Quakers and Social Media

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Love it or hate it, social media is now part of our world. It's not a purely western phenomenon, nor something restricted to “developed” economies. Not only is it prevalent in the so-called BRICS economies, or even the so-called “Next Eleven”, but it is increasingly a meaningful part of life in pretty much every country where it is available – and it’s available in more than you might think. We might look at how much our computers cost, in the Global Economic North, and the price of iPhones and their most direct competitors, and boggle at the idea that people in poorer countries have access, but remember that far more inexpensive phones exist. Companies want to make money from every population they can, and if that means finding a way to make it affordable to additional populations, that is what will happen. Also, it is worth remembering that every country, no matter how much poorer it may seem, has a wealthy elite. In fact, the biggest barrier to social media adoption in some parts of the world is not wealth, but literacy.

Now, I'm sure a very interesting post could be written – indeed, I'd be amazed if things hadn't been written – looking at the phenomenon of social media and its worldwide adoption, what it means to communities in general, its economic and social impact, etc. That's not what I'm about on this blog, though. No, in this post I will be looking at and setting forth my own views on the use of social media by Quaker organisations and individuals. This has relevance to our own community – how we communicate with one another – as well as the wider community, outreach, how we are presented and how we appear to the wider world. I do not claim to be presenting a well-researched guide to using social media, either in principle or practice. This is merely some observations from my own reasoning (for the principles) and experience (for the practice), and reflection on both.

It’s hardly surprising, given liberal Quaker demographics, that there are plenty of people in our community – even some fairly weighty Friends – who are uncomfortable about social media and sceptical of its value. There’s all the stories in the media about how dangerous, how harmful to mental health social media is for young people (apparently thanks to addiction, bullying and the usual image problems), or how full it is of abusive behaviour; the former has some mixed evidence, and it’s certainly clear that some bad things happen on social media. Doxxing, the practice of publishing someone’s personal information without their permission, along with other forms of harassment, have made it a dangerous place for some – even physically dangerous, as seen in the ‘hilarious’ (abhorrent) practice of ‘SWATing’ - reporting a dangerous, violent crime as happening at the person’s address. This began largely in relation to people who would live-stream themselves playing video games, because people thought it was funny to see their reaction to armed police bursting through their door, but it has happened – so I understand – in cases where people are actually reacting to someone saying something they don’t like, even when they won’t be able to witness it on Twitch.

Yet many who use social media find it an amazing boon. It’s been used to organise protest movements, facilitates networking for communities who find it difficult by more traditional means, and allows people to find connection, to feel connected, who might otherwise be isolated. It has also certainly been effective for marketing, provided you have the know-how and the budget. We need only look at its reported importance in recent elections and referenda in various countries to know how much of an impact it can have – including when it is used dishonestly. Even where it is useful, that same usefulness is a peril; that does not remove, however, that usefulness, nor render it inherently unsafe.

Controversial.

Consider a parallel: Friends in urban settings, away from any wilderness, may consider it inappropriate for Quakers to own guns. Indeed, I’ve heard that sentiment stated often. But Friends who live in wilderness areas, or those with dangerous wildlife, are more likely to see virtue in gun ownership. For while the sole purpose of a gun is to kill or, if you’re lucky (or perhaps unlucky) to injure, it is not only human beings that may be injured by a gun. Where it may be necessary to scare off, or even kill wildlife for the safety of people, or to hunt in order to feed people, guns have considerable virtue.

Social media was created for a positive impact. That it has had negative impacts due to what I can only characterise as misuse (both abuse of individuals and nefarious uses for political purposes) does not negate the positive impact that it has, and that it has had. Thus, while we must be wary of misuse, and pitfalls that face users, we would also be wrong to write it off as a bad deal. Let us now explore some of the benefits and how they can be leveraged – as well as how we might be disappointed – before we consider the downsides in the specific Quaker context.

