I came across a very insightful post over at Experience: The Blog
where the author uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to tease out some of
the reasons for online behaviour, in this case why people join online
communities. It is a very good analysis of the motivations behind
people’s behaviour and set me thinking about the online social media
scene in South Africa and why companies who engage in online social
media campaigns may be jumping the gun a bit.
South Africa is still in a very fragile state of uneasy equilibrium
socio-politically, nearly fifteen years after the end of apartheid the
overall majority of the black population is not very much better off
than before the end of apartheid in 1994. Economically, the majority of
the country’s wealth still are controlled by a small minority of
predominantly white people, the reasons and dynamics for such a state
of affairs which falls outside the scope of our present conversation.
The result is that when it comes to information technology and the
ecosystem around ICT tools, we still have a very unequal distribution
of access to these modalities. In other words, the average black
student or child still does not have access to computing resources and
their parents still are not in a position to afford a computer; most of
the time they are still struggling to just provide in the basic needs
like proper housing and enough food on the table in the face of a
struggling economy and rising fuel and food prices.
When one speaks of social media, you are thus speaking, in a South
African context, of a small minority of predominantly white geeks and
geekettes with an odd sprinkling of Coloured, Black and Indians thrown
in who are leading the conversation and an incestuous in-clique
parrotting and echoing each other’s blogs and blog posts. Recently a
furore broke out when one freelance journalist made a list of the prominent figures in the South African blogosphere and almost all of them turned out to be white. One coloured blogger quickly reacted with a counter-list of non-white South African “Web 2.0″ personalities
and his post was severely criticized by many on the “white list” as
being divisive and hurting those he mentioned on the list. How exactly
it would hurt them I could not imagine, I suppose all the white boys
would fort up and keep the business and the action within the in-clique
and ignore completely anything that any of these “troublesome”
coloureds have to say…?
The point is, social media and social media marketing and social
media strategy is an almost pointless pursuit for businesses in South
Africa when the same small group of people who are also the same group
who got the contracts to develop these sites, now have to go around and
stir up their small, limited circle of friends to go and see what
Company A or B has put up and comment there or add a digg, or
del.icio.us bookmark or in South Africa’s case Muti or Laaik.it or
Amatomu or Afrigator. Once anyone has put anything up and he goes: “hey
guys go look at my post” a small number of his/her buddies will rush
over and throw two cents worth of “nice post, keep at it” into the
comments collection-box and be on their merry way to look at the next
shiny little pebble on the internet highway.
When it comes to companies releasing press releases about new
products/programs or initiatives they are launching, we are stuck in
the old top-down hierarchical mentality of wanting to control the
message and releasing stiff, formal templated media releases that does
not contain anything with a potential of going viral or being worthy of
being shared with your friends on Facebook. The Vodacom animated
meerkat is a much despised brand property on Facebook where there is
actually a group called “I fucking hate the animated meerkat from Vodacom” with 15,642 (South African) members.
Some of the bigger media companies have in-house “social media
experts”, mostly web development geeks who saw potential in this new
frontier opening up and all sorts of “consultants” offering “New Media
and Social Media Strategy” services for exorbitant fees. Most of these
consultants are based in closed in-clique centres like Johannesburg and
Cape Town where most of the action is happening and the market is so
small that there is usually stiff competition from the same group of
individuals for the available social media gigs. This then inevitably
leads to some behind-the-scenes intrigue and gossip mongering and
trying to keep it “within the family”.
This means that in a South African context where an incompetent and
corrupt government alliance are failing all it’s people, every
community is closing in on itself and protecting it’s own and being
very protective of the available small pieces of pie going around. The
hierarchy of needs that Maslow talks about thus comes into play with
people who have access to technology and the education enabling them to
wield that technology adequately and competently, keeping it to
themselves in order to remain ahead of the pack in the African bush.
You then find a situation like you have at present in the online Web
2.0 South African zoo, those who have been benefitting from apartheid
through privileged education and upbringing and access to good
education and resources banding together only with those from similar
privileged backgrounds.
Everyone else is not “worthy” and it is not their problem or their
concern why “these people” aren’t educated or sophisticated enough,
it’s been fifteen years of Affirmitive Action and BEE after all! We
thus see a very vicious racism rearing it’s head where the Australian
passports and emigration visas are being dusted off and old Afrikaner
Boer generals are nostalgically praised in popular culture to signal a
return to the “good old days” if only in spirit and not in the everyday
reality.
My point in waffling on like this? People form communities around
common and shared interests. Many of the small minority of active
participants in the South African blogosphere or Web 2.0 scene share
only one thing: being white and their parents having benefitted from
the previous apartheid regime. They are thus the custodians of the old
wealth and the old ways and are doing everything to protect their
position of privilege from being usurped by pretentious nouveau-riche
blacks who wants to overrun and nationalize everything in sight. Recent
political developments like the ANC youth league president threatening
with killing for the very unsuitable presidential candidate does not
exactly help in easing their fears.
So social media strategy and social media marketing online in South
Africa is only existent for a small minority of privileged white geeks
and their equally small potential white and privileged audience who
might be enticed into visiting a site and leaving a comment or sharing
it on a social bookmarking site. The rest of the population do not have
computers, many access these sites from work or school or university
and then only to check the odd e-mail and zombie bite their friends on
Facebook. Most of the teenagers are clogging up the GPRS networks with
Mxit from their mobile phones and those (mostly white kids) that have
access to 3G use it to play XBOX or World of WarCraft online.