I met Shanti Ramroop in 2003 while doing fieldwork in Richmond Hill, NY among the West Indian immigrant community that lives there. Shanti had recently immigrated to the United States and was working as a sales girl at a variety store. When we met, she was using her lunch hour to complain to a convenience store owner that the phone card she had purchased the day before to call her mother didn’t work. She wanted a refund. The owner refused. She was very upset. So, I introduced her to email.

As she stood muttering curses at the store owner in the doorway, I asked her if anyone in her family could get to a library in Trinidad to check email maybe once a week. She wasn’t sure, but I took her to a local library branch in Richmond Hill, NY and helped her set up an email account anyway. Soon enough, Shanti was emailing her family regularly. Email was preferable because she didn’t have to deal with the worry of the letter getting lost in transit. Plus she could send and receive pictures, and there was no limit on how much she could write   with the time limits of phone cards, she often had to plan her news carefully. Though email never fully replaced her bimonthly calls to her mother, it helped her stay connected.

Today, sites like Facebook and Twitter, online blogging communities, and photosharing sites are popular means for immigrants to remain connected to family and friends. According to Facebook, 70% of users are outside of the United States. With 400 million active users, that’s a lot of international members connecting globally. For immigrants this can mean watching nieces, nephews, cousins, and siblings grow up; seeing the family home and the old neighborhoods undergo gradual changes; and simply, maintaining meaningful ties to culture, history, and heritage.

Marcia Nunez, a 56-year-old woman who has lived and worked in New York City for 30 years, regularly checks her Facebook account on her mobile phone ‘ which is what she was doing when I noticed her on a subway platform. Holding her phone at an angle (the screen is a little small for her tastes), she was chuckling when she looked up and caught my eye. Her teenaged nephews in Ecuador are on Facebook and she wants to be as involved as she can be in their lives.  It’s great,’ she said.  I can carry my nephews with me everywhere now. I know what happened in school. I know when they’re in trouble. I can see them growing up.

Martin Rodriguez, a 35-year-old night watchman originally from the Dominican Republic, admits that he spends a lot of his night passing his time on Facebook chatting with friends and family members in his homeland.  It doesn’t compare to a visit but it’s close enough,’ he said.

Nunez and Rodriguez are part of the growing number of Latinos who are finding their way online. According to the Pew Research Center, Internet use among Latinos grew 10% between 2006 and 2008 with foreign born Latinos heavily contributing to this increase. But these types of online spaces also help immigrants form a community in their new neighborhoods as well. A quick search of Facebook revealed groups for The Trini-American-UK-Canadian Connection, From Penal and Proud, and New York City Haitian American Student Association. These spaces help immigrants find and make connections with other individuals to help them create new networks based on a shared heritage.

About the research: Shanti Ramroop was an original informant in Krystal’s fieldwork with Trinidadian immigrants looking at the intersection of capitalism and immigrant identity (2004-2005).  The name Shanti Ramroop is an alias. The other two examples are from Krystal’s current project which looks at various elements of digital sociality.

O’Barry held up a sign that said “TEXT DOLPHIN TO 44144” when he and others involved in the making of ”The Cove” — a documentary about efforts to stop an annual dolphin hunt in Japan — took the stage for their Best Documentary Feature win at Sunday night’s 82nd annual Academy Awards.

Following O’Barry’s instructions signs you up for the film’s mobile campaign, connecting you to more information on the film, trailers, a petition against the hunt in Taiji, Japan, and other materials to promote “The Cove” and the cause behind it.

Some viewers watching on television might not have caught O’Barry’s message; the cameras cut away soon after he raised the sign above his head. The Academy Awards show producers, after all, are famous for trying to keep things short and on schedule — and relatively politics-free.

VOTE

Name: Care2

Nominated Category: Organization

URL: http://www.care2.com

Area: Online Community, Advocacy, Action

About:

Care2, started by Randy Paynter, calls itself the largest online community for people involved and interested in green living, human rights and animal welfare.

Description:

Care2.com gives folks a chance to stay on top of worthwhile causes and news, search for tips on anything form how to be a more conscious consumer to farmers’ market recipes, and connect with the community’s 11 million members. How the site functions is dependent on the community. The Care2 News Network, for example, dubbed C2NN, depends on members posting news stories, videos or podcasts elsewhere online and uploading them to C2NN; other members can then vote or “note” stories they particularly like. Well “noted” stories get pushed to C2NN’s “front page.”

For immediate action — if you’re looking to better more than yourself, but perhaps those in need of aid on the other side of the world — Care2 has a “take action” section where members can sign petitions or start petitions for various causes, blog, and start or join Care2 community groups. There are also charitable actions tied to web site’s free e-cards. Sending different e-cards benefits different charities; with one in particular, Care2 promises to purchase one square foot of rainforest for each e-card sent.

