Click on the image to enlarge. Here’s the full text of Kawam’s interview with Menachem Wecker:

Q1: Why have people – young people namely – become so reliant on social media?

A: Saying young people have become reliant on social media is kind of like saying young people have become reliant on communicating with peers, being inquisitive, forming communities and experimenting. Young people have always done those things, and social media is just the latest in a long tradition of technological advances that young people have embraced. Add into the mix that social media is overwhelmingly free (if you can afford an internet connection), and you get a set of tools and communities that is even more accessible.

Q2: Is this a good or a bad thing? Or both? Why?

A: I would be cautious about slapping a “good” or “bad” label on social media, or young people’s reliance on it. Surely there are young people embracing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, Quora and other networks and wielding them for healthy and constructive reasons, and there are others using it to slander, humiliate, hurt and otherwise clogs networks with useless information. Young people, like older people, are using social networks in a variety of ways. Some refer to “social networking addictions,” while others ridicule the term. I’m agnostic on whether that’s a real phenomenon (mostly because I don’t know much about it), but I can see anecdotally that some folks should use social networks more. Some should use them less. I think it’s more fruitful to focus on the question of how we can all use social networks to build and grow.

Q3: Where do you see social media going? The way of Google (as in, getting bigger and bigger)? Or the way of MySpace (as in shrinking to almost nothing)? Or somewhere else?

Great question! I think we are all starting to see that social networks are mostly about the people and only coincidentally about the tools. I wish I had a crystal ball to predict the future of MySpace, Google and other platforms (I’d be rich, for one thing), but I don’t. I think the phenomenon where social networks are being used cooperatively, rather than competitively, is here to stay. For example, it used to be that a company would hire an individual, and depending upon the field, that individual might bring her or his Rolodex of contacts along to the detriment of the previous employer. Now, it’s not unusual for friends (or connections) at competing companies to have each other in their chat buddy lists or as connections on social networks, and increasingly we are all collaborating to resolve problems together. “[People] work together,” Robert Frost wrote, “whether they work together or apart.” I think this culture is going to be a larger and larger force moving forward, whatever the platforms lucky enough to host it.

Q4: Can you offer some advice to students as a way to use social media as a tool and not a crutch?

I’d be glad to, but with the caveat that students are usually showing me how to use social media, rather than the alternative! I try to use social networks in a way that I am always learning something. If I am using them as a platform to pitch my own ideas, then I’m not gaining anything. Who says my ideas are that hot anyway? Instead, I’d advise students (and everyone else!) to use social networks like sponges. Absorb as much as you can. Try not to speak for as long as you can. Maybe this is the Zen of social networks. Social networks offer us so many Libraries of Alexandria many times over at our finger tips, and it’s all free. You used to have to may millions to access this kind of information. That’s a tremendous opportunity, but also a great responsibility. I often joke that social media users should have to take a Hippocratic Oath of social networking: first of all, do no digital harm. Whatever else you do, matters much less.

Q5: Why create something like the Association of Social Media & Higher Education? Was there a need? What do you guys do there?

I and my colleagues created ASMH because we were, and remain, very interested in how social networks can and do inform higher education, and in the ways higher education can impact social networks. Are there others who are doing good work on this intersection? Of course. But we figured we had a unique way to go about it, and we each brought our own resources and connections to the mix. We had a really successful event about the ways chain of command in the military interact with social networking, primarily Twitter, and we recently hosted a conversation about the role, if any, Wikipedia should have in higher education. To the extent that we can continue to curate relevant and useful conversations of this sort, I think we will be a success story.

Trust and Authenticity in Social Media: The Case of the U.S. Military

WHEN: Thursday, November 12th at 3-4:30 p.m.

WHERE: Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street, NW, Room 602 (Google map)

The Association of Social Media and Higher Education (ASMH) invites you to a panel on the nature and role of social media in the military. The panelists, who include current and former U.S. military officers, will address the ways social media can be used effectively, efficiently and transparently to connect the military, civilian and veteran populations. The conversation will also address the ways Twitter, Facebook and blogs can:

• offer a more nuanced view of military life;
• generate public support for veterans;
• serve as a support system for wounded soldiers;
• increase transparency through social media;
• build authentic dialog about military issues and defense policy.

Panelists:

- Moderator: Scott Talan (Twitter: @talan), director of communications, National Association Schools of Public Affairs and Administration and adjunct faculty member, GW

- Lindy Kyzer (@LindyKyzer, @USArmy), public affairs specialist at U.S. Army

- Steve Field (@fieldsteven), former spokesman, Pentagon, blogger, The D-Ring: Where the Military and New Media Collide

- Nicole Schwegman (@nicoleschwegman), former Navy Public Affairs Officer

RSVP here (and see full bios of the panelists): http://tinyurl.com/yc3tb3p

For live updates on Twitter, follow @JuliG or the hash tag #ASMH. For a live webcast of the event, click here.

The event is cosponsored by The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, Graduate School of Political Management and Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, and George Washington Today, GW’s official online news source.