{"id":1468,"date":"2017-02-24T12:47:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T12:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1468"},"modified":"2017-02-24T12:47:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T12:47:29","slug":"the-bubble-print-a-new-csr-frontier-for-google-and-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=1468","title":{"rendered":"The Bubble Print: A New CSR Frontier for Google and Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many commentators, pundits, politicians, journalists, NGOs, and even normal people, are talking about \u2018bubbles\u2019 and Brexit, and as my previous blog<\/a> suggested, such \u2018bubbles\u2019 can easily form along values divides.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The way we now \u2018living more separate lives\u2019, aided and abetted by the digital echo-chambers of social media, may have helped cause \u2018Brexit\u2019 and helped make it unexpected.\u00a0 \u00a0So many of us have our Brexit story, and our own bubble story, and here\u2019s mine.<\/p>\n

23rd<\/sup> and 24th<\/sup> of June 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the morning of 23rd<\/sup> June, I went along to my local Polling Station (see video<\/a>) to vote in the EU Referendum.\u00a0 I went quite early because I had a two-hour journey ahead.\u00a0 I was due to join a couple of days of meetings in Cambridge, run by the \u2018Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership\u2019 (CISL<\/a>) to which I make a minor contribution.<\/p>\n

When I arrived at the Methodist Church Hall of Wells-Next-the-Sea<\/a> I found it was busier than it usually is on polling days, and my heart sank.\u00a0 As a \u2018Remainer\u2019 who had been writing blogs warning that a values driven split could tip Britain into leaving the EU, despite what most of the polls said. \u00a0What I saw confirmed my worst fears.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I wrote the next day to an enquiring German friend:<\/p>\n

\u2018Yesterday morning I went to vote in Wells next the Sea where I live and although I have lived here since 2000 and know a huge number of people having been involved in a lot of local community\/ political activities, there were lots of people who were obviously Settlers and lots of them very old, who I had never seen before.\u00a0 They were literally being brought in on wheelchairs and on walking aids.\u00a0 It was not a good sign\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

What Did The Germans Ever Do For Us ?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Cambridge friend told that the BBC had made a news report from the City just before June 23rd<\/sup>.\u00a0 In the interests of \u2018balance\u2019 the reporter had tried to find a would-be Leave voter, and a would-be Remain voter to interview.\u00a0 A Remainer was found immediately but it took another 71 people before they found the Leaver.<\/p>\n

Little surprise then, that when I walked into town to join the \u2018networking\u2019 and \u2018stocktaking\u2019 meeting of the CISL, the day after the vote, people seemed unusually subdued despite the rush-hour activity and bright sunshine.\u00a0 Arriving at the conference venue, I found many of the Cambridge-centric audience murmuring to one another in funereal tones.\u00a0 Others paced about outside, mobile phones to their ears.\u00a0 Distracted, dismayed and bewildered, they resembled a gathering of relatives who had all unexpectedly lost loved ones in a sudden disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand it\u201d boomed one participant, \u201cHow did this happen? I simply don\u2019t know a single person who voted Leave, and nor do my friends\u201d.\u00a0 Exactly, I thought to myself but I do.\u00a0 I know lots of them, because where I live we do not live in such separate bubbles, and no longer feeling any enthusiasm to discuss \u2018rewiring the economy\u2019 I went home early.<\/p>\n

A couple of days later I wrote to another friend, this time a long-standing campaigner with a deep involvement in British politics who I had met up with in Cambridge on the evening of polling day.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a bit from my email:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said to you in Cambridge, I thought the game was up the moment I went to the polling station in Wells and saw squadrons of Settlers and Golden Dreamers I\u2019d never seen before, being literally wheeled out to vote.\u00a0 For many of them it was a last chance to vote against a complex of stuff they never understood or liked, and had become a patriotic duty.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Friday evening Sarah <\/em>[my partner] and I went to the pub.\u00a0 We met a friend who declared he was too ill informed (educated) to have voted.\u00a0 His friend who he worked with (carpenters) declared he had voted leave because \u201cI am a working man\u201d and \u201cI was a soldier\u201d.\u00a0 He \u201cwanted his country back\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m a working woman\u201d said Sarah.\u00a0 He looked slightly baffled.\u00a0 Our friend said he also thought \u2018the whole system was wrong\u2019. By way of explanation he offered: \u201cthey tell us to recycle our beer cans which is right and I do but then they make these cheap things that wear out, it doesn\u2019t make sense\u201d.\u00a0 His friend agreed.\u00a0 An example, they said, was washing machines that only lasted a year or so while the good ones went on for at least 7 years and could be repaired.\u00a0 \u201cSo which type is best?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 \u201cMiele\u201d they said in unison.\u00a0 \u201cOnly a numpty would buy anything else\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cGerman then ?\u201d I said \u2013 they laughed.\u00a0 \u201cYes like my VW\u201d said the Brexiteer.\u00a0 So I asked, \u201cshould they have said that in the campaign ?\u201d \u201cOh yeah that would have been a good idea, it might have made a difference\u201d said the Leave voter.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