Started in 1998, out of founder Paynter’s apartment, Care2 is now a certified “benefit corporation,” with 12 million members and 400 non-profit partner organizations.

The Basics:

WHO: Randy Payner (founder)

WHAT: The Care2 site provides tools for people to live a greener, more socially and environmentally sound life — whether those resources be articles and advice, or online petitions.

WHERE: U.S. based, but with causes all over the world.

HOW to get involved: Become a member, sign a petition, support a cause, etc.

What other people are saying:

Ode magazine on founder Randy Payner

Column that mentions Care2

Times (UK) piece on how stray dog gets to the U.S. from Iraq thanks to a Care2 petition

Current TV video

VOTE

Name: Care2

Nominated Category: Organization

URL: http://www.care2.com

Area: Online Community, Advocacy, Action

About:

Care2, started by Randy Paynter, calls itself the largest online community for people involved and interested in green living, human rights and animal welfare.

Description:

Care2.com gives folks a chance to stay on top of worthwhile causes and news, search for tips on anything form how to be a more conscious consumer to farmers’ market recipes, and connect with the community’s 11 million members. How the site functions is dependent on the community. The Care2 News Network, for example, dubbed C2NN, depends on members posting news stories, videos or podcasts elsewhere online and uploading them to C2NN; other members can then vote or “note” stories they particularly like. Well “noted” stories get pushed to C2NN’s “front page.”

For immediate action — if you’re looking to better more than yourself, but perhaps those in need of aid on the other side of the world — Care2 has a “take action” section where members can sign petitions or start petitions for various causes, blog, and start or join Care2 community groups. There are also charitable actions tied to web site’s free e-cards. Sending different e-cards benefits different charities; with one in particular, Care2 promises to purchase one square foot of rainforest for each e-card sent.

Started in 1998, out of founder Paynter’s apartment, Care2 is now a certified “benefit corporation,” with 12 million members and 400 non-profit partner organizations.

The Basics:

WHO: Randy Payner (founder)

WHAT: The Care2 site provides tools for people to live a greener, more socially and environmentally sound life — whether those resources be articles and advice, or online petitions.

WHERE: U.S. based, but with causes all over the world.

HOW to get involved: Become a member, sign a petition, support a cause, etc.

What other people are saying:

Ode magazine on founder Randy Payner

Column that mentions Care2

Times (UK) piece on how stray dog gets to the U.S. from Iraq thanks to a Care2 petition

Current TV video

This dynamic and illuminating TED talk given by Clay Shirky’s  at the State Department last month underscored three important breakthroughs of social media. First, that it is a significant revolution nestled amongst the printing press and television. Second, that social media is a “site for coordination” where all mediums are aggregated in one space for dialogue and response. And third, that former audience members/consumers now have the ability to simultaneously be producers of content.

He illustrates one of the more profound examples of media transcending the traditional space and galvanizing a larger community by recalling the 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China this year. China’s traditional media outlets were unable to keep up with the speed at which information was being disseminated to the world and eventually started cracking down on the sources. On the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen, the government suspended service of Twitter (Facebook had already been shutdown). Shirky points out that China, so well-oiled for censoring the internet, had now been stymied because media was no longer functioning in the traditional structure as it had before.

Yet, his story elucidated a more troubling matter. Although China was thwarted by its own citizens, who had bypassed usual media posts, leaders were still able to recognize sources of social media anarchy (eg. Twitter, Facebook) and just shut them down.

Michael Anti, a former NYT employee, recently stated that “Twitter is a new thing in China. The censors need time to figure out what it is. So enjoy the last days of twittering before the fate of YouTube descends on it one day.” He goes on to point out that Chinese tweets have “three times the volume of an English tweet, thanks to the high information intensity of the Chinese language.”

Most recently, communal violence between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese, that left 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured, further illustrated China’s suppression of expression. Urumqui Communist Party Secretary Li Zhi told the official Zinhua news agency that they “cut internet connections in some areas of Urumqi in order to quench the riot quickly and prevent violence from spreading to other places.” Simultaneously, they invited foreign reporters for controlled tours of the area, taking the cunning and sophisticated approach to managing reported media.

Clearly, China has shown a deft and swift way of dealing with new media control. They are concurrently controlling and propagating messages over these social media channels. It’s easy to get lost in the swell and excitement that surrounds technological breakthroughs and demonstrations of democracy in Iran, the US and elsewhere in the world, and focus on where it’s working. But, policy makers and business leaders need to also recognize that their needs to be the creation of alternatives in places like China, North Korea and Cuba. Just because elements of social media and the internet are a lawless frontier, doesn’t mean that it will not be wrangled and contained.

