a top-down relationship – we can all learn something from each other. And that is perhaps the truest form of collaboration.