Before I continue, however, it’s worth considering blogging and how it relates to social media. It predates the idea of social media, yet many blogging platforms have social functions or some degree of interaction with social networks, and at least two of the popular social networks describe themselves in terms of blogging: Twitter is considered, and has described itself as, a ‘microblogging’ platform, and Tumblr straight out refers to what it provides as blogs, though the social features are the most prominent. Some blogging platforms are extremely social in their outlook, like Livejournal and its descendants (such as Dreamwidth and the possibly defunct Blurty) who have a system of friends-locking posts, finding people with common interests, and ‘communities’ as (potentially) moderated groups for discussion of shared interests. Even free-standing blogging software often has features to enable community use of the software, or integration with social networking platforms. Even if that weren’t the case, we have now reached a point where social media has become the glue that holds the blogosphere together, and a successful blogger (depending on how you measure success) is going to have to make sure their blog connects with social networks. As such, it is necessary to consider blogging as part of the social media landscape.

Blogging can be like this, except you won't know for a
while if the megaphone is turned on.

One thing that is readily apparent about social media is its democratising impact. It has been used by groups opposing oppressive regimes in several countries, and even in the ‘civilized west’ it serves as a platform where those who have trouble being heard can come together and organise. Of course, this includes groups that we might have trouble with, such as the so-called ‘alt-right’, as well as, say, disabled people organising to advocate for or against reforms to social security or equality law. Even within groups that existed and functioned perfectly well before social media, and whose existence has been largely untroubled by it – such as British Quakers – this democratising influence has been felt. No longer must Friends share their ideas by slow conversation, or word of mouth, or publication by vanity press with take-up driven only by word of mouth, or publication by some body with gatekeepers. Witness this very blog, where I – a Quaker convinced in adulthood, without a formal background in relevant scholarship, and starting from a fairly modest ‘career’ in Quaker service – may share my ideas and thoughts freely in the “marketplace of ideas”, to use the free marketeer terminology, or contribute to the bazaar of Quaker thought that has developed in leaps and bounds with the advent of the user-created web. Any of us can present our ideas, comment on others’, take theirs up and develop them, adapt them, and generally create a slow-moving collective thought process that can take ideas in different directions and see what floats to the surface, so to speak.

The bazaar analogy is taken from the idea of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a treatise on software development and the open source community by Eric S Raymond, and bears more consideration here – though a proper examination of it for the context of Quaker thought will require more space. Essentially, it is an exploration of the ways in which open source software can be developed, and characterises two models. In the cathedral, a small group have tight control, work on things and test things privately, and then release their products (complete with source code) in major releases that they have some confidence about. This closely mirrors how software was generally developed in commercial contexts, and how some still are – though newer methodologies are somewhat displacing this pattern, often based on the principles of the bazaar model. In that approach, by contrast, the constantly-changing source code is available to all at all times, development versions can be regularly downloaded to be tested by all, and anyone can offer to contribute fixes or new features. The same distinction can be seen in the evolution of a spiritual community, although the cathedral of the metaphor is a reference to architecture rather than religion. Nevertheless, it can be seen that in episcopal churches – in the sense of the existence of an episcopate, not in reference to churches of the Anglican Communion – there is a strong sense of central authority, while in congregationalist churches – again, in the sense of governance not of adherence to a particular identity – the authority is shared, decentralised. Quaker Yearly Meetings vary in the extent to which they resemble each, with some hewing more closely to a congregational approach and others with a greater sense of the Yearly Meeting having a degree of governance over the worshipping communities. Nonetheless, I would argue that it is in the nature of our faith that growth and development of that faith will tend to come from the ground up, and not be governed by a central authority; exploration of that argument will have to wait for another occasion, however, as I am straying from the topic.

