[celliod]

Quick question and a chance to hear some of your opinions too!

New Media (Internet News, Facebook, Twitter) is vastly taking over as the way to get information out into the public eye rather than more Traditional Media (Newspapers, Cable TV, Books).

Would you say this New Media is more effective in spreading awareness and engaging in Peak Oil debates and conversation than Traditional Media?

Is there anyone here who prefers Traditional Media and thinks communication via Facebook and Twitter is not as effective at getting the point across or containing enough valid information?

Thank you!

[Pops]

I would say the difference is "broadcasting" vs "narrowcasting." Traditional media cuts across many lines both demographic and sociographic where new media tends to be very narrow in reach. The result is new media reinforces preconceived notions rather than challenging them - although I'm sure that would hack off a new media booster. The result is you get a lot of people who think about peak oil on PeakOil.com but not so many on MonsterTrucks.com.

And Facebook/twitter isn't one "channel", it's a billion channels and if you don't have a kitty picture or a banality marking your territory as a believer in [insert deity of choice] you aren't going to get much traction there.

I've make a living from traditional media for years but also I've spent many hours tapping into the either and I'll venture that a million internet mentions of peak oil doesn't compare to ten seconds of Diane Sawyer gushing: "A Harvard study says the US will soon be the world's top oil exporter."

On the side of new media, a person can dig down just as far as they desire into the weeds of just about anything that interests them thanks to the 'net. (sorry for the tortured metaphor, lol)

[SeaGypsy]

I use facebook in the normal ways, I also use it in an online justice community which I established a few months back. I find it an incredibly handy tool. What started with a letter to a monthly expat news blog I follow, with some names in it of people I knew, grew to a near 500 member group in about a month- responsible now for triggering 6 professional news writers (half blogs half newspapers) in 3 countries publishing the story on their front pages. Specific keyword google hits went from 20 something to around 600 with about 80 unique new page mentions. Every police agency, court and government department involved is on our mailing lists, as are every potential employer for the previously very highly paid wanted man (a murder accused). So far we have not managed to get action by the relevant authorities (3rd world) beyond 'milking' this person for money- which he is quickly running out of as we have made him unemployed.

Unfortunately for reasons I wrote on earlier today- peak oil, like climate change- is just too broad and intractable to run effective campaigns on. Social media is way more effective for getting your voice heard than MSM if you are not already an established professional writer and publisher. There are 1000 trying for every one who actually makes a living from it. For peak oil- choose a definite specific area of genuine personal interest (downsizing, die-off, solar tech, zombie hunting- you name it)- or you just won't get an audience.

Social media- especially facebook- is really changing a lot about what is possible in community building for whatever takes your fancy. This 'thing' is definitely moving. If you aren't part of it, you aren't in the main game. Going in with great expectations is an almost certain path to disappointment. Successful campaigning takes patience, perseverance, aptitude, real world social skills.
There is more of a democracy in the facebook world than there is in any other mass audience tool at the disposal of the ordinary person. Democracy only exists for those who choose to exercise it.

[SeaGypsy]

If you are reading this on a computer with an internet connection, chances are 95% of everyone you know between 14 years old and 40 has a facebook account, probably half of those above 40. Ask anyone under 30 what the most important website is. Only a few years ago the answer would have been google. (Note I am not associated with facebook in any way- own no shares or interests. We have here on peakoil.com tended to shy away from these massive demographics- I am just acknowledging their existence and huge potential.)

[dinopello]

Ask many kids under 18 and they will say Facebook blows. Their parents are on Facebook. It's still very dynamic out there and this experiment is still working itself out. Overall, people think they know a lot more nowadays but much of it is either trivial, skewed or outright false. I'd love to know what the effect on the human mind will be when older of all this infogarbage that gets pumped through there during their youth (and useful stuff as well).

[SeaGypsy]

https://www.change.org/en-AU

Sorry the site autodirects to where the IP is logged. If this link brings up Australian branch- google will find your local branch instantly. This is one of my favorite community initiatives at present.

[SeaGypsy]

Dino, I just tutored classes full of kids under 17 for 2 years, even the ones who say it blows have an account and can't help looking. One main reason for this negativity is the misuse of the tool for bullying among teens. In this regard facebook can be very dangerous- more a fault of the education system and parents than the medium itself. I agree it's in flux and it's very early days yet.

