After reading my latest post regarding the Survey on Social Networks Worldwide, Stowe Boyd wrote a very interesting post about Social Networks And The New Tribalism.

Boyd writes:

“I think a new tribalism is starting to emerge through social connection on the web. A bottom-up, emergent sense of allegiance through web-enabled communities is supplanting twentieth century, industrial era alienation. While tribalism has its dark side — a tendency toward inter-tribal conflict and aggression — the wiring of the human mind and new social technologies are combining to engender neo-tribalism….

My primary relationship with the world is through my social network, and I don’t mean Facebook: I mean the specific collection of a few hundred people that I connect with through a smorgasbord of tools and services. And this is more important to me than other allegiance. More important than religion (not that I have one, really, aside from a diffused sort of Taoism), locality (I am a nomad, after all, like many tribal peoples), and definitely more than nationality (I haven’t felt very American for some time).

The difference with the new tribalism is that it is borderless, and isn’t organized as an exclusionary system. Some may reject new tribalism as being in conflict with their other allegiances. Hard bitten business types who feel that the purpose of work is to crush competitors and win at all costs will find the inherent altruism and shared social capital of web tribalism incompatible with their world view. Religions that are based on hatred of non-believers or those that have different beliefs will find web tribalism a growing threat to their exclusionary practices. Centralized national governments will fan the fires of industrial-era patriotism, but will find less adherents that are willing to bond with the notion of national interests trumping global and personal concerns.”

In his post, Boyd digs deep into the meaning of social networks and the human need to connect with others on a level that is beyond religion, geography, or nationality. I also wrote a similar post two months ago entitled Why We Should Care About Web 2.0 in which I emphasized the fact that social networks now represent our new tribal communities:

“Throughout time humans have always liked to interact and share with one another. Web 2.0 is only a digital extension of that desire. Web 2.0 communities are for us today what tribal or village communities used to be for our ancestors. They represent a place where we can make new connections, share details of our lives with them, and discuss topics that matter to us.”

Like Boyd, I also believe that social networks represent our new form of allegiance. We are entering an era of virtual, borderless connections where geography, nationality, or religion are no longer the primary dividers. Connections are now based on deeper personal elements such as: Traits, habits, views, and hobbies. Due to differences in these elements, just like in the past, not all tribes will get along. Each one of us will choose the tribe(s) where he feels most “at home”, with the people that he relates to the most, and pledge allegiance to that community. There will be some people who, as Boyd writes, will view this new tribalism as being in conflict with their other allegiances. These persons have always existed throughout time and have always tried to keep the “masses from rebellion”. For the rest of us, let’s enjoy all the privileges and advantages that this new tribalism brings us by allowing us to forge strong communities based on our own personalities (or inner selves) and not based on what country or religion we were born into.

Only a few hours after Boyd published his post, Jeff Jarvis posted on The emergence of media tribes, which is somewhat related to the topic at hand. Jarvis writes about the latest Pew Research Center study on Americans’ views of their news media showing falling trust, growing divides, and the emergence of media tribes.

Jarvis writes:

“Pew was most struck by the growing difference in opinions about media among people who use different media. Bottom line: People who use the internet as their primary source for news — who are also younger and better educated than the rest of the country — are the most critical of mainstream media (and probably the most likely to sneer at it as “MSM”). TV viewers are older and also less critical.

I see the emergence of media tribes.

Different groups use different media and have different views of that media. Perhaps that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, the internet is used to criticize MSM and it attracts people who are critical of MSM and thus it is more critical of MSM. Or not. It could be that younger, better-educated people are already inclined to be critical of MSM and that is why they gravitate to a medium that gives them more choice, comparison, and control. Chicken, meet egg.

This is an inevitable outcome of the end of monolithic media: the death of The Press. Now that we have the means of comparison, we compare — and the old controllers do not compare well. I have long decried the allegedly grand shared experience of media that really lasted only three decades — from the 50s, when network TV killed second and third newspapers locally, to the 80s, when the cable box, VCR, and remote control gave us more choice, to the mid 90s when the internet gave us more control. I say it is a good thing to have more voices, more perspectives, more means to compare.

But I’ll also note that this division of the media tribes means that we are each seeing different Americas. That will have ever greater implications for not only news media but also for politics and public policy as well as any consumer business. Of course, this means you can’t just buy network TV to sell soap or ideas anymore. But it also means you’re never talking to one nation.”

So there you have it. Tribes are emerging around us everywhere. Each of us is trying to find his own domain (lliterally) where he can best connect with others who share his views, tastes, and habits, pledge allegiance to that community, get the news that he chooses, share his perspective, and have a say in controlling all of these elements. Web 2.0 symbolizes our freedom of choice in controlling all of these factors and we should cherish this freedom and embrace it.

Which tribe(s) do you belong to?

Thanks to Frans Devriese for the photo.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Social Media, Social Networks, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.