Facebook superposters and the loss of our own narrative

August 26, 2018

08/26/201808/23/2018 · Martin Kelley

In the NYTimes, a fascinating piece on filter bubbles and the ability of Facebook “superposters” to dominate feeds, distort reality, and promote paranoia and violence.

Superposters tend to be “more opinionated, more extreme, more engaged, more everything,” said Andrew Guess, a Princeton University social scientist. When more casual users open Facebook, often what they see is a world shaped by superposters like Mr. Wasserman. Their exaggerated worldviews play well on the algorithm, allowing them to collectively — and often unknowingly — dominate newsfeeds. “That’s something special about Facebook,” Dr. Paluck said. “If you end up getting a lot of time on the feed, you are influential. It’s a difference with real life.”

A great many general-interest Facebook groups that I see are dominated by trollish people whose visibility relies on how provocative they can get without being banned. This is true in many Quaker-focused groups. Facebook prioritizes engagement and nothing seems to get our fingers madly tapping more than provocation by someone half-informed.

Formal membership in a Quaker meeting is a considered process; for many Quaker groups, public ministry is also a deliberated process, with clearness committees, anchor committees, etc. On Facebook, membership consists of clicking a like button; public ministry, aka visibility, is a matter of having a lot of time to post comments. Public groups with minimal moderation which run on Facebook’s engagement-inducing algorithms are the public face of Friends these days, far more visible than any publication or recognized Quaker body’s Facebook presence. I written before of my long-term worry that with the rise of social media gatekeeping sites, we’re not the ones writing our story anymore.

I don’t have any answers. But the NYTimes piece helped give me some useful ways of thinking about these phenomena.

Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Published 2018)

Towns where people use Facebook more also had more attacks on refugees, building on suspicions that the platform…

www.nytimes.com

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

August 5, 2018

08/05/201808/06/2018 · Martin Kelley

From Emily Provance:

An under-45 communications strategy, in contrast, would mostly involve social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, possibly Tumblr or Pinterest). Articles would be short and would contain mostly content directly relevant to the reader — or, if the content were not directly relevant, it would be single-story narratives with an emphasis on personal impact. Announcements would come out through messenger apps or text messages, with a strong element of user control about which announcements to receive and which not. Photos and videos would be used frequently.

I’m always a bit wary of generational determinism. I think generational ideas are more like underlying trends that get more or less traction over time. And Quaker digital outreach in particular has been a thing for a quarter century now. But the underlying message — that some people need to be reached digitally while others are still best served by print — is a sound one and I’m glad Emily’s bringing it up.

But it’s still kind of sad that we still need to make this kind of argument. I remember having these discussions around an FGC outreach committee table fifteen years ago: surely we’re all on board about the need for digital outreach in 2018?

The 45-Yard Line

Letting your life speak in digital spaces

May 8, 2018

05/08/201805/08/2018 · Martin Kelley

Kathleen Wooten has some tips on ministering in social spaces without “losing your sanity”):

Develop personal rules: These are specific to you. A few of mine…. Never respond to an angry message from my phone. Always open a computer, sit down intentionally, and if possible wait 24 hours. ON social media – this might be a shorter time frame, but still, not until I can sit and center and not speak out of anger.

Letting your life speak in digital spaces (without losing your sanity)

The internet is a very effective tool. Connecting, sharing, work, social interactions – all can and do happen…

QuakerKathleen

I’m not sure if I’ve ever written down my personal guidelines. Some of these are generic to being a good online citizen (don’t feed trolls, don’t punch down, don’t respond in anger, disengage when a conversation is obviously running in circles).

Other guidelines of mine arguably come from Quaker values. For example, in general I won’t mention someone else on a forum in which they don’t appear. I’m especially wary on private Facebook groups, as they can easily become forum for detraction and us/them peer pressure. The Tract Association pamphlet on detraction is really a must-read. It’s actually probably something worth re-reading every six months. Readers: what kind of practices have you developed to be a responsible Quaker online?

Eternities

April 24, 2018

04/24/2018 · Martin Kelley

Sam Barnett-Cormack brings a grammarian’s eye to our use of the old Quaker phrase, “The Things Which Are Eternal”:

To know one another in that which is eternal is to share our grace, our Light, our spiritual experience. It goes beyond the sort of knowing that might come from social activities and icebreakers; indeed, it is of an entirely different character… For it comes down to this – to know one another in that which is eternal is to know the Divine, and to know the Divine is to know one another in this way; they are two sides of one coin, and we can only promote one by also promoting the other.

https://quakeropenings.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/what-are-things-which-are-eternal.html

Has Christ come to teach his people himself?

April 13, 2018

04/13/201804/13/2018 · Martin Kelley

Johan Maurer looks at one of our most-used George Fox quotes and wonders whether we’re using it authentically: Has Christ come to teach his people himself?