[Paulo1]

Alas,

My wife and I will be left behind to languish in the world of the unconnected with no friends. At 58, sorry, I will never join facebook. I understand it can work well as a purposeful tool, but ...... My true friends know where we live and what we are about and can pick up the phone or come on over. They are welcome to send an email to arrange the latter. They also know we are there for them and can expect instant support as needed. I just see facebook and short texts as substitutes for real relationships and conversations. None of us need to be that busy. I remember not too long ago phoning my brother and hearing members of his party line picking up and quickly setting down. I remember communicating across the arctic by HF, with the world listening in. Or, passing on messages because the signals would be out for someone else. I have nostalgia for those times. The wonders of computing have changed my life, but I am not sure if the past wasn't better?

Not too long ago the CBC mandate was to link Canada from coast to coast. I took delight in knowing that when I listened to something while working and living away from home, my loved ones often heard the same broadcast. I have grown up with some of the reporters, at least their voices, and sometimes still hear them from a new assignment/station. Now, we are in our silos of interest, narrowed as Pops said, and I am not sure if it is better?

We don't have cell coverage where I live, but I understand a tower is to be built in our valley. If they phase out our land lines will we buy a cell? Or, will they raise the rates so the hard wired connected are forced to go cellular? I don't think I would change over at this point. Screw it. Might go back to someone having to deliver a message and use the phone down at the gas station or at a friends. Maybe we'll get on the ham radio circuit? And if things keep getting more complex, maybe we all will?

Luddite with power tools....Paulo

[rollin]

For those old enough to remember when knowledge was contained in books and the broadcast or newspaper news was the major source of current knowledge (other than a few magazines), you might remember how much of a knowledge vacuum existed. After reading a book, trying to follow up references was a time consuming or impossible chore. Hear something on the news and there was no real way to follow up or corroborate the occurrence, let alone get more detail.

I recall spending the time and money to travel to the New York Public Library to do research. Otherwise you were limited to what the local libraries held.

Now, we have knowledge at our fingertips. We can search multiple news outlets in minutes, look up many references quickly, do side searches to get depth on historic or technological changes. Within limits, the link to the internet can bring to bear a huge amount of information. Of course one must become good at sifting out any trash info or repeat info, but the ability to go on google scholar and come up with numerous scientific reports on a topic is amazing. All without leaving home. The possibility to expand one's knowledge and view of the world is now at the end of one's fingertips.

So after more than a decade of gathering knowledge through the great electronic portal, what did I learn? A journey that started with my desire to know more about solar energy and conservation. I learned a feeling similar to what medieval Europeans must have felt when news of the plague crept closer to their villages. They knew it was coming, they lacked understanding of what it was and knew there was no way to stop it, yet they had to try. Their world was collapsing around them and who was to blame except themselves, of course they did not know that. What did they feel? Despair, helplessness, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, trepidation, then horror and pain.

So now with many "plagues" darkening the horizon like storms from hell, it doesn't matter that I know the forces are worldwide, or their causes. When they come to my village there will be no stopping them and they are legion. Their scouts are already here, their attacks veiled in lies and natural disaster. The village lies between the two great armies "PROGRESS AND CIVILIZATION" versus "MULTITUDINOUS NATURAL FORCES". It's CHEMICAL AND NUCLEAR WARFARE against BIOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS. The village and villagers will be crushed. It almost makes the plague look friendly.

In the end the battlefield will be desolate, filled only with bacteria, slime, jellyfish, cockroaches and flies. Nature will take a breather while the pollutants are absorbed and resume her duties. Man will be nothing but a bad dream whose radio waves will echo for a while until they fade into and are absorbed by the universe.

Will the great forests ever rise again with the cries of birds or slapping of an anxious beaver? Maybe something similar. But I don't care, my village will be crushed, my world will be destroyed by them. You know who they are, just look In the mirror.

So thank you internet and all those people who slaved so hard to place the knowledge into my home. Thanks for helping me to enlighten myself. It has been like a journey through a carnival house of horrors turned real. Now I can fully appreciate the dying world around me with the full knowledge that I can at best only prolong the agony.

[Newfie]

Marshall Mcluhan prophesied the Global Village.

What we have instead is a version of New Guinea. 3,000 villages, speaking different langues, across the valley, within shouting range, each thinking the other sub-human.

[Pops]

That's it in a nutshell Newf, the new Tower of Babel:

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
. . .
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth

There's yer proof, God created the internet to confound the language so that all humanity could shout into their own echo chamber and restrain humans from the things they have imagined.

LOL, love it.

[Quinny]

+1 I've been involved in several successful campaigns on the Uk version.

https://www.change.org/en-AU

Sorry the site autodirects to where the IP is logged. If this link brings up Australian branch- google will find your local branch instantly. This is one of my favorite community initiatives at present.