Kelley Currie from the Wall Street Journal says “policy makers in free societies need to recognize China’s simultaneous efforts to control and exploit new information technologies as a serious threat to freedom and human rights.” She suggests starting the process with Chinese-language media such as Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and the BBC and says that it will also require “investing in new initiatives that challenge China’s control of online space and discourse by both increasing Chinese citizen’s access to the uncensored Web and expanding the number and presence of alternative Chinese vernacular voices.”

Likewise, this spirit of defiance is captured when Shirky concludes his speech with a call to arms by asking, “How can we make best use of this media? Even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it.” Although his question is directed towards traditional media space, we can just as easily aim it at the ever-expanding, growing force that is social media. How do we investigate, challenge and expand the sphere in areas where it is being stifled, silenced and manipulated? And can we transcend national laws and supersede powerful regimes with social media innovation?

Jimmy Wales

JIMMY WALES
Founder, Wikipedia

Twitter: http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales

Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, is an American Internet entrepreneur best known for founding Wikipedia.org, as well as other wiki-related organizations, including the charitable organization Wikimedia Foundation, and the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.

TS: How do you define the public interest of social media?

Jimmy Wales: When we think about social media and the public interest we should be interested in and concerned about quality and what roles different forms of social media play. It’s a very diverse topic.

TS: How do you at Wikipedia take the public interest into account?

JW: Wikipedia is fundamentally a charitable endeavor to create and distribute a quality free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet. And within our community there’s a very strong spirit that we should be concerned about quality, that we’re trying to conserve a culture that has a positive, helpful role for people and learning. Its fairly defined project as far as public interest.

TS: Are there any unexpected ways you’ve seen it used that you’re particularly proud of?

JW: It’s been interesting to see how Wikipedia responds to breaking news. It does a really great job normally at synthesising information from a wide variety of different sources. Pulling things together from all sorts of different places very fast. In some news stories it plays a crucial function.

TS: What other developments excite you?

JW: I’m very intrigued by video in the future. I think that it gets more exciting as we get to a place where people have access to the tools to create and edit video collaboratively and more people have faster internet connections that allow them to download and view it. When I see video today it looks a lot like the creation of text did in 1999. What I mean by that is that you have a lot of individuals doing individual projects just like everybody used to put up homepages and make these fabulous resources but as just one person. Maybe they’d write 20 pages of information about Thomas Jefferson with hyperlinks and pictures but they weren’t collaborating to make something bigger. And right now in video we see lots of people doing individual projects but very little so far in terms of larger groups putting together bigger projects. We’ve got a long way to go there, and I think that’s what we’ll see a lot of in five years.

TS: What do you think the greatest threats to the use of social media in the public interest are?

JW: To create goodcontent requires certain social norms and rules. It’s not just about software, it’s about people. Wikipedia as a community works really hard to generate social rules and norms and expectations and structures and institutions with an eye towards trying to create a very high quality. And while I’m proud at what we’ve accomplished so far we still have a lot of things to do. But the thing that seems to work is that spirit ‘ the idea that this is a medium that we’re trying to make into something important. You can have all the new software or technology in the world and if people are just using it to be idiots then it doesn’t really help with anything. I think that’s one of the key threats ‘ a failure to recognize that this is really a social phenomenon and that software can impede us or help us along but at the end of the day people have to get together and decide to do things in a good way.

TS: How do you build that kind of spirit?

JW: It takes a lot of work, a lot of talking, a lot of coaching, a lot of empowering good people and making it harder for bad people to participate. It’s 1001 different things but it’s no different from’ what we struggle with throughout all society all the time. How do organizations deal with toxic personalities? There’s no simple magic answer to that. If you’re thinking about some solution that has to do with cyberspace you’re going down the wrong path. It’s just about building good communities like it’s always been.

TS: Where do you see it in a couple of years?

JW: In my work I’m seeing people expand beyond the encyclopedia into the rest of the library. We’ve got a half a billion pages a month and growing very quickly. We’re still seeing a consolidation of the move towards real-time working in a semi-public fashion using things like Twitter and Facebook. The other thing is the globalization of the medium. Right now less than 20 per cent of what’s in Wikipedia is in English and in five years time that will be less than 10 per cent – because all the other languages are growing so quickly. And that’s really important, the idea that this kind of communication is going on world wide, albeit unevenly distributed because of broadband access. We should remember that the impact here is global.

TS: Do governments have a responsibility to consider that?

JW: Yes, of course they do, but I’d really caution against the one-after-another fad-ism of people suggesting governments or organizations should be doing X, Y or Z. Someone was joking online the other day that companies could reassign the people they hired to be in Second Life and have them move to Twitter instead because it’s the fad of the year. It’s perfectly fine if we see people in government who are using Twitter or blogging or on Facebook but let’s not get too wound up in that. The most important thing government can do is not interfere with the marketplace and really allow these kinds of technologies to develop.