From babbling to crushing on Stephen Harper

Judy is off on vacation for a couple of weeks, so I'm going to take over her blog and post videos of Michael Jackson here.  (Just kidding.  We've all seen enough of that on Twitter and Facebook.  Pam Kapoor wrote an interesting article about that here, in fact.)

What I really want to blog about is social media, which Judy also talks about in her book, in chapter 8.  I just went to a fantastic conference a couple of weeks ago - Social Tech Training 2009.  In a nutshell, the conference was for people who want to learn and share ideas about how to use social media to organize, promote, and create social change.  Instead of taking notes, I tweeted them out on twitter as a way of staying in touch with Judy about what I was learning (since I was there for both of us), and you can find my play-by-play and other participants' notes from the conference under the hashtags #stt09 and #ncwk.  So I won't rehash (ha, get it?) that here.

Instead, I'll talk about my own journey with social media, and I invite you to share yours in the comments here if you feel so inclined.

I've been using "social media" for years now - I started out on rabble.ca's discussion forum, babble, which is a place for activists and lefty types from across the country (and beyond) to talk about issues of the day and activist projects they're working on, as well as to socialize with other like-minded progressives.  As a single parent of a preschool-aged child in university, I didn't really have a lot of people that I talked with in real life about feminism, media criticism, politics, etc.  I found such a community online, and it very quickly became like a virtual water-cooler/pub, where you not only go to have intellectual discussions, but also to see how your friends are doing every day.  One of the friends I made online used to jokingly call her online friends "the e-people".

Politically, I went from feeling relatively voiceless and not very active to feeling like I could make a difference by getting involved in real life.  That's what this early online social media inspired, at least in me, and I think in a number of others as well that I've gotten to know over the years online and in real life. 

I got involved in a few political campaigns as a volunteer (and chatted about it with other volunteers in other ridings across the country) because I was inspired by other activists in this online community.  I got involved in Fair Vote Canada - first as simply a paying member because I thought it was an interesting idea, and then as an active member, and ultimately as a riding captain for two Toronto ridings during the Vote for MMP campaign during the Ontario referendum - simply because I got to know a few Fair Vote members online that I would never have met otherwise, and learned more from them about the organization and felt like maybe I could make a difference by getting involved.

When I moved to Toronto in 2003, I knew next to no one since I have no family here and didn't grow up here.  But I camped out on the couch of a person I had met on babble for a couple of weeks until I found an apartment.  I got involved in activist stuff with a lot of people I met online.  A good number of my friends in Toronto are now people I've met through social media, because we discovered we had the same likes and dislikes.

That has been the power of social media for me, on a personal and a political level.

But social media has exploded, and goes way beyond just discussion forums and listservs now, as we all know.  And it is being used in all sorts of creative ways.  For instance, tonight I'm going to see Harper Girl Does Canada at the Fringe Festival here in Toronto.  (9:30 p.m. at 16 Ryerson Avenue, near Bathurst and Queen, $10 per ticket if you're interested!)

Ruby Jones, a.k.a. Harper Girl (satirist extraordinaire, Rusa Jeremic) blasted onto the YouTube scene around the time of the coalition talks in the late fall, 2008, proclaiming her schoolgirl crush on Stephen Harper with syrupy odes and scrapbook art.  She talked about how sexy and hot he was when he promoted specific (awful) platforms.  For me, it was a hilarious squirmfest of delight and embarrassment cringes, and an all-around humourous way to get the word out about Harper's regressive policies. 

Well, this one-person home video went viral because Harper Girl tapped into the magic of social media - she took a funny concept, filmed herself doing it, stuck it on YouTube, and got thousands of views because people passed it along to their friends.  And now she's taking her show on the road to Fringe Festivals across the country in order to spread the "love" for Stephen Harper and his politics.

Judy and I have been using social media for event promotion here at Ryerson, too.  Sure, for big events we still do certain "old-fashioned" ways of promoting, like postering and announcements at other events, of course.  But we find social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, discussion forums and e-mail lists to be a now indispensible tool for not only getting the word out about events and reporting back from them afterwards, but also for organizing "emergency" responses to time-sensitive issues that come up.  Who needs a phone tree when you've got social media that goes viral much more quickly and easily?

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P.S. Okay, here's my favorite Michael Jackson song right now.  And yes, I did post it on Facebook last week.