I want us to use our dearest cliches honestly, but if they sometimes seem weakened by overuse, the solution isn’t necessarily to discard them. Maybe we can rediscover their provocative content and test whether the promise within is already being fulfilled or could once again be fulfilled in our time.

I appreciate that Johan also asks if we’re hoarding this insight and claiming it as particularly Quaker. One of my personal tests for adopting Quaker peculiarities of practice or belief is whether I could argue that they should be adopted by other Christians (or even other people of faith in general) as universal principles. An attitude of plainness not based on social pressures or uniforms is one I think would bring humility and insight to any follower of Christ, for example.

That Christ has risen and is here and is ready to guide us directly seems to be an obvious truth – the heart of the resurrection and of Pentecost and the apostles’ church plants. That some churches insert people in between is a potential distraction but even they would, I hope, keep in mind that Christ is there with them in their steeple houses and in their lives.

The only other take-away I have from this universality test is that it centers the Inward Christ and risen Jesus and not our human institutions. This was the obvious point in the 1650s as Quakers broke up religious meetings and I think it still holds true. Our libraries and meetinghouses and mission statements and staff flowcharts don’t mean anything if they get in the way of the purpose of our society, which is simply to help one another settle down, recognize that Inward Christ, and learn the corporate skills discernment so we can be Friends (of Jesus). The invitation to knock on Jesus’s door is extended to all, not just those of us calling ourselves Quaker.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/04/has-christ-come-to-teach-his-people.html

Quakers and Mental Health

March 29, 2018

03/29/201804/03/2018 · Martin Kelley

Well this one hits home for me. The new QuakerSpeak talks to Oregon social worker Melody George in the topic of Quakers and Mental Health :

I really see mental diversity as a gift to a community, and that the folks that I serve and that I’ve worked with are very resilient. If they tell you their stories about how they’ve gotten through their traumatic situations and what’s helped them to keep going, faith is a huge part of that. And we have a lot to learn from their strength and resilience.

My family has had very avoidable and out-of-nowhere conflicts at two religious spaces — one a Friends meeting and the other a Presbyterian church — over easy accomodations for my son Francis. It seems like many of the dynamics that we’ve seen are not dissimilar to those that keep others out of meeting communities. Who are we willing to adapt for? Is comfort and familiarity our main goal?

Melody also wrote for Friends Journal a few years ago, Imagining a Trauma-informed Quaker Community.

Decline and persistence, part two

March 2, 2018

03/02/201803/02/2018 · Martin Kelley

So much to chew on in Johan Maurer’s Decline and persistence, part two. Find a good chair and take the time to read.

Friends theology strips away all irrelevant social distinctions, giving us the potential for radical hospitality, but that requires us to neutralize elitist signals of all kinds with a hunger to taste heaven’s diversity here and now. If it takes a whole new conversion to give us the necessary freedom and emotional range in place of old class anxieties, so be it.

http://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/03/decline-and-persistence-part-two.html

Belief (in anything) and belief (in nothing)

February 27, 2018

02/27/201802/27/2018 · Martin Kelley

So Isaac Smith is back with the third installment of his growing series, “Difference Between a Gathered Meeting and a Focused Meeting” and this time he’s referencing two writers on Quaker matters, Michael J. Sheeran and yours truly.

In my previous posts, the distinction between gathered and focused meetings seemed connected to one’s religious outlook, and thus related to the divide between Christ-centered and universalist Quakers that has bedeviled our faith for centuries. But as Sheeran and Kelley argue, the more fundamental divide in the liberal branch of Quakerism is between those who seek contact with the divine and those who don’t.

My post is, as Smith puts it, “nearly fifteen years old,” which is about the length of a social generation. I’m not sure if I’m in a good position to pontificate about what has and hasn’t changed. Much of my Quaker work is with interesting outliers, either one-or-one or as part of a loose tribe of Friends who passionately care about Quakerism and are willing to go into the weeds to understand it. I have very little recent experience with committees on local levels.

One useful concept that I’ve picked up in the last fifteen years is that of “functional atheism.” This bypasses a group’s self-stated understandings of faith to look at how its decision-making process actually works. An organization that is functionally atheist might be full of very devout people who together still decide actions in a completely secular way. I would guess this has become even more the norm among the acronymic soup of national Quaker organizations in the last fifteen years. In that time a lot of bright ideas have come and gone which flashed briefly with the fuel of donor money but which didn’t create a self-sustaining momentum to keep them going long term. Thinking more strategically about what people are seeking in their spiritual lives might have helped those cast seeds land on more fertile grounds.

The Difference Between a Gathered Meeting and a Focused Meeting (3)

Bonus: the 14-year-old comments on my piece include some gentle whining about Friends Journal between myself and a regular reader at the time. Now that I’m its senior editor I’m sure there remains plenty to grumble about.

Quaker Ranter

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