Social Media | ChangingMedia

May 23

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Hashtag: #EndingHomelessness

By Jasmine Arnold | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 2 Comments

You won’t find out what I’ve done today by checking my facebook statuses. I’m comfortable with social media, but I try not to get too comfortable. No “woke up, ate eggs, went to work, looks like it might rain” information from me. I’m on the quieter side – both in real life and when it comes to posting what I’m thinking about, which is perhaps why I struggle when I see my friends and colleagues use their twitter feeds as a platform for social advocacy.

As #Bringbackourgirls, the hashtag protesting the kidnapping of more than two hundred girls in Nigeria, exploded this past week, I wondered if I should be tweeting the same thing. I read up on this travesty, and felt outraged at this human rights violation, but I struggled to connect how my tweeting – even with a hashtag used by hundreds of thousands of other users – might lead to justice half a world away.

This week, Twitter made an announcement that really connected the dots for me, and showed how a platform made up of 140 characters can make a difference online and off. The microblogging giant announced plans to open and operate a tech center for individuals experiencing homelessness in the San Francisco area. Computers are increasingly relevant to the job market, both in finding available job opportunities and in possessing basic computer skills, but poverty creates a “digital divide,” and people from lower income backgrounds have less access to computers as they grow up, making the internet a scary place. The space, called the Twitter Neighborhood Nest, will be open to individuals as well as families, with tech skills offered to any age group. For adults, this will include computer literacy as well as job searching skills.

Twitter is the place for the newest information, where the news is splayed across your screen in tiny snippets. So it is perhaps somewhat surprising that the platform for all things instant is partnering with a service organization that is more than a century old. Compass Family Services will work with Twitter to create the new technology center, as the nonprofit currently coordinates services for more than 3,500 individuals experiencing or on the brink of homelessness.

This partnership is an excellent move, one that gives The Twitter Neighborhood Nest a strong foundation. This seems to be much more than a one-time donation or a publicity move, because Twitter has sought input from people who know the demographic they hope to serve. Partnerships – especially the unlikely ones – are the key to having enough knowledge and resources to overcome the digital divide and overcome homelessness.

Dec 20

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Charge Your Phone, Change Your Life

By Jasmine Arnold | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 2 Comments

Kids these days. Gone are the times when people talked with each other, interacted in person. Today, young people spend hours glued to screens — phones, computers, tablets, perpetually connected to the internet, apps, and games.

Do I sound like your parents yet?

As parents and grandparents complain how things have changed, they might not realize just how different times really are. As an increasing number of families have fallen on hard times, poverty and homelessness is affecting a greater number of youth. Last week’s New York Times investigative piece, “Invisible Child,” which followed a New York City family led by a fearless 11-year-old named Dasani, showcases the extreme grips of family poverty — a reality that is becoming increasingly common. As the article points out, 22,000 children are homeless in New York City, including Dasani and her seven siblings, who all live with their parents in one room of a city shelter. The conditions are deplorable — the food expired, the bathrooms moldy, the roaches and bedbugs happier tenants than the human residents.

Baltimore doesn’t face this problem on the same scale as New York, but not because Baltimore has won The Race to End Homelessness. There are virtually no family shelters inside the city, so large groups must move to the county to stay together. Even so, Baltimore City saw an increase in youth and student homelessness — to around 1,700 students in 2012, although many of these youth have separated from their parents and family units.

One study reports homeless youth who end up couch surfing or dancing between different family members don’t really consider themselves “homeless,” although by standard definitions they are still unstable. Many times, they can hardly be considered “youth” either — one study demonstrates that children experiencing homelessness, tend to act as little adults, helping their parents pay bills and, find the next place to sleep. Most important, these young people feel it is crucially important to stay strong for their parents, so as not to worry them.

With no money for necessities, how can homeless youth be following the same supposedly unhealthy trends as their housed peers when it comes to technology use? Eighty percent of homeless youth reported using a social media site regularly. More than sixty percent of the youth surveyed own a cell phone, but the internet is also accessible at libraries and youth centers. While the average American youth might claim to be “addicted” to his or her phone, homeless youth in one study rank having a smart phone as equally important to having food.

How can this be? Is technological dependence just another detrimental effect of homelessness — along with the higher rates of mental illness, chronic physical health issues, and behavior problems? It may surprise older generations to learn that technological resources have some ability to curtail the strain of living unhoused. Youth on the street or separated from siblings in the foster system reported that the increased ease of contacting loved ones improved those relationships. Close ties to family in turn puts a child at an increased likelihood of making smart health decisions and staying emotionally strong.