Used correctly, social media also allows you to reach people you could never expect to reach otherwise, nor sometimes that you would ever suspect you might reach. I imagine most of you have heard of the expression “to go viral”, meaning that a post shared initially among a relatively small community is suddenly shared all over the place, popping up in unexpected places and being seen by thousands or millions when the poster might have expected to be seen by dozens only, perhaps hundreds. Marketing firms make good money advising on strategies to make advertising or PR material go viral, and a relatively obscure musical artist from Korea can become the most-watched video online through what seems happenstance. Now, Quakers probably have limited interest in going viral in that way – though it wouldn’t be out of place for some of our social action work. However, that sort of viral propagation is an extreme instance of a more general pattern that run a whole spectrum from “hey, friends of friends that I don’t know about how seen my work” through “holy cow, why am I getting so many views from Poland?” and up to the “everyone is talking about that think I posted, WTF?”. If I write something and pass it around some Ffriends in a lower-tech way, like emailing it, and no-one uses social media, it’s hard for it to get far. Social media has been designed in such a way, however, that when something attracts interest it can snowball. Not only can people share things with one (or maybe three) clicks, but just ‘liking’ or ‘favouriting’ something increases the number of people that see it. This creates a more organic sort of propagation (hence the appropriateness of the term ‘viral’), and the nature of the social networks – using the term in its old-fashioned sense – involved means that it ends up being seen most by the people who are more likely to be interested. The social networks – in the new, technological sense – have also done work to increase that effect, to learn through various methods (including the much-maligned and misunderstood ‘AI’) which people want to see what content and from what sources. Thus it was that a piece I wrote about the whole poppy thing (worn in the UK in relation to remembrance, around Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday in November) ended up rapidly becoming my most read blog post, and nothing has ever caught up with it. It was more thoroughly shared across more networks, partly because of its appeal beyond the Quaker audience, than anything else I’ve written.

The potential of this organic propagation for Quakers is twofold. First, it makes it easier for ideas and content to spread across the online Quaker community, which is part of the democratising impact mentioned above. Second, it means that Quaker ideas have a fair shot at being seen by more non-Quakers. I do not mean this in terms of advertising, which is a possibility that I will cover below (amongst pitfalls and disappointments). Rather, it is a matter of the increased chance of people ‘naturally’ finding Quaker thought, the possibility that people will ‘stumble upon’ something that speaks to them (or not). This is not to be sniffed at, given the number of convinced Friends who seem to have found their way to Quakers more or less accidentally. As people spend more of their time exploring things online, having a presence and a participation in the space in which they explore is the only way Quakers will still have people find us in this way – and with liberal Friends often opposed to anything that even smells of proselytisation, being found in this way is important if we wish to keep being found at all. It is also of benefit to those who are looking, for whatever reason, to find more writing (or videos or podcasts) about Quaker thought, Quaker theology, Quaker processes; social media makes it easier to find things, at least when it’s working properly, and helps us stumble into things that we were looking for, even when we were not actively looking at a particular time. We can join groups, follow subreddits, or just plain follow interesting people and ease ourselves into a community, ask questions. We can do all of that in a way that feels (and usually is) relatively safe, in all sorts of senses of the word.

Not an accurate physical representation

Not only do these online interactions have the advantage of not requiring physical proximity, and the lack of effort that might be required for correspondence or traditional publication. They actually combine other advantages of different pre-social media/user generated web methods of discussion. Once you have the proximity to discuss things in person, there is very little effort involved in conversations – but there is an expectation of rapid response, and the communications themselves are transient, leaving no mark but on the minds of the participants. Conversations online are stored in most cases, albeit sometimes whether the participants will it or not. They are also often either asynchronous in nature – taking sufficient time to reach the recipient and be seen by them that no immediate response is expected – or where they are effectively synchronous, there is nothing rude about not responding immediately but taking some time to consider your response. True, nothing stops you making an intemperate, knee-jerk response, but you do have the option of not doing so. One might hope that Quakers would naturally take to the pattern of taking time to digest things and respond, though experience suggests that they perhaps do not always find this a natural or easy course – which neatly brings us to some pitfalls and disappointments.

It has been noted since long before the advent of social media that people online tend to behave in ways that experience suggests they probably do not when interacting in person. This can be in big or small ways; anonymity or even the simple lack of a clearly present other person seems to lead to people caring less for how others might see their behaviour. Some have argued that this even amounts to having less regard for the feelings of others in these situations. Anyone who’s spent much time in user-generated or interactive parts of the internet, even going back to Usenet, one of the oldest services operated over the internet (indeed, it arguably predates the internet). This was the first world-wide computer based “message board”, to use more recent terminology, in which anyone could roll up, find a relevant community (known as a “news group”), read posts and share their own via the medium of the “network news transfer protocol”, or NNTP. It was (still is, albeit much less-used than it once is) a relatively lawless place (except in the heavily moderated minority of moderated groups), though creation of new groups was somewhat policed. Well before modern social media, there was a Quaker newsgroup, soc.religion.quaker – I even hung out there a little when I was still quite new to Friends. I can’t comment on what the people in that group were like generally (there was the odd fracas while I was there), but in general it was well known back in the oldest days of Usenet that people would act in ways that you would struggle to imagine they acted in person. Trolls and flamewars abounded, and though claims of usage of the term ‘troll’ on Usenet and BBS forums (I’ll skip the rabbit-hole of explaining ‘BBS’) have never been verified, the behaviour has certainly been documented. There’s plenty of psychological theories about why this happens, but there are two simple truths we must acknowledge when talking about being a Quaker online: our interactions are not limited to fellow Quakers, and Quakers are human and sometimes fall into the same problems with behaviour as everyone else in any case. Thus doing Quaker things online is going to run into these problems – whether it’s social media or anything else interactive.

