Crowd Sourcing The Big Issues In Social Media: Race, Gender, Generation, Poverty

Jul 25, 2008 No Comments by Leslie

Over the past 48 hours I conducted a poll of Twitter users. Unscientific? Absolutely. Generic? Of course. And yet I was surprised at the results. What did I ask on Thursday? “Which issue is bigger to you? Gender gap/social media, race/social media, poverty gap/social media or generation gap/social media.”

I must admit I picked a hard time to conduct a Twitter Poll, what with Twitter going down, but I still got a healthy number of responses. When I started the poll, I had a preconceived notion of the results formed in my mind based on the latest bitchmemes (race in the form of Loren Feldman’s video blog, or gender due to the rash of “women in tech” lists and BlogHer). I was so happy when my Twitter list surprised me.

The results: race got two votes. That’s it. I was shocked. Perhaps people are all talked out about it this week after the 1938 Media brouhaha that’s been going on, or perhaps it never was the over reaching issue people made it out to be in the first place. I don’t know. I know I was expecting more of my Twitter list to say it was a hot button topic and only two did. In fact, several of the people I would have pegged for it to be an issue voted for other things.

Intrigued, I moved on down the poll. Gender gap and social media got 1 vote. One! That made me happy. It is a personal peeve of mine when women want to be treated equally and have the same opportunities then cry foul when they are truly treated equally. Equality and “better” are not always the same, after all. I’m more comfortable when race is an issue, but often think that it isn’t really the color of someone’s skin that was the problem but rather the opportunities they were afforded in life. Often this is more of a class or economic divide than one of skin color, however.

The fourth option, generation gap, got three votes. I was not surprised at this, as I think that many of the 20 something crowd (not all, but many) hang out somewhere besides Twitter in social media (FaceBook and MySpace come to mind first here). What happens when these 20 somethings outgrow FaceBook (or when FaceBook outgrows them and makes itself too work centric to appeal to that age level any more)? I’m not sure, but at least on Twitter it was not the winning hot button issue.

What won the poll? Poverty gap and social media had the dubious distinction of “winning” with 47 votes. That’s right – a late night poll to my nearly 800 scattered follows and followers during a Twitter crisis netted a whopping 53 replies, 47 of which said that the issue of an economic/poverty gap and social media was their biggest concern. I must admit I was hoping that issue would win, as it is near and dear to my heart.

Why conduct the poll at all? Because I want to solve the problem, or start to. I want to put the finest minds on the internet together to come up with ways to bridge the gap. Won’t you join me? Sure we have the One Laptop Per Child program in the States, finally, and a few other programs, but it is nowhere near enough. In this time of recession, the economic gap crosses the lines of gender, race and generation. As a collective, the social media thought leaders of the internet could effect real change in this desperate hour.

I am soliciting participants for a series of podcasts on poverty/ecomonic gap and social media. I want to know what you bring to the table. If you want to help, if you have big ideas, it doesn’t even matter if you are an industry rock star or the person in the apartment on the corner with a little too much internet time – tell me your big ideas in the comments. I’ll be hosting the first podcast on Topics On Fire, Episode 1: Social Media and the Poverty Crisis this Sunday at 11 PM Eastern on TalkShoe. I’d love to see you all there. Let’s make this happen.

A topic as big as this deserves a panel big enough to handle it, so without further ado I present your panel for the evening.

Panelists include (in no particular order):

Moderator: Leslie Poston (@geechee_girl ), Senior Writer at Blorge , Co-founder of UptownUncorked

Andrew Feinberg (@agfhome ), Assistant Editor/Warren Communications News – Washington Internet Daily / Communications Daily

Erin Koteki-Vest (@queenofspain ), BlogHer Political Director, Huffington Post contributor, and proud mommyblogger

*Erin has moved to “maybe” status because her daughter is ill. She will try to make it.

Sean P Aune (@seanpaune ), Mashable Lead Features Writer and co-host of Mashable Conversations , owner of SeanPAune.com

Steven Hodson (@stevenhodson ), contributor at Mashable , owner WinExtra

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira (@fourlittlebees ), Contributor at The Industry Standard

Jim Keenan (@heykeenan ) Founder of Cre8Buzz , Social Media enthusiast, Skier

Shireen Mitchell (@digitalsista ) Executive Director of Digital Sisters/Sisters Inc and blogger at WomenWiredIn.com

Fellow UptownUncorked founder Triston McIntyre will be in the chat room making sure we don’t miss any of your contributions in chat. This should be a lively group!

Edited to change the time of the show so as not to compete with L33t Tech News.