It seems as though social networks are actually connecting homeless youth to what they need most — their support network. Certainly, there is more that both Baltimore and New York can do to support this group that has been forced to grow up too quickly, but while they wait, this population has impressively used their own devices to connect with resources and important people. Perhaps this generation of internet savvy, technologically addicted individuals will be able to network their way to a more promising future.

Jul 24

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Silo-Breakers: Scott Burkholder

By Scott Burkholder | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete, Silo-Breakers | No Comments

Editor’s …

At ChangingMedia, we love playing around with new technologies. One of our core beliefs is that tech has the potential to break down barriers and create meaningful social change. That pixelated sense of playfulness extends to ChangeEngine, where we’re always looking for new ways to send grand schemes and new ideas into orbit. Our most advanced technology, of course, is the genius of our contributors. But we also know that those new tools can push the debate and the work of social change forward. And so, without further ado and through the magic of Instagram video, we present the latest installment in our Silo-Breakers series — our very own bard of love and concrete, Scott Burkholder, on his work with GBTC at the intersection of art and tech.

Thanks to Scott for agreeing to be our pioneer (and a shout-out to ChangeEngine’s chief booster, the irrepressible Colin Seal, for suggesting the idea.)

[Want to join in the fun? Create a short Instagram video telling us what your silo is and how you’re working to break out of it. Share with us at changeengine on Instagram, @ChangEngine #breakoutchallenge on Twitter, or at facebook.com/ChangingMedia.]

Apr 09

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The Top Ten Most Useless Top-Tens About Social Media

By Hasdai Westbrook | ChangeEngine, Social Media | 2 Comments

As someone who spends a good deal of time helping organizations great and small harness the power of social media, I often find myself stumbling across “top-ten lists” of social media tips from a never-ending parade of blog evangelists, web-thumpers, and manic e-preachers. It’s intriguing how closely these features tend to mirror the anxieties and misconceptions that I come across in my face-to-face conversations with real-life people seeking insight, which is no doubt one of the reasons they’re so popular.

The top-ten list itself is one of the dominant tropes of the infinitely-aggregating (and often aggravating) digital media age — link-bait for our flicker-quick attention spans, churned out as proven traffic drivers to cater to our jones for simple answers. A vast number are about sex of course, or at least love. In fact, the social media top-tens remind me most of the advice lists written in breathless tones by relationship “experts” that we all click-through eager for some secret insight, even though our rational minds know the premise is absurd…”Ten Ways to Know She’s Into You!”* or “Top Ten Things Your Man REALLY wants!”** Superficially revealing, deceptively empowering, and almost certainly completely useless if applied to your specific circumstances.

So, without pointing any particular fingers, here’s a run-down of the top ten kinds of top-tens for social media, and why you might want to use them for novelty purposes only…

*Because it makes perfect sense that the answer to a mystery that has eluded every poet, philosopher, and evolutionary biologist since the dawn of time can be imparted to you by a freelance “Passion Consultant” in a 500-word post on DudesHealth.com
**Chris Rock has helpfully boiled the list down to three.

1) “Top Ten Reasons You Should Be On <Insert Social Media Site> RIGHT NOW!”

I’m often asked in panic-stricken tones “should I be on…?” And my answer invariably is, “well, that depends.”

“Facebook, right? I need to be on Facebook!”

Well, maybe. The real question is who you want to reach and why. Your audience isn’t “Facebook.” There are a billion people on Facebook, and unless you have a cat with a Hitler ‘stache you’re not going to reach them all, nor would you want to.

“Oh right, I should be on Twitter.”

Your audience isn’t anyone called “Twitter” either. These things were created to help us communicate with people. Sometimes the most powerful social media tool is e-mail, or that most dynamic of social inventions — a conversation.

2) “Top Ten Twitter Hash-Tags You NEED to Be Using, Like, YESTERDAY!”

Speaking of Twitter, no magic tags. Event tags good for
events. Build relationships, find your voice. Remember,
you only have 140 charact... #WasteOfTime

3) “Top Ten BEST Practices for Social Media!”

Nooo. Nope. There are no generalizable social media tips for content or strategy other than don’t post bomb threats, pornography, or pictures of your Weiner.

4) “Top Ten Ways to Go VIRAL!”

The percentage of content on the internet that actually goes “viral” – as in ubiquitous enough for you to be sick of it (or at least vaguely aware of its virulent existence without even seeing it) – is so infinitesimally small, you might as well have a “top ten ways” to win the lottery or hit a half-court shot. If you insist on chasing the chimera of being the next Gangnam Style, by all means spend your waking hours trying to come up with a hilariously preposterous little dance move that sets the world on fire. But that’s probably time better spent creating quality content that resonates with your audience.