Related to this, and as mentioned above, the possibility of making a rapid response can easily tempt people into doing so before they have properly digested the discussion so far. In my experience, knee-jerk responses tend to widen existing divisions, rather than helping to bridge gaps. Sober thought and taking time over responses can help to build those bridges. Social media doesn’t have the cues that we have in some Quaker contexts to remind people to take time to respond, and it doesn’t have the cues of in-person interaction to encourage people to make a response that is socially acceptable – polite, moderate, not recklessly offensive. If people, as we are often wont, see immediately the things that we disagree with, and immediately speak up about them, then we fail in two ways. First, we respond only to what we’ve disagreed with, without spending time to understand where it is coming from and discern things that we have in common. Second, and possibly more important in some situations, we don’t actually respond to the things we disagree with in the most helpful or effective way. Sure, call out racism online, for example – but take time to understand where it is coming from and engage with the whole of the content that included racism. As long as we don’t succumb to the temptation to react immediately to our first impressions, voice the first thing that comes to us, there is no problem. The same is true when we communicate in person - it’s just that whatever causes the disinhibition of online interactions comes into play as well when the interaction is online.

What a concerted online attack can feel like.

Another aspect of this disinhibition and potential for bad behaviour is that Quakers might readily become targets for attack online, whether it is responsible discourse that happens to be negative towards us or out-and-out abuse, or anything in between. This has already been seen in relation to the ongoing debate on gender recognition and issues around the trans community here in the UK. I make no comment here on the merits of either side, but for example where our Meeting Houses let rooms to groups who are critical of the recognition of trans people’s gender identity and their inclusion as that gender, groups and individuals supportive of trans rights made their disapproval obvious online – sometimes unpleasantly. On the other hand, where a Meeting House refuses to let a room to such a group, the same range of objections and behaviour come from those who are supportive of those groups. Even being visible online, talked about online, can draw attacks without engaging in conversation ourselves. Social media is going to drive elements of our public image whether we engage with it or not.

Social media presents exciting opportunities, as well as risks, but one big risk is disappointment. To hear some people talk about social media, we might think we just need a Facebook page, an Instagram account, a Twitter account, and someone taking care of them with regular posts and responsible replies, and we will have a huge surge in interest. Sadly, it rarely works like that (though sometimes you get lucky). If you want to get the most out of social media, it takes skill and knowledge (which you might have to pay for), and usually some actual budget for ads or ‘promoted posts’. This can be relatively cheap, but you won’t get much out of an advertising budget on social media without also having the knowledge and skills to make use of it. Don’t expect social media to solve problems without having a solid reason and knowledge base to have confidence that it can solve a particular problem in an effective way. Social media is a tool – really, several tools – and it’s a matter of knowing the tools, and using them appropriately.

I hope that this has given some idea of the power and benefits of social media, as well as the pitfalls and perils, both for the collective mass of individual Friends who want to share ideas – or just socialise – and for Meetings and other Quaker organisations. Many such organisations have made effective use of social media, others have had disappointments, and the same is true of individuals. But by approaching it realistically, eyes wide open, and with proper preparation and expectations, we can continue to make good use of it and to reap the benefits. Yes, there are pitfalls, and we need to communicate about those and share those experiences. But if we want a modern, forward looking Religious Society – and I feel clear in myself that that is what we should want – in which we talk about things, share ideas and experiences, we would be hobbling ourselves appallingly if we neglect modern tools such as social media.

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