Socalnomics: Scanning the horizon

Interesting meetings are in the diary this autumn about the possibilities and challenge of social media in the Church. Investigating the effects of social media on marketng practice, I’m reading Erik Qualman’s Socialnomics this week — a rather chipper and US based assessment of the marketing angle. He begins with facts and figures that make yer think...

However breathless and enthusiastic this stuff may seem, it’s a more informed perspective than idiocy in the Dinosaur media about how Facebook eats teenagers’ brains and makes them suicidal, neither of which assertions seems to be particularly true. Something significant is happening, with a capacity for benefit as well as evil.

One suggestion here is that the whole idea of “broadcast” in the sense of a few big powerful media beasts shoving its stuff at you wholesale, with no opportunity to bite back, is fatally undermined now. He also makes great play of the idea that in a fast developing world such as ours, organisations that hang around wondering what to do about stuff put themselves at an immense disadvantage, compared to people who get on with doing something interactive with real human beings, even if it’s not perfect.

A bit of a challenge, then. But I’m not downhearted because the story about Church communities on the ground is often very positive. We’re such an inherently bottom-up dispersed organization, we’ve a lot less unlearning to do than slick eighties corporations with big marketing budgets and associated politics. The trixical strategic bits are around how dioceses and national institutions can genuinely support and enable local talent, relationships and excellence — but then, that’s always what we try to do anyway...