Social Media as an Instrument for Social Change

Arianna Huffington can tell a story, but the important message she had for the foundation sector was about the role of the media in social change.

While many people are concerned about the future of newspapers due to competition from the Internet and social media, Huffington looks at social media as an instrument for social change, suggesting that it can be a real help to the work of scaling solutions. Her point is that social media, as well as online media like the Huffington Post, make the news actionable. “Social media is all about action, not about watching passively,” she said.

The impulse that taps is what Huffington calls the “fourth instinct,” the human need to come together and solve problems. (The other three instincts are sex, money, and power—not necessarily in that order). Huffington has a very hopeful and positive view of people and community. She suggested that fourth instinct isn’t something to cultivate; it exists, and what philanthropy must do is to tap into it.

In addition to tapping people’s desires to do good, Huffington thinks philanthropy can help bring the results of that instinct to scale. She contended that “at the local level, you see people coming together to make things happen…you see fundamental change; how can we take that and scale it?” The “we” is both philanthropy and the media.

She expressed her chagrin at the media’s propensity to disproportionately cover the sensational and the emotional (she cited the “balloon boy” phenomenon). The Huffington Post (now purchased by AOL) has been establishing a “patch network” of digital newspapers in small towns “to put the spotlight on what is working, to accelerate what is working…and create a critical mass of ‘goods.’” Huffington’s vision is for the media to “put the spotlight on conditions that need fixing and on the solutions…putting the magnifying glass on what is working.”

How should philanthropy connect to the media? Huffington was a little unspecific. Citing the support of The Atlantic Philanthropies’ Gara LaMarche for the Huffington Post’s investigative journalism project (which just merged with the Center for Public Integrity), Huffington called for foundations to provide the “risk capital” that could be used to promote the role of the newspaper (paraphrasing John Knight of Knight-Ridder) “to bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition…and make them pursue their own true interests.”

Huffington didn’t sound the alarm for the future of the newspaper. Rather, she said the newspaper will not survive as we know it, but that good newspapers will survive and thrive if they integrate online and print journalism. At HuffPo, she instructs her reporters to “tell more stories and spend less time looking at polling data” as the way of connecting to readers’ lives, expectations, and solutions.

Foundations might adapt to the same model, focusing on people and their lives and stories rather than getting overly absorbed by the data.

Rick Cohen is a columnist for the Nonprofit Quarterly