The process of creating this piece was more informative in some ways about how people using social media process posts and online information than anything else, so I suppose that in that way especially it was a great success. Thinking of the concept for the project started as somewhat challenging, but became became even more so when considering how people might respond or interpret my call for entries. When I posted, I received way fewer entries than I expected. Normally I see a decent amount of activity on questions I post using social media, but they are simpler and require less thought or energy. It would seem that while people want to express themselves within a social media community, they do not necessarily want to spend energy to think about how to do so, at least when seeing a post in passing. In order to get more participation, I had to ask friends and family members, with whom I had social capitol, to think about a response and post something. I realized maybe people were over-thinking it once they decided they were going to think about it at all. My wife and sister-in-law both spent considerable time trying to come up with the perfect piece of media to post and repeatedly asked me questions about it, even though they initially had several ideas in mind and I reiterated several times that the project is very open-ended. This would suggest that they were hesitant to make any sort of definitive representational post about themselves in the community, especially about something that inspired them, without wanting it to accurately and positively reflect on them.
Interestingly, other friends who said they would participate hardly ever post anything on facebook, and don't seem to care all that much about how they are presented on social media. Not only did they post immediately when I invited them to, but I don't think they even really read the prompt. One friend posted a quote his grandfather told him. I can't think of any way I can pitch that as being any sort of media, but I am glad he participated. Interestingly, however, these friends tended to engage more in the conversation, liking others' posts, perhaps more to support the person or idea than to represent themselves to the community. One friend shared his own artwork and creative inspiration, but contextualized that decision by telling me it was a hard one and asking the community not to think him arrogant by doing so. Even more interesting, it seemed that the more posts I got, the more eager people were to participate, even if I had already asked them. Perhaps the posting is exponential, in that if people see a mass gathering online to discuss something, they are far more prone to be part of the conversation.
It would seem that community plays a very large part in shaping what is created or received online, if differently for different people. I can't help but think of other social media sites, such as tumblr or reddit especially, where art and information and community are all blended into one with memes. Memes are a particularly interesting form of community media in that they typically reference an understood original source, they are self-perpetuating, they can be used to make points, reference current events, create satire, simply joke around, etc, and they are even considered an art form with no original author.
Community calls to action are a cool and synthetic way curate this sort of online sharing and connection, but I find it even more mind-boggling when these sort of things spontaneously occur. Perhaps there will be a way in the future to better study and track this sort of information, but as of now we are still working on it, and I think we are doing well. There is a beauty to the viral, spontaneous unanimity of online communities and expression, and I'm anxious to continue evaluating my own personal presentation in the virtual world.
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