ARNOVA November19, 2010

Social Media and Citizens with Disabilities

John C. Bricout

1

Overview • Opportunities for activism in the online

and offline civic spheres• Risk profile of social media for

undermining civic activism• Activism-positive future scenarios

2

Opportunities

• Average Facebook user connected to 80 community pages, groups or events

• 150M Facebook users access mobile devices/month• Demographics

– Facebook 55% female, 12% 50+, 53% college+ – LinkedIn 48% female, 32% 50+, 75% college+

• User Base– Facebook: +/- 320M Users; w/620M groups– LinkedIn: +/- 75M Users; w/625K groups

(Baker, Bricout, Coughlan, Pater, 2010)

3

Opportunities

Facebook & LinkedIn Disability-focused Groups

(2010 Study by Baker, et al., 2010)

• Social media platform: Facebook & LinkedIn (for comparison) chosen based on user base/activity

• Search criteria: employment, aging, and disabled-focused online communities (groups)• keywords + >5 members

• English-language groups

4

5

LinkedIn Facebook

Total hits (groups) 1458 3449

Total hits (valid groups) 343 190

Total hits (invalid) 1115 3259

% false hits 75.98% 91.79%

Advocacy Education Networking Outreach Services0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Disability-Focused GroupsN

umbe

r of

Gro

ups

6

60%

5%

16%

7%

9%

2%

Disability Group Breakdown

Community / Participation

Employment

Healthcare / Wellness / Lifestyle

Politics / Government / Civic Engagement

Professional / Business

Technology

7

8

66%5%

17%

8%

4% 1%

Facebook

9

52%

7%

14%

7%

16%

5%

LinkedIn

Opportunities

• Social media build community• Community is the foundation for collective

action• Social media also engage members in

discussions of social goods, including health, employment, governance and indeed runs the gambit of participation in civil society

10

Opportunities

• People with disabilities resemble other social media users in their interests

• People with disabilities do not resemble other social media users in their means…

• …meaning, an aspiration-achievement gap, the stuff of activism or inaction depending upon the risk profiles entailed by use of social media

11

Risk Profile

Discriminatory Participation• Divide within disability civic activists –

those disenfranchised by the digital divide whether by technology access barriers, usability challenges, income, ethnicity or income

12

Risk Profile

Fragmentation of Effort• Social media partitioning –

compartmentalization analogous to a division of civic activism labor as complexity of civic life engenders specialization

13

Risk Profile

Competing Needs• Distributed activism approach running

afoul of the displacement phenomenon as collective social media action crowds out other social media activities important to civil life causing backlash and undermining popular support

14

Risk Profile

• Future scenarios that transcend – or resolve – negative tendencies in the structuring and process of social media activism, will ensure more effective efforts at civil or civic action by people with disabilities and other marginalized groups

15

Future ScenariosCreating Participatory Spaces for Action • People with disabilities create ‘third spaces’ online using blogs

and social media platforms such as Facebook to engage the general population in dialogue about what are the proper targets and methods for civic activism

Developing a Cooperative Marketplace for Action• Pluralism in the online ‘marketplace’ for civic action generates

an environment in which interdependence, collaboration and joint goal-setting becomes the norm

16

Future Scenarios

Parallel Expectations• Activism in the domain of social media is recursive in the

offline domain

Matched Drivers• Social innovations that drive profound changes in civic life are

as likely to emerge from online social networking and social media as from offline activism

17

Conclusion• Social Media Activism – Social Good Linkages

– Social media influence on civic activism is proportionate to its impact on setting the value on social goods

• Social Activism – Disability Citizenship Links – For people with disabilities the trajectory of social

media activism will be moderated by their citizenship status

• Social Activism – Community Linkages – The adaptability of the larger community to new versions

of active civic life in the social media context will determine the spillover into offline life

18

Questions

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