Every company, organization, public figure, government department is making the jump to online communication and social networking whether signing up for a Facebook fan page, Twitter account and YouTube account. Ordinary citizens have already learned that social media is a helpful tool to gather a crowd around a certain topic or issue and advocate for a result. The power of social media allows us to connect to one another and rapidly share ideas and opinions.
According to a Mashable interview with the PR and communications VP of the UN Foundation, the UN has big goals it would like to achieve–the UN Millenium Development Goals–and it is using social media to meet them. New media is becoming a more flexible and integrated tool to increase transparency, communication, reliability and access to information for all the various programs and initiatives that the UN Foundation has to keep track of. There’s only 4 more years left until the deadline of 2015 for the MDGs to be fulfilled.People have the ability to engage with the UN Foundation through a tweet or Facebook post and get their voices heard, so the idea of a global grassroots activist generation is becoming more increasingly possible.
I think the possibilities of social media engagement is exciting and allows big institutions like the UN to become less closed off and removed from the average person. It’s important for institutions with social missions to not forget how vital it is to socialize and vocalize their efforts on a regular basis. Do you all think that this was a good move for the UN to take as a leading global organization to stay ahead of the curve?
This is really an important topic.
The thing I wish to add that social media was one of the reason of successful of Egypt’s January 25th, 2011 Revolution…