I just tweeted a couple of tweets bemoaning how it is SO HARD to find church related communication folks who are attracted to tech discussions about Social Media apps. The ones I am thinking of are those tech discussions that delve into what users need in order to find useful social interaction. The Gillmor Gang (youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/stevegillmor )and some of Leo Laporte’s Twit.tv shows (like This Week In Google at twit.tv/twig ) These discussions regularly feature discussion about the sociology of social media technology. I like them for the same reason why I like WIRED magazine. They cover the SOCIAL EXPERIENCE of the Web and related tech by talking about what makes a particular technology, app, or experience useful. They talk to the developers from these companies about what they are trying to improve, fix, change, or invent in order to add value to the Social Media experience. They talk about issues such as Net Neutrality and what the impact of one decision or another (or proposed decision) will have on our experience of the Internet.
It just KILLS me, as I tweeted earlier, that there aren’t numerous people whose jobs entail communications in the church, frequenting such discussions, or talking endlessly about them. My blog posts and tweets get very little feedback when I delve into issues of user experience such as this. And that’s very frustrating to me. I have the feeling that I will want to come back and “re-tweet†the tweet that gets pushed out when I publish this post, after I have found several more church-centered communication folks who do desire to study the ways that the church should be designing their Social Media experience, and what impact particular Social Media-enabling technologies and apps have on how we do things as the church.
I want to delve deeper (and have) into the very idea of online communication, and how it falls short as a vehicle for community, and how it enhances community, or how it creates community, and what kind of community we are talking about in each of those instances.
It is also disconcerting to see how eager churches and church orgs are to draw on secular marketing agencies ideas re: Social Media strategy, but virtually no corresponding eagerness to delve into the technological issues like what the user is looking for, how they use the tools, and how well certain tools help us do things that are useful for the church community. In other words, discussions like what The Gillmor Gang has on a regular basis, and also on various twit.tv shows, are hardly ever IF ever had in church organizations. And to me, this presents a danger that churches will implement these tools in a way indistinguishable from the way the rest of the world. And that should be , in many ways, disconcerting to all of us. The kind of reflection and analysis and conversation had by The Gillmor Gang on Social Media is instructive (or SHOULD be).
Is anyone out there RIGHT NOW listening? And who do you follow that might be tackling the theological questions about technology and community?
Jay,
Thanks for asking. I came up with 5 off the cuff, which I could do rather quickly because I've hit all around each of them for the past 8 years, sometimes more directly than other times, but I've been blogging such things for those 8 years, and using other Web channels and methods before blogging dating back to 90-91.
But here 's what I'd like to find more discussion about:
1. nature of worship/church and online worship (how it meets/fails to meet the "criteria")
2. is online community "sufficient" as "church"? Continuum from "there can be totally online churches" to "there should be nothing that considers itself church" (and the points along the continuum: online as extension to existing church, online as satellites, etc.)
3. what do we need to communicate about the church that would be aided by multimedia? (ie story telling), and the role of Blogging as story telling
4. what does the church as USER do with social media – ie. the issue of self-promotion vs being a resource to help audience/followers find what would help them in their use of social media as a church member?
5. Church's role as an equalizer/democratrizer/grassroots enabler. To what extent should theology be an "open source" enterprise (you've talked about this from time to time, and did on your podcast with Leo a few years ago). How does the ability to interact around texts enhance/change/transform the notion of authority and impact the idea of "Bible" and "inspiration"?
I've also asked on a regular basis about specific technologies within the "Social Media space", and it would be a good exercise for me to go back through and regurgitate but also re-state and re-think them in light of later developments.
I didnt want to state my frustration so bluntly, but I feel I've done some pretty good thinking and experimenting and developing over 8 years, and presented Social Media thoughts on a regular basis, and its been as though nothing hit any buttons anywhere. I'm feeling a bit testier on all this since Leo Laporte let loose a week or so ago about how everyone is shouting. Maybe raising my voice too as such wasn't the ideal approach, but I just decided to lay it out in a rant and see how it went.
Thanks for asking about specifics. Always helps to keep reviewing things, since a particular angle on any of these might catch someone differently , or introduce the angle to someone who missed it the last time around. And then there's the issue of how to find more followers/readers (ie. by following/commenting on their stuff, some of the new Twitter "suggestions" based on the who the people I follow are following)
So, how's those 5?
Dale, I think that there are folks talking about similar issues, but not in specific terms of social media technology. Folks like Dan Dick, John Menuier, Taylor Burton Edwards, and Gavin Richardson raise important questions about the nature of the church that are, I think, not that foreign from the things that Leo or Gilmore are talking about. The danger that I have seen has been folks like Leonard Sweet trying to talk about these things in describing today's world with little understanding of what they are talking about. They sound sexy, hip, and up to date, but in fact they are seduced by the flash and have little ability to offer critique.
From your perspective, what are the five most important theological questions related to social media that you want to talk about? If you want to pull together a Skype/Google Voice based podcast, I'm certainly willing to talk. But ask some pointed questions and see where we might bite.