Preamble

Social media is a term which refers to the user-generated, participatory applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs). It is the defining feature of what some call Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2003) the interactive public sphere of the Internet. Web 2.0 delineates the participatory infrastructure of the World Wide Web. Its architecture is rooted in the principles and practices of rich public dialogues.

The impact of social media on the ways we relate to and communicate with one another has been significant: over half of the Canadian population is now signed up for Facebook (SocialBakers.com, 2011) ; over 13 million hours of video footage was uploaded to YouTube in 2010 (SocialMediaObservatory.com, 2011); and between 2010 and 2011, Twitter activity, measured by tweets per day, increased by 252% (JeffBullas.com, 2011). Social media then, provides individuals and organizations with a free and powerful tool kit for engagement and communication.

In the advertising world this is translating into social media campaigns around brands and products. Positive narratives about, and customer engagement with, the campaign are viewed as the keys to, and measurements of success to the advertiser. Social media is also a powerful tool for gathering market research, so that campaigns can be targeted and archives of user data can be accumulated. Social media campaigns are designed to sell a product or idea; a campaign is created around a brand or product based on an organization’s desire to do so.

In the activism world, this is translating into social media campaigns for social justice; fundraising efforts for Tsunami victims (PoliticsOnline.com, 2004) and the successful of the Egyptian revolution (Wired.com, 2011) are two powerful examples of how individuals harnessed the power of social media independently to mobilize and effect positive change. Social justice campaigns are designed to help and share; a campaign emerges around a cause or an issue based on individual response to it.

The Handbook of Best Practices

In this handbook for using social media to augment community radio events, campaigns are blended. The “product” being sold is individual and community identity, the positive change desired is sustainable community and individual self-esteem development. The campaign also allows for an archive of the event to be created, and can provide a virtual home base for the community event or station.

Adding a virtual overlay to an existing community can strengthen the bonds between the people within it and can have phenomenal positive identity effects (Willson, 2006). Social media can facilitate the emergence of a community dialogue using text, photography, video, and sound.

Participating in a community becomes a specific and deliberative action when social media is used within it, and active participation becomes documented and archived for reference. Recognition for participation is given through direct feedback from other community members, which reinforces feelings of inclusion and belonging in the participant. Using social media to participate in a virtually defined community is a self-referential action and becomes connected to the very essence of the community itself.

Using social media, community dialogue is documented as the multitude of voices that participated using social media tools. It is the whole of the communication between the community members who created it.

1. Assessing the Feasibility of a Social Media Campaign

There are two critical factors in assessing the feasibility of using social media to augment a community radio event: 1) the technological proficiency of the participants and 2) the technological capacity within the community.

Participants

If the practice of using social media as a communication and information-sharing tool is foreign to participants, adding it as a component to enhance participation and create an archive of the event is an unreasonable goal, and creates superfluous work for event facilitators. In these cases, participants would require training components on using the tools first.

The more engaged the community participants are with social media in their daily lives, the more robust and active the campaign will be. Individuals who are already embedded in social media networks will naturally use the technology to share their experiences at the radio event. In those cases, participants only need be given the coordinates for participation: blog address, Facebook page link, Twitter handle, YouTube Channel etc.

These are, of course, the two extreme versions of participants. In most cases participants will fall somewhere between those two extremes;

there will be a handful of technologically embedded participants, in addition to those who will have little to no experience.

Technological Capacity of Community

This factor is particularly important when working in rural communities which may not have access to high-speed Internet connections. Working in a dial-up environment will mean less technological capacity to carry out the campaign. It will also likely effect participants levels of technological embeddedness.

2. Choosing Platforms

Once it is decided that a social media campaign will enhance the community radio event, selection of relevant platforms will be necessary. With such a wide variety of social media platforms available for free usage, the amount of choice in platforms can be overwhelming. However, selecting which platforms to use does not have to be a difficult or time-consuming task.

Consider the following:

● Function: What is the purpose of implementing the platform?

● Content: What information do you want to deliver through the platform?

● Community: Where does the community already gather online?

Social media platforms can be classified based on their functional purpose, and the type of content they typically handle.

● Webcasting Platforms - allow participants to stream audio or video either live, or after an event has been recorded Examples: ustream, livecastr, blogtv

● Publishing Platforms – facilitates text-based, participant expression of opinion, expertise and experience. Examples: Blogger, Wordpress

● Sharing Platforms– allows participants to share multi-media (photo, video, audio) Examples: YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare

● Communicating Platforms – facilitates real-time communication between participants who know and have shared their contact information with one another. Examples: Skype, Instant Messenger

● Social Networking Platforms - allows participants to network with one another for the purposes of group organization and self-promotion. Examples: Facebook, Linked in, Ning

● Micro-blogging Platforms - allows participants to broadcast short information bursts to other users Examples: Twitter

● Collaborative Platforms - facilitate group editing, evaluating and defining of information. Examples: Wikipedia, digg, del.ici.ous

● Virtual Living Platforms - allow participants to create a virtual environment where they are not tied to the laws of physics Examples: World of Warcraft, Second Life.

