Using Social Media to Explore "Care" and Community-Centered Practices

• In Event: Redefining Care in a Global Pandemic: Problematizing Relational Models in Socio-Ecological Systems

Abstract

Purpose: This case study focuses on redefining socio-ecological care and the use of social media to foster community-centered interactions as part of a sharing economy. During the recent COVID-19 shutdown (March 2019 to present) social media like Facebook (FB) has been used to organize local community groups to share resources such as food, children’s clothing, household furnishings, knowledge, and assistance with small household repairs. Our research focuses on the ways that participants in a Buy Nothing (BN) group and a private Buy, Sell, Trade (BST) group on Facebook develop community sharing, pro-social relationships, share knowledge, and leverage sustainable practices.

Theoretical Framework: Like Schor & Vallas (2020) our study focuses on the motivations of social media users, as well as how trust and pro-social behavior is produced through digital means. We employ an intersectional, transdisciplinary feminist approach (Taylor et al., 2020) in which we examine the ways in which sharing knowledge is an extension of gender, language, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, class, and other ways of being.

Methods & Data: Participants in the BN group include men and women (about 1.2k members) from diverse racial/ethnic and class backgrounds in the Mid-Atlantic near a large urban center. The BST group (330 women), live in or on the outskirts of the small bi-city area in western Oregon. Internet data collection (Shumar & Madison, 2013) includes: (1) anonymized FB posts to identify the types of “sharing” or economic exchanges that occurs and the language used to describe aspects of community and a sharing-economy in these posts; (2) interviews with the founders and moderators; (3) participant observation field notes; and (4) autoethnographic writing by the authors. Data were analyzed using rhizomatic methods (Honan & Sellers, 2008) for each group and across groups.

Results: Members of both groups cited in their posts an enhanced sense of “community” as an outgrowth of participation: “caring” for others resulted in new interactions extending across boundaries of class, race, gender, and age. Members shared or assisted others economically through “giving from your own abundance and sharing one to one with neighbors.” However, the exchange of non-essential items continued to play a large role; practices mirrored the kinds of purchases made in present-day consumer culture. Parents with young children and single mothers seemed to benefit greatly from the exchange of goods and knowledge related to child care. In our presentation, we also problematize the use of FB, whose business model involves selling information about its users, as a way to create an alternative sharing economy.

Significance: Few scholars in environmental education have explored the use of social media to create more community-centered sustainable practices. Several Internet researchers have noted that the digital sharing economy has created new patterns of economic support and practices that go beyond traditional sharing, leading to the emergence of a new class of resource allocation (Pouri & Hilty, 2020). Others (Hossain, 2020; Shaikh et al., 2021) cite how the phenomenon of the digital sharing economy is transforming with the changing environment caused by the COVID-19 and how “care” is extended across digital spaces.

Authors

• Carol B. Brandt, Temple University

• Sarah Stapleton, University of Oregon