From Tribes on the Ground to Tribes Online

Recently, Strategic Social presented at the Interagency Strategic Communication Working Group at the Department of State.  The post below, the third in a series of posts regarding anthropological concepts, is based on that presentation.  In it, S2 explores the concept of culture and how the emergence of social electronic media impacts cross-cultural communication.

Strategic Social believes that technology alone cannot create effective messages.  Meaningful communication can only come from a deep understanding of the audience you hope to reach.

As a result, S2 takes an anthropological approach, seeking to understand the impact of kinship, patronage, tribal, religious, and other networks.

S2’s definition of culture:

Culture is a taken-for-granted, patterned, arbitrary system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, that can change over time, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning and social interaction.

Culture can be further distilled into five key nodes:

1. Religion
2. Language
3. Kinship
4. Identity
5. Norms and values

These nodes serve as leverage points for effective socio-cultural engagement.

Remarkable similarities exist between extremely disparate cultures separated by time and space.  For example, the Spartans and the Fulani of West Africa share many warrior cults and rituals; both the Japanese samurai and the Bedouin emphasize “saving face,” and both the Mokas of Papua New Guinean and Kwakwaka’wakw of the Pacific coast of North America celebrated competitive potlatches.

Understanding cultures is the key to dealing successfully with them.  The idiosyncratic nature of cultures can create many barriers to communication.  For example, nautical metaphors that come naturally to sea-faring people do not resonate well among the Toureg people of the Sahara.  Thus, a biblical reference to God as the steadfast “anchor” of one’s soul was translated as the “picket peg” for the soul—a good place to tie up a camel.  In places like Iraq, such misunderstandings can be deadly.  As a result, when a tribal leader was insulted after being excluded from dedication ceremonies of reconstruction projects in Iraq, he responded by destroying the buildings in order to avenge the insult to his honor.

The recent emergence of social electronic media has created behavior among industrialized peoples that is akin to classic tribal behavior.  In many ways, the networks of the Web 2.0 world resemble pre-information age tribal networks more than the one-to-many Web 1.0 broadcast communication model.  Moreover, in many tribal areas, mobile phones and other Web 2.0 devices are more useful and affordable than Web 1.0 devices, such as the desktop computer.  So, in many regions of the world, tribes on the ground are meeting up with and merging with online tribes, as both increasingly use Web 2.0 new media technologies.

Nevertheless, in this new communication arena, content is still crucial.  Message-makers must be attuned to key cultural clues.  As an example, in Iraq’s Anbar province, many people watch satellite television channels, such as Al Jazeera.  However, the most trusted sources of information are those that are most familiar: the family, the mosque, and the tribe, with satellite television ranking very low.  Thus, mass broadcasting power does not necessarily translate into influence, unless one is able to crack the cultural code.  Still, cultural networks are so idiosyncratic and fragmented that it may be beyond the ability of broadcast channels to influence them coherently.

In its experience around the world, Strategic Social has found that persistent presence is the foundation upon which dialogue must be built.  In communication, relationships and trust are far more important than the information that is being communicated.  S2 is putting its concepts into action by conducting a study comparing the behavior of tribes on the ground and tribes online, and how these tribes assimilate collaborative technologies.  Strategic Social is examining the Ticuna, 35,000 people inhabiting the Amazonian rain forest in Brazil, Peru and Colombia, an online tribe, and a tribe in Africa.  We are asking questions about each “tribe,” comparing leaders, resources, challenges, productive activities, and how they utilize new media.  Look for additional posts in the coming months about our findings.