Certain Social Media sites have risen to the top in terms of penetration in the general public. If participants are engaged with social media, it is likely that they will already have a Facebook account, have watched a video on YouTube, and have heard of Twitter.

Since Facebook is the largest social networking site online today, it is likely the platform where participants in the community already gather.

For the most part, Facebook can handle all aspects of multi-media sharing, including video. YouTube, however, offers participants the ability to share with people who may be social media users, but who do not maintain Facebook profiles. YouTube is also a dedicated video-hosting service which makes it the go-to web location for video sharing.

In terms of users, Twitter is a much smaller social media platform than Facebook, only about 5% of all Internet users are Tweeters. However it is still an important social media tool if 1) participants are active Tweeters or 2) the event is intended to be shared with a global audience and 3) if the event is trying to capture the attention of traditional media.

A Skype account is easy to set-up and can be used to facilitate participation for those who are away from the local community. Skype can be used for interviewing, phone-in requests, on-air time, and group discussions with long distant participants.

Collaborative platforms like wikis and social bookmarking sites are recommended for broadcasts which have the potential to turn into long-term projects, as they can be effective organizing tools for project sustainability.

Integrating elements like Second Life (setting up your community broadcast in a virtual world), while very experimental, could widen the broadcast audience and participation and yield interesting results, however it is recommended that these only be attempted if an organizer or volunteer is an existing member of the virtual world, and interested in setting it up and maintaining it.

Setting up a blog can create a running text-based narrative of the event which is also accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Blogs can be set-up with multiple users and so that a multiplicity of participants can post their own blogs, and make comments on posts from other participants. While the broadcast itself may provide rich and interesting blog content, a difficulty with maintaining a blog throughout a community radio event is finding the time to sit down and write about what is happening.

3. Dedicating a Social Media Facilitator

The issue of finding time to blog during a community radio event leads to the next step of campaign creation; dedicating at least one social media facilitator who can set-up and maintain the platforms before and during the broadcast. This will likely be the participant who is most engaged with the technology, and connected to other participants on Facebook and via email or Skype.

If there are no participants with enough social media proficiency to take on the role of facilitator, but still average users of the technology; a third-party or professional facilitator can be used for that purpose. If this is the avenue chosen for the event, the facilitator should be present in the community at the time of the event. A professional facilitator would be able to provide participant social media training as part of their role in the event.

4. Elements of a Basic Campaign Infrastructure

Facebook offers two types of tools that can be used to augment community radio projects: Groups and Pages. Groups and Pages each offer different features and are intended for specific uses. In a Group a participant becomes a “member” of the group, whereas with Pages, participants “like” or become a fan of the Page.

Groups are used for horizontally organized information sharing among members; all members can have administrative powers, and no “official voice” exists representing the whole of the group. Pages are used more for promotional/public relations purposes; administrators are set, but all posts made by administrators appear on the page as from a single official voice of the page.

Groups can be open to new members or closed. When a group is set to open, any participant can access and view the group’s content, and can request to join it. Any participant can approve new participants requests to join, and add any of their personal Facebook contacts to the group automatically. A person is never sent a "request" to join a group, the default setting is for people to be automatically added.

Pages are intended for public consumption. If a Page is either published or unpublished. If unpublished, only the administrators are allowed to view it.

If published, a Facebook Page can be seen by any participants regardless of if they have a Facebook account. Participants with a Facebook account can "like" a Facebook page, and they will receive updates in their news feed of activity. Any participant who likes a Facebook Page can recommend the page to anyone on their friends list, which comes in the form of an invitation. Pages can "like" other Pages, and administrators are given the option of using all of Facebook with the Page as their Profile.

If Twitter is to be included as part of the campaign for the event, it can be done either by creating a Twitter account for the event itself, or through the use of hashtags. Creating an account for the event on its own is unadvised, as building a Twitter network of followers can be task that requires time and effort, and not necessarily worth the work for a one-off event.

Many communities have official or unofficial Twitter representation, a better approach would be to solicit participation with the individuals behind those accounts to broadcast the event on Twitter.

The event can be labelled using a hashtag, which is placing the pound symbol before a one character word or phrase representing the event, as in #communityradioevent. Hashtags become search links, and clicking on them will produced a feed of all Tweets containing that hashtag.

All other social media platforms used will require the creation of accounts for the event. If existing community accounts are actively being maintained and accessed, it is always advised to use those in the set-up of the basic infrastructure, connecting them to the events Facebook group or page.

5. Activating the Campaign

Social Media is a great way to promote your broadcast event for free to a large audience. Once the basic infrastructure is laid, it is time to promote your event. Social media can be used to recruit participants and notify the community.

All print materials created for promotion of the event in the physical community, can also be used in the virtual community. Uploading event posters on Facebook, sending out press releases through Twitter, and asking people to share the link to your blog in their individual networks, are all effective and simple ways to use social media platforms to promote your event.

Online, the more people who are sharing information about your event the better. It will not be very effective if only one or two people are doing all the work because the promotion will only ever get to that first level of social network. Once five or six people from the same community are sharing the same information, it attracts more attention by reinforcing that there are a number of people who think this information is interesting. And on the Internet, being interesting is what matters most.

