This bubble could burst. ‘New Media’ is a dirty word these days from the dot.com burst bubble. And I can’t help but feel that the ’social media’ bubble will just float away into the sky.

Social media will grow and weave into our lives, and so what’s next?

Putting all your eggs into the ’social media’ basket is dangerous, it can make you look de riguer one day and old news the next.

I think its important to own a broader space that encompasses ’social media’ but makes you more of master of this strand of communication, not a slave to it.

As a designer I respond. I absorb what culture is upto, really feel the pulse and produce something that should be felt by the audience and in turn they will want to engage in.

For me – Responsive Design Media Agency (working title) works for me.

The foundation of an agency is the ability to look outside and pick up on whats going on, have ideas, shape them, then make media/technology do something useful or inspire an audience.

There again what’s wrong with design agency?

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/265/
(To remake the world).

I quote:

“It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent.”

“The movement can’t be divided because it is atomized—small pieces loosely joined. It forms, gathers, and dissipates quickly. ”

If there isn’t a role for social media in supporting this movement I’d very surprised.

Transferring the power of communication into the hands of the many rather than the few seems to make sense give our needs at the beginning of the 21st century. And I say “our” because at the most basic level “we” (all 6 billion of us) share the same roof. We’re living in the same house.

We have some significant challenges to deal with – poverty, disease, climate change etc. These problems are all global but they are also local. For example, I heard that about half of the UK’s carbon emissions come from energy that we use in our homes and day-to-day lives. So it seems what people do locally really can make a difference globally.

While I think the mainly top-down systems which we inhabit have served us pretty well up to this point many seem to be starting to creak – a good example is the global financial system which just does not seem to be fit for purpose. My evidence is that despite the trillions in flowing around the world economy they don’t seem to be flowing where needed!

And, yes, you are so right social media can make individuals and communities feel powerful again.

Potentially social media can create “awareness” – allowing people to start to understand the problems and issues and challenges and impacts.

Potentially social media supports “agency” – by providing access to the best knowledge and best practice to try and do stuff. It shows us the alternatives, what others have achieved and shows that better solutions are possible.

And social media seems to offer the potential for “association” (ie supporting one another) – through a sense of community which often is the sense of sharing a problem then finding a solution with others.

But unlike in politics, (and as Theo said) there is no organised ‘we’ in social media. This might be a good thing if it can bypass that sense of powerlessness.

For instance, I can think of lots of ways social media could help the environment and communities: car sharing, organising political campaigns, reducing waste through peer pressure, meeting your neighbours, cycling-to-work clubs, discussing alternative power sources, etc.

And I think most people are willing to do a little bit for the environment as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them too much, and people will do more if they see their friends and neighbours doing more. If all those ‘little bits’ could be harnessed and amplified it might start to make a real difference.

All those activities above already exist, but perhaps social media has the reach to make it feel like a powerful unified effort, rather than powerless isolated effort, and without having anybody dictating from above.

Is that the sort of direction you had in mind Pete?

The problem i think is in the ‘we’. There is at the moment no ‘we’, that will act as a single agent (i.e. having the same belief about what must be done and actually doing it as a single agent) in order to make social media what it thinks social media should become.

What we have at the moment is a fragmented multiplicity of groups and individuals that use social media in a variety of different ways, and towards a variety of different goals.

We could of course try to create a ‘we’ that will do this, and we could use social media to create this ‘we’ subject/agent. I am not convinced however that such a we is in the end a good thing. This requires a post unto itself tho.

The name’s not that relevant to me. I think we know what new or digital or social media are. And what they mainly are is something different from traditional media. As Jenny said it’s just a handy moniker.

But in the theory of change, there’s an essential idea called “agency”. Agency is about having the power to do something about something. Critically, it’s also about believing one has that power.

In other words, if you don’t think you can change something, you won’t.

It strikes me that rather than debating what social media is called, and even what’s it for today, we really need to be debating what we would like it to be for.

In the first decade of the 21st century we (especially those of us in the developed world) are in an incredible position (economically, socially and in just about every other way) to make this kind of choice.

And to decide consciously what we would like social media to do for the whole of humanity.

I think we’re missing a huge trick if we don’t.

Coming back to the baptism debate. How bout digital media? It isolates a property all ‘new’ or ’social’ media share (though not a very telling one), and it does not face any of the problems ‘new’ and ’social’ have.

Re-reading your post it seems just a tad negative.

Don’t you think the media might have some kind of role in improving the way the world works?

And if money is generated along the way what is so bad about that?

Of course it’s possible that the social benefit of social media is just a by-product of a money-making objective behind it.

But doesn’t that beg another question: What if we (all of us) seized hold of social media and tried to give it a useful purpose? Isn’t that close to what “social media goodness” means?