5) “Top Ten Ways to Make SURE … !”

There’s a great deal of fear associated with social media — of wasting one’s time, of bomb or Weiner-wielding lunatics, but mostly of criticism. Most of these “Make Sure”‘s are of the “something doesn’t happen” variety. But there is no certainty in social media, whether of results or consequences, be they negative or positive. There are ways to watch and listen, to learn, to harness these tools for your own ends. But if there’s one thing that’s true of social media it’s that it’s not an inanimate technology like a crankshaft or an engine; it’s a human system, and so susceptible to failure, horror, and great joy.

6) “Ten Creative Ways to Use …!”

To be fair, these are actually the most useful of this breed. It never hurts to be open to new ideas or new ways to use familiar platforms. The key word here though is “creative,” as in being inspired to create something fresh and meaningful in a way that expresses your unique voice. Slavishly following some tip will lead to derivative drudgery, which brings us to…

7) “Top Ten Trends You NEED to Jump On Before It’s TOO LATE!”

People are using video/audio/auto-/wiki/real-time/Vine/ …people are using this… people are doing that. Media trends in the digital world have the half-life of a mayfly. It doesn’t necessarily matter what other people are doing (again, most of these trends probably involve cats.) It matters what you’re doing.

8) “Top Ten Predictions – The Next BIG THING in Social Media!”

Always good for a chortle. If the people who make such predictions really knew what the next big thing in social media was they’d be poppin’ champagne in a solid-gold jacuzzi molded into the fuselage of a diamond-encrusted private jet, not sharing that information with you via a top-ten blog post for the standard digital media industry fee of no money at all.

9) “Top Ten Ways to INCREASE Your Site Traffic Using Social Media!”

… Slow down, think about who you want to reach and why. Most tips for increasing site traffic won’t work, won’t be sustainable and some of them might even get you on Google’s naughty list. Though, of course, a top-ten list is a pretty sure-fire way to drive traffic 😛

10) “Top Ten Social Media BLOGS You Should Be Reading!”

The blog you’re reading is almost always one of these. They all tend to consist of advice that’s either too broad, wrong for you, or too technical (i.e. written for other breathless professionals!!!). You’re better off reading blogs, websites, and content by people in your field, or finding outlets that share your passions and values. Oh, and of course, you should be reading ChangeEngine 😎

IMAGE CREDIT. Hasdai Westbrook.

Aug 01

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Designing Data

By Jami Dodson | Design, Social Media | No Comments

One of the most important roles of a designer is presenting information in a way that is clear and easily understood by the intended audience. When you think about it, this may be the single most crucial thing designers do. It’s at the core of communicating effectively. This coherent visual presentation of information can take many forms, from wayfinding signage in a children’s museum, to user experience design on a mobile website, to making prescription drug containers easier to read for elderly patients.

Data visualization and infographic design has become a developing trend across social design media. The sheer volume and diversity of infographic work on display at design community sites like Visualizing and Visual.ly alone tell me visual data representation isn’t a trend soon to be passé. As information overload increases and our attention span decreases, many think that this type of parsing information will be even more necessary in the future.

Infographics have long been a supporting aspect of journalism by presenting factual or esoteric information in an easy-to-understand format. What would USA Today or the Onion be without their (albeit, amusing) bar charts? With the astronomical surge of information made available to us via the web and new technologies, visualization graphics have become very popular, and much more illustrative. Wired magazine began utilizing this new style of visual data as part of their groundbreaking editorial design in the tech and web magazine market in the late 90s. Good magazine uses infographics so extensively, they have become synonomous with the magazine brand itself. This genre of graphic design has become prevalent enough that design firms have found their niche in solely creating them. Hyperakt, out of Brooklyn, NY, and Column Five Media in California, are two that consistently catch my eye. Posters of information graphics as art can be found on Etsy as well as designer’s personal web stores. Even your resume or LinkedIn profile can be transformed into a pie chart frenzy via Visualize.me.

Invasion of the Drones by Column Five Media for Good magazine.

Of course you can’t talk about all this data visualization without at least mentioning the godfather of it all—Edward Tufte. A statistician and professor emeritus at Yale University, Tufte has written numerous books and essays on information design. Tufte’s infamous criticism of Microsoft PowerPoint as a presentation tool for technical data might elicit chuckles from like-minded graphic designers, but some of his points shoot holes right through the fancy infographics those same designers might create. He argues that PowerPoint uses “chartjunk” to reduce critical data to trivial bullet points and graphs, and that this type of “slideware” favors format over content.

Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant.

Tufte goes further to suggest that PowerPoint has dumbed down our ways of assembling information, conducting statistical analysis and deductive reasoning. Not to mention degrading the quality of communication and trivializing the actual material.

So what about these elaborate, beautifully-designed graphics whose entire purpose is a visual representation of precious data? Are designers reducing important statistics to our own form of “chartjunk”—illustrated bullet points and color-coordinated Gantt charts? Granted, PowerPoint is primarily a presentation tool, and serves a different purpose than a well-thought-out editorial illustration. In a way, social-cause designers are making their own sales pitch, without the benefit of verbal explanation. In values-based design, these infographics are a large part of disseminating the need behind the call for action. Visual styling should be secondary to the content, or rather, enhance the organization of the message. Form should follow function, but that doesn’t mean black Helvetica on a white page is the best way to do it. As long as the designer considers the information and presents it in a clear way that tells a story or demonstrates a point of view, data visualization graphics will stay true to their purpose.

Jul 19

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Dear Blog: I Think I Love/Hate You

By Jami Dodson | Design, Social Media | No Comments

It’s with trepidation that I enter the ubiquitous world of “blogging”. Although there’s really no need for quotes anymore—it was eight years ago that Merriam-Webster claimed ‘blog’ the word of the year. The word itself is a combination of two words with separate meanings—called a portmanteau by word-savvy linguists. According to Wikipedia, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence as of February 2011. That’s a lot of cat stories.

For a long time, I harbored a negative resentment toward blogs. I considered donning a t-shirt with “I Hate Bloggers” emblazoned across the front. Well, I didn’t have a problem with blogs per se, I had a problem with the people writing them. Those people who, and you know who you are, are blatenly using them to spew otherwise personal information into the interwebs. In ye olden days, this was called a diary. And it was kept personal. Why does the public at large need to know about your relationship with your therapist? I’ve always been put off by cheeky horn blowers. This new medium has potential to be an agent of transformation, beehives of collaboration, sounding boards for opinion, and yet some of the most popular blogs are unquestionably some of the most low-brow.

Alas, I shouldn’t take things so seriously. CakeWrecks makes me laugh every time. Maybe the reason I hated bloggers so much was because regular joes were given the opportunity (encouraged, even!) to publish openly without needing any technical skill or qualifications, much like how graphic design has changed since the introduction of the Mac. The proliferation of web blogging tools to the masses coincided with the popularity of Photoshop and high-end digital cameras. Now anyone with two hands and access to a computer can be a journalist, a designer, a photographer or an agent of social change. While in some regard this has diluted the validity and quality of these professional creative fields (as in crowdsourcing), it has also provided a mouthpiece for the individual with a means to make a difference.

I wanted more. I wanted to justify spending my precious time reading them. I expected bloggers to be legit, to be experts in their given subject matter. I didn’t want stay-at-home moms waxing nostalgic about scrapbooking. But even that stuff is relevant to somebody. Designers reaching beyond their given aesthetic boundaries and digging into the social relevance of their projects—now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s nerd-out about typefaces, but let’s also elevate design to be the strategic, valuable thing that is essential in today’s rapidly changing world. Isn’t it great to have alternative information sources? Shouldn’t I be celebrating the diversity of the written word and the right to individual thought and creative endeavors? It’s basically an evolution of the newspaper column. Or is it more?

In future posts, I hope to make the best of the responsibility I have as a blogger (and as a designer) and use this space as a platform for thought-provoking ideas and insight about design for social change. I admit it’s also an experiment in self-exploration and in seeking out the changes I’d like to see. Following the advice of Brian Collins, Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS:, an innovation-led firm, “Don’t think of yourself as a problem solver, think of yourself as a problem seeker. Look for challenges to overcome.”

As designers we have the ability to sell a product or shape societal views, sometimes even simultaneously. I’ll be touching on social design projects and collaborations, like MICA’s partnership with Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. I’ll take a look at group initiatives such as Project M and the upcoming Steamboat Design Camp (which I’m thrilled to attend in August) that bring like-minded designers together. Relevancy is all around us; it feeds different perspectives and ways of design thinking. Good design that is responsible, direct and connects on the human level will always rise to the top.

Now that’s something to blog about.

Jami Dodson is a designer, writer, thinker with extensive experience in creative services. She thrives on delivering compelling communications solutions for mission-driven causes. Jami believes that open-minded, cross-disciplinary ways of problem solving are valuable, tangible things, and that they can build awareness and make lasting change in our society. When not designing or volunteering at greening events, you can find her at the farmer’s market or enjoying a manhattan.