Using Social Media to Build Community? Sounds Good.
We’ve all read the stories. Social media is destroying our humanity. Social media is destroying democracy. Social media is even destroying music.
Is it?
Back in 2014, St. Paul, Minn., couple Sean Kershaw* and Tim Hawkins had an idea to hold backyard music concerts next to their Civil War-era home. It seemed like a great way to provide a family-friendly setting for listening to music, and after holding their own wedding for about 80 people there, they knew the logistics should work and the setting under an ancient oak tree would be beautiful.
They found a couple local musicians to line up for two September concerts, promoted them on a neighborhood Facebook page, and were pleased to have a few dozen people show up. So they added their own Facebook page for what would become an ongoing concert series called Grand Oak Opry, and held five shows the next summer and six shows the following summer with bands and singers like Mina Moore, Communist Daughter, the Cactus Blossoms and Charlie Parr. “It was just about the music,” says Hawkins.
Word spread, almost entirely online. Local and regional media noticed. Facebook likes jumped. The mayor came. People described the experience in almost religious terms.
On Saturday, July 29, my birthday, my family and I joined more than 500 friends and neighbors at Sean and Tim’s place to listen to a band called The Pines. Attendees were asked to contribute $10, which goes straight to the musicians. Sponsors — a local coffee shop, an acupuncturist, a garden center — cover the other expenses. Here’s what people said on Facebook:
“The space is magical — homey, gorgeous, and the perfect place to spend a beautiful summer night. The hospitality of the hosts was unparalleled as well — to warmly invite 500 (kind of) strangers into your backyard and to put together something this fantastic just floors me.”
“Sitting under the broad boughs of that magnificent Oak tree of life, listening to the ethereal folk sounds of The Pines complete with fireflies twinkling their approval all the while surrounded by a loving and peaceful community gave me hope for just about everything.”
“Fall in love with neighborliness all over again the world is still good.”
What happened? I would argue that Sean and Tim planted a seed of an idea. Individuals in the immediate neighborhood and then across the Twin Cities then shaped and spread that idea, connecting something “in the real world” with the power of social networks to build community.
This is not about something going viral. It’s about spreadability. Jenkins, Ford and Green in their book Spreadable Media said “spreadability” refers to the potential for people to share content for their own purposes, not to passively and involuntarily transmit something. “Spreadability recognizes the importance of the social connections among individuals, connections increasingly made visible (and amplified) by social media platforms,” they note.
Everything that spreads on social media platforms is not good. But neither is everything that’s been discussed in private offline conversations. The difference is we are now networked individuals with the ability to help spread and shape stories and ideas faster than before. We the public have more agency than we used to.
“We didn’t go into this thinking we were creating this outcome,” says Kershaw. “You’re on to something with agency. [Attendees] do feel part of it. Everyone is super excited to help and desires to be part of something.”
At Creation, we believe creating shared value is what drives effective communications campaigns today. We think about shared value as the intersection of the organization’s interests with what its stakeholders and care about. They spread because we can all feel ownership in them. And that should be music to our ears.
* Disclosure — I am on the board of Kershaw’s employer