With so much information to cut through, and so many people doing so many interesting things, it is important for those promoting the event to be ambassadors and cheerleaders for it.

6. Engagement Through Content

The quality and quantity of content being shared and updated during the broadcast will depend on the number and nature of online participants. The following are suggestions of content for the social media facilitator using particular platforms during the broadcast.

Blogging:

● publish schedule information

● provide links to guest, organization and community information

● write commentary about issues and topics being discussed on-air

● ask participants to become “guest bloggers”

● read blog comments on-air

● provide commentary on what is happening “behind the scenes”

Facebook (Page or Group):

● post schedule information

● import blog RSS feed

● take listener requests, conduct opinion polls

● facilitate on-air question and answer sessions

● use Facebook wall as a virtual bulletin board for the event

● share photos

● ask participants to upload and tag photos that they take at the event

Twitter:

● schedule information

● soliciting participation from other Twitter users

● guest quotes

● guest website information

● “behind the scenes”

● comment on and link to Facebook and blog activity

Skype (with long distance participants):

● interviewing

● phone-in requests

● participant on-air time

● panel discussions

Best Practices

Equity and Technology Radio (Wolfville, NS)

Event Dates: Wednesday March 21 – Sunday March 25, 2007.

Social media used: Blog, Webcast, Skype, Flickr, Podcast

The Equity and Technology Radio event involved much preliminary community work and participation recruitment. In the organization phase, the Internet was invaluable in recruiting participants and keeping them informed. Social media enhanced communication within the local community, however was limited to only a small segment of the population who were familiar with and unafraid of the technology. In this project, it was the university students who were most engaged with the participatory nature of the social media used.

The Equity and Technology Radio blog (www.ryakuga.blogspot.com) was started March 13, 2007 using Google-based Blogger.com. Two students involved with the Equity and Technology Research Alliance were event bloggers. The blog acted as the hub to the other web 2.0 activities organizers facilitated. Flickr was used for photo-sharing and it was simulcast on the web at the Ryakuga website.

Preliminary posts promoted the event, provided information and relevant links to the Equity and Technology Research Community in addition to publishing information about the schedule and topics of discussion during the broadcast. The link was provided in posters and shared with organizations and individuals who were participating in the broadcast.

As the broadcast went live, and awareness of the event spread throughout the local community, blog traffic and frequency of user comments increased. In total, 28 comments were left on the Wolfville Radio blog during the course of the broadcast. The Wolfville Radio blog has been viewed over 2000 times by people from more than 10 different countries including Iran, Germany and the United States.

After the event concluded, the blog was updated with summaries of the Radio Broadcast, further contact information, and links to podcasts of selected recorded segments on the website mypodcast.com. The blog remains an archive of the event and still gets an average of 10 visitors per week.

Social Economy Radio (Fredericton, NS)

Event Dates: May 29-June 2, 2011

Social Media Used: Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Skype

Although the infrastructure was set-up about a month before the event, there was very little participant engagement with social media during this event. This was mostly due to lack of understanding and clarity of purpose for using social media, fuelled by privacy concerns.

An external facilitator was used, however was not given access to the participants. Only one of the event organizers was engaged with any of the basic social media platforms, however consideration of workload prohibited that organizer from being actively involved in the campaign. Further, the event was geographically located in a community which none of the organizers, nor the facilitator, was a part of. Poor communication led to little pre-event social media engagement.

Once on the ground and in the middle of the event, content and participants emerged from the local arts community. Partnership with CHSR, the local campus community radio station, also meant a broader reach to the geographic community, as Social Economy Radio was transmitted through their signal. Also working in favour of this event was it’s location for broadcast at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, the epicenter of the Fredericton arts scene. The broadcast was also aired during the open hours of the iconic Owl’s Nest Bookstore in its entirety.

Connections were made between the scheduled Social Economy Project participants, and the local emergent participants. Skype, Facebook and Twitter were actively used during the event by all participants who were engaged with the technology.

Cape Shore Radio (Cuslett, NL)

Event Dates: November 21 - November 25, 2011

Social Media Used: Facebook, Twitter, Blog

This was the second broadcast of Cape Shore Radio in 2011. A loose existing infrastructure was in place from the first event. A community based facilitator used both her personal Facebook page and the Ryakuga infrastructure to share and tag photos of participants, promote and spread the webcast address, and generally promoted the event.

A secondary facilitator, who was not present at the event, offered support to the community facilitator. Also rebroadcasting snippets of Cape Shore Radio on Facebook and Twitter, sharing real-time scheduling information and relevant links to accompanying interviews, from the point of view of a participant as listener, rather than a participant physically present at the event.

Cape Shore Radio’s use of social media connected the event to the larger network of community radio emerging in NL. Using Ryakuga’s infrastructure, facilitators were able to easily post and share the event with little effort, and a pre-existing base of potential external participants.

References

Willson, M.A. (2006) Technically together: Rethinking community within techno-society. New York. Peter Lang