Online communities have more in common with their offline counterparts than you might think. The capacity to share and transmit information, make contacts and form relationships can be offset by bullying or cliquishness that prevents communication with others outside the group. Striking a balance between the two can be tricky.
A recent twitterstorm at City University illustrated both the problem and the thin divide between heavy engagement and a sense of exclusiveness. When students were less than impressed by a lecture on Public Administration, the hashtag #CityPA became a lightning rod for complaints. So far so much standard moaning – perhaps better suited to an evening in the pub than the public forum of Twitter, but contained within a hashtag that had only ever been used by students and lecturers.
But halfway through the lecture, the Political Editor of the Birmingham Post burst the bubble by tweeting the hashtag to his followers, noting that City students were criticising a “rubbish” lecture. The comment was picked up by journalists from The Express and Sky.
The Storify below outlines the community’s reaction to its breach. It underlines the point that online communities are at their strongest when they contain an offline component – when interaction in one of the spheres can feed the other with content, strengthen relationships between members, and provide an existing audience. But the strong and clearly defined offline component – sitting in a lecture theatre together as students on the same course – had also created an illusion of containment and privacy for some, (and not necessarily those using the hashtag most heavily) where none existed. Some students were happy to have their tweets suddenly exposed to professional journalists and the attention of the lecturer, citing free speech; others were embarrassed. As a community manager it makes me think about the importance of remembering that your social media community should never close itself off to the possibility of outside interest or new members. As a journalist, it reminds me that intruding on a small community with a niche interest or set of relationships should be done with care: it’s easy to panic when you feel you’ve been compromised or your space has been breached.
But the incident also raises an ethical question: How responsible is it to use social media communities to criticise individuals? Constructive criticism put in private to the lecturer may be the best option. But is moaning in the pub or in private spaces like facebook any better than making less personal attempts to blow off steam on twitter, which could have the added benefit of drawing attention to room for constructive improvement?
It depends of course on just how constructive that criticism is. There’s always the potential for a group moan to turn into a little ugly, as it did when a group of chefs and their followers ganged up on food blogger, James Isherwood. My fellow Interhacktive, Sam Creighton, may have more to say on the topic, so I’ll just point out that whilst constructive criticism and group bullying are opposite extremes, there’s a lot of grey space between the two that can be difficult to navigate.
http://storify.com/NabeelahJ/city-pa-twitterstorm
To be honest, I hadn’t read half of all the things you brought up here. Very nice gathering. I think a reasonable rule is to say on Twitter only what you would tell someone to his or her face. I would have no problem in telling Joy and Sheila I found it difficult to care about PA week (despite the need for a grade, I just don’t work like that) because it won’t be useful for me in Brazil — and neither is media law. And I do think that so many people wouldn’t have had a problem with the lectures in there really weren’t… problems with the lectures. I wrote the Facebook commentary suggestion lecturers should be open to criticism and I stand by that.
To be honest, I hadn’t read half of all the things you brought up here. Very nice gathering. I think a reasonable rule is to say on Twitter only what you would tell someone to his or her face. I would have no problem in telling Joy and Sheila I found it difficult to care about PA week (despite the need for a grade, I just don’t work like that) because it won’t be useful for me in Brazil — and neither is media law. And I do think that so many people wouldn’t have had a problem with the lectures if there really weren’t… problems with the lectures. I wrote the Facebook commentary suggesting lecturers should be open to criticism and I stand by that.