Is Political Social Media a Paper Tiger?

“Digital spaces are not your friend anymore.”

--Leslie Mac, digital strategist and communications expert who works with grass-roots organizations

Political organizing on both Left and Right began to move online immediately after Facebook went live. Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok, and a host of other influencer networks soon followed. Came to pass quickly that no national party could survive without all brands of social media. We used it to raise awareness. Howard Dean taught us how to use it to raise money. Quickly. It was all about the speed of communication, the new efficiency of being in touch with dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, delivering intel, staging events, asking for money, recruiting volunteers -- people willing and wanting to do stuff to help. No individual candidate of either major party would dream of mounting a campaign today without social media. Why, our about-to-be President is wholly the creature of it.

But I'm hearing more and more from people smarter than me, that there is, however and of course, a big, fat, munching worm inside that digital cabbage. 

I'm a believer in the usefulness of social media (though I'm aware that its usefulness gets over-hyped). I experienced its rise and influence in political organizing as an incredible new tool to link the like-minded. to raise money, to raise a crowd, to get the attention of potential recruits who might recruit more people. Social media transformed all brands of community organizing -- and the old, antiquated, but totally effective drudgery of door-knocking, phone calling, elbow bumping began to atrophy. For too many of the new social media warriors, boots-on-the-ground activities became too much trouble, too time-consuming, too sweaty. So much easier to sit at our computers and move the world. 

Social media -- or rather the practice and habits of social media -- can exert a negative counterforce on mass movements because social media flatters the user, tickles their pleasure centers and ultimately creates the illusion that typing amounts to action. Hell! I do it too, press the "DONATE" button to seem like I'm doing something, and it is doing something. But money alone won't win it. It takes those boots-on-the-ground (a tired phrase, but I can't think of a more descriptive one) -- that old, antiquated, but totally effective drudgery of door-knocking, phone calling, elbow bumping. 

Fewer person-to-person interactions. More keyboard. It's a trap, warns Leslie Mac (quoted above). Mac was speaking specifically of certain social media oligarchs like Zuckerberg and Musk, who own many of the most influential social media sites and whose druthers might not be advantageous to the rest of us. Mac also points out that “social media turned activism organizing into a kind of public relations job, where your follower count and where you were quoted mattered as much as the tangible work that was being done.” 

More than two years ago we published an essay here by Jon-Dalton George, the 23-year-old (at the time) Mayor Pro-Tem of Boone, "Twitter Ain't Real," which offered pretty concrete proof that social media activity does not match up necessarily to winning a race. It's wise to be reminded of that from time to time. I say that as an 80-year-old hanger-on whose activism is pretty much limited these days to a keyboard. Just saying.