Becoming Part of the Spectacle

Today in my visual communications class we talked about spectacles. Essentially, a spectacle is an event that is out of the ordinary and so captures the attention of a large group of people. According to Guy Debord, “the spectacle’s function in society is the concrete manufacture of alienation.” Guy Debord was the leader of the Situationists International, a group of politically motivated artists in 1960s France. This organization used their life situations to point out restrictions to freedom through spontaneous creativity in everyday experiences. What did Guy Debord mean by this quote? He was trying to communicate that watching spectacles unfold privately on your television at home does not make you part of the actual spectacle. On the contrary, there must be action starting with getting off your couch and becoming part of the crowd driving social change.

While this core principle still holds true, the rules have changed. Social media enables people to become part of the crowd without having to physically move. Through online social networks, an organization can build up and strengthen its supporters while spreading its work to the general public. Nonprofit organizations can take advantage of this through crowdsourcing. According to The Networked Nonprofit, crowdsourcing is the process of organizing many people to participate in a joint project, often in small ways. There are four parts of crowdsourcing that come together to bring results greater than an individual or organization could accomplish alone. They are:

·         Collective intelligence or crowd wisdom.

·         Crowd creation.

·         Crowd voting.

·         Crowd funding.

The best way to utilize a crowd movement is through microplanning, which the book described as an iterative process of small experiments that lets organizations change them easily. Basically, this concept involves breaking a project up into small steps that eventually lead to a big change.

After this development has occurred, learning loops is a process used to monitor and analyze results in real time. Learning loops also incorporates a process of reflection at the end of the project. The focus is on measuring an organization’s use of social media. The Networked Nonprofit says an organization should plan its learning loops on three steps:

·         Pick a specific narrow objective.

·         Design low cost low risk experiments.

·         Articulate key learning questions.

Social media can be used to directly affect change when a large group of people are motivated to take their opinions online through comments, tweets, and blog posts. It is vital for an organization to examine the success of their efforts and to embrace the value of social media. Listen to Guy DeBord and become part of the spectacle. Discover what you can do to be a part of positive social change.