It was \u2018what did the Germans ever do for us<\/a> ?\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Except the washing machines. And the cars, and making the EU work …\u2019 \u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Outside the butchers, Wells-Next-the-Sea<\/p><\/div>\n

Living in Less Separate Bubbles<\/strong><\/p>\n

The point being that Wells Next the Sea (population about 2,000 in winter, more like 10,000 with summer tourists) is an example of a sort of town now unusual in Britain.\u00a0 In short, it has values groups but they are more mixed, still living less in separate bubbles than in many other areas.<\/p>\n

Visitors and even locals recognize Wells as unusual, and \u2018like something out of the 1950s\u2019 (or 60s, 70s or \u2026 pick your reference point from the past).<\/p>\n

Wells has about sixty local voluntary organizations, often makes its own entertainment, and is widely known for \u2018community spirit\u2019.\u00a0 It\u2019s friendly and has very little crime.\u00a0 It\u2019s the sort of place where if you walk down the street and people have seen you before a few times, they say hello.\u00a0 Being a long-standing port it\u2019s culturally a bit more open than inland Norfolk towns and villages and although it suffers badly from very high house prices and second homes, it still retains a fishing fleet and a lot of people live and work locally. \u00a0Wells Harbour Commissioners do their best to keep it a \u2018working port\u2019 and not let it just become a marina for recreational yachting. \u00a0Wells is almost entirely white, with many large families who have lived here for generations.<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019ve not run a survey, many of the residents and, although I\u2019m a Pioneer many of my friends, are Settlers.\u00a0 Of course there are Prospectors and Pioneers too (in What Makes People Tick: The Three Hidden Worlds of Settlers, Prospectors and Pioneers<\/em><\/a>, although names have been changed, some of the stories are from Wells).\u00a0\u00a0 By English standards Wells is quite isolated with poor transport links, as local teenagers will attest. \u00a0It has limited choices for social activities, such as pubs but quite a lot of social activities which bring the population together, such as the RNLI (the voluntary lifeboat service), the voluntary fire crew, the summer Carnival, and the winter Christmas Tide.\u00a0 People still mix here a lot more than they do in many other places: the \u2018social elastic\u2019 in Wells is still quite strong.<\/p>\n

Yes, people in Wells self-select by values preferences and yes they have flat screen tv\u2019s and broadband, go on foreign holidays and use social media but here at least it\u2019s hard to overlook the reality that people who in many ways seem similar, are in fact quite different when it comes to \u2018issues\u2019, and politics and suchlike.\u00a0 Sociologists might say it has a lot of \u2018social capital\u2019.\u00a0 People in Wells might say that a lot of people know one another, which makes a difference.<\/p>\n

It’s Changing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before you get carried away with the idea that Wells is some sort of paradise, it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 For a start the majority in my area voted Brexit.\u00a0 One friend of mine even hoisted his own \u2018Leave EU\u2019 banner<\/a> on the fishing shed but we are still friends.<\/p>\n

Wells still has two state schools meaning local children (at least up to 16) and their parents get to know one another.\u00a0 But more of the teachers now seem to send their own children to fee-paying private schools (mainly favoured by Prospectors) and a few (mainly Pioneer) parents opt for unconventional new choices like \u2018free schools\u2019, Steiner Schools and home education.\u00a0 These encourage \u2018bubbling\u2019 as they create separate experiences.<\/p>\n

Plus, Wells is becoming \u2018gentrified\u2019.\u00a0 The pub where we used to spend most Saturday nights with a drunken mixture of teachers, care-workers, fishermen, clerks, shop workers and owners, builders and artists, as rock bands played and local ladies danced on the tables and sometimes fought, is now Prospector \u2018Norfolk Coastal style\u2019. \u00a0It caters for tourist families not fishermen, and to add class, in the summer it pays a lady to sing opera from the outside balcony.\u00a0 That I regret.\u00a0 Deeply.<\/p>\n

In The Values Story of the Brexit Split (Part 1)<\/a> I listed some factors which enable people with different values to nevertheless get along (Brexit being an example of where they did not).\u00a0 It\u2019s a crude list but it was:<\/p>\n