The financial crisis of 2008 caused many a surprise, but perhaps none as unusual as the recent discovery made by John Bollen of Indiana University.
Bollen has analysed messages sent through the website Twitter during that crisis. He expected that the emotional content of these ‘Tweets’ would mirror the market. But he was wrong. The Tweets did not reflect the market; they predicted it by two to three days, and at an accuracy of about 86%.
Social media, like Twitter or Facebook, are easy to dismiss. For some they seem juvenile, for others decadent, for many faddish. But even Twitter’s greatest fans might be surprised to discover that it predicted the chaos of 2008.
Ministry implications
What does the rise of ‘social media’ mean for ministry? Each new media development impacts how we communicate: the Gutenberg printing press led to the Gutenberg Bible; radio led to C.S. Lewis’s famous radio talks; TV, for better or worse, to the televangelists. What the internet and, in particular, the social media aspects of blogging and ‘tweeting’ will do is still unfolding. But perhaps we have not yet quite realised how powerful a tool some of it is. ‘We live on farms, we lived in cities, and now we’re going to live on the internet!’ is the line from the Facebook film The Social Network. If Bollen’s research is any indicator, there may be a smidgeon more truth to that sort of gung-ho acclamation than we might sneeringly think.
Worth a close look
Perhaps a close look at 1 Corinthians 9.22 and context is in order. Standard interpretations will tell you that this rallying call to ‘be all things to all people that we might win some’ does not mean abandoning moral or doctrinal standards. Some will tell you that it means being flexible with cultural norms. Others will tend to stress the more specifically salvation-historical hermeneutic of the Jewish-Gentile point that is certainly at least there. But I wonder what Paul’s ‘I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some’ would mean in reference to social media? Would Paul blog? Would he tweet?
He certainly wrote letters. All media has its inherent dangers. Just because Paul wrote letters doesn’t mean that all letters in the ancient world are worthy. And Facebook has its pitfalls, to say the least, as well as privacy concerns.
However we negotiate all this it is probably wise not to disparage the power of these new media. Business certainly is not. For instance, Verizon (a cell phone and communication company) has invested about $23 billion in its ‘FIOS’ super fast fibre network which in Massachusetts can run at 10,000 megabites per second. Right now there’s not much demand for that sort of 2Fast2Furious heat. But if that kind of money is still being put down for the next generation of internet products, then we might need to gear up for realising that we have only just begun to see the impact of the internet.
Tweet tweet may be a bird in hand that’s worth two in the bush.
