The past two years have seen a tremendous increase in the amount of social media integration in the LDS general conference experience. A few years ago the idea of “tweeting” or “blogging” conference was just crazy to most people. Nowadays the hashtag #ldsconf is pretty much guaranteed to be trending on twitter on conference weekend.
And if you don’t know what a hashtag is, you can probably stop reading now. #luddite
I really “Like” PresMonson’s facebook page!
No, don’t stop. I’ve got some good stuff for you.
With the recent changes to the LDS.org homepage to include a very prominent twitter icon next to the #ReliefSociety broadcast announcement, as well as this phrase from the newsroom, “For additional inspiration, follow the official Church Twitter account @LDSChurch and like the Church’s Facebook page,” it’s clear that the church is fully endorsing the use of social media to not only spread the gospel, but to absorb it.
But what is the best way to use social media to enhance your general conference experience? There are many ways to participate and enhance your spiritual download. Each with its own perks as well as risks.
Twitter was the first on the scene for General Conference. It is a system which has been used many times for live events. I know the first time I opened up my laptop during general conference it was to see if other saints were online, geeking out the way I hoped to. They were, and they do.
Twitter is neat because it lets you connect to a vast crowd of saints, letting you really appreciate the unique LDS community as well as the diversity in our church. Sometimes you even see a tweet that makes you laugh, or inspires you in a way the conference itself didn’t.
It’s easy, too. Just search for the hashtag #ldsconf and watch the stream of hundreds of thousands of tweets. Easy peasy.
The downside is that twitter is a wild west sort of scenario, where anybody can post anything under any hashtag. And as the community grows, so does the troll population. In addition to the occasional “gentile” who wanders through with a tweet like “What the heck is #ldsconf?” you get hecklers and antagonists. I believe that this year in particular will be challenging to the uninitiated twitter user, as large ex-Mormon and anti-Mormon communities are actively organizing twitter campaigns designed to drop doubts and criticism into the #ldsconf stream. Accounts such as @ThoughtfulLDS and @MormonTrivia seem legit, but are owned by bitter ex-Mormons looking to sow doubt and confusion.
Facebook now has lots of communities designed to be places for topical discussion. While Facebook’s format means conversation with more than one person can be awkward, there are tens of thousands of members of LDS related groups from all over the world. Plus, without the character limit imposed by twitter, discussions can be more in depth. While most lds groups on Facebook are either subtly anti-Mormon or extremely anti-Mormon, there is at least one faith-positive space.
Some of the so-called “faith-neutral” spaces seem welcoming and open enough, but during conference can erupt with anti-Mormon sentiment since moderation policy is very hands-off. One saint on the lds reddit page said “I was at the Mormon Stories podcast page on Facebook last conference. That was not at all uplifting.”
While Reddit itself strays heavily to the liberal side of politics and the atheist side of religiosity, the lds reddit group remains a fairly safe haven for the faithful redditor. Topics can range all over the place during the year, but general conference time finds the subreddit very active and full of conversation. Reddit’s nested conversation style allows for in-depth discussion, but the requirement to constantly refresh the page means no twitter-like live stream is available.
Because it is less popular than twitter or facebook, the lds section of reddit stays faith positive during general conference season. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before too much traffic forces the moderators to subdivide into smaller sections where the faithful can discuss the church in peace, but for now the mods do a great job keeping it troll free.
Google+
With both hashtag functionality as well as interest based communities, Google+ may be the future of social media. You can search for the #ldsconf hashtag and see live updates as they happen, as well as subscribe to one of the many faithful lds groups with a minimum of detractors. There’s just one problem: there’s pretty much nobody there.
Yes, Google+ has become the defacto bastion of programmers, online marketers, and tech workers, but it has no regular user base like twitter or facebook. In a way it’s too bad, because it really could be great.
Google Docs
I know, I know, Google Docs isn’t social media. Stay with me here. Google Docs is an online office suite. It lets you create spreadsheets, documents, presentations, etc. If you have a gmail account you already have Google Docs. One redditor pointed out that the collaborative nature of Google Docs makes it a great cooperative study journal come conference time. When I read this idea I was astounded. What a great concept. Imagine getting together with a few people who are interested in the same topics as you and creating shared documents for you to share insights on.
While the sharing is essentially real-time, it can be a big mess if you’re not careful. Rather than have a study notebook called “General Conference,” I suggest you find a topic or two which you are interested in and create documents on those subjects. For example “How can I spread the gospel?” or “What is revelation?” and then fill them with quotes and thoughts you have on those subjects during conference. I’m going to try this this year with some friends, and I’m excited.
What else is there? How else can you share your general conference experience? What has worked for you and what has failed? Share your tips!