Lisa Schirch Social Media Impacts on Social & Political Goods 13 isolation and bringing the world closer together. At the individual level, social media allows people to share their thoughts and experiences. This can enable people to understand, feel empathy and compassion for others. Social media also saves time and energy by reducing the need for travel through increasing the ability to email or video conference. 22. Designing Civic Technology. “Civic Tech” is an umbrella term that describes the use of technology for various social goods, including improving governance and coordinating community action. CivicTech “hackathons” are happening all over the planet to solve social problems. In Civic Tech in the Global South: Assessing Technology for the Public Good, authors document a variety of tech solutions to social challenges, such as Brazil’s use of online voting on participatory budgeting, (Peixoto and Sifry 2017) In Seattle, Washington, for example, a variety of independent groups gather staff at technology firms with community leaders concerned about the social good to think about how to use technology including social media to solve social challenges both locally and globally. (SeattleTech4Good 2018) 23. Expanding Democratic Governance. Community leaders, governments, and international organizations like the World Bank use social media to improve the state-society relationship. Social media allows governments to hear directly from citizens to identify concerns, brainstorm solutions, and share information related to public issues. Social media platforms also create opportunities for citizens to hold governments to account, as policymakers respond to constituent "noise" or pressure. Without social media, elected officials in some countries encounter far more "noise" from corporations with lobbyists pressing and rewarding officials who respond to corporate interests, often at the expense of public interests. 24. Enabling Social Movements: Prior to social media, the expense of phone calls and transportation made it difficult for civil society groups around the world to collaborate. Social media offers virtually free methods for civil society to coordinate global protests against war and sexual abuse, and global actions to stem climate change and coordinate with each other to advance social and political goods. Social media also lets citizen reporters document abuses of power, even when mainstream news sources ignore or cover up these abuses. Social media enables activists to amplify information aimed at empowering people to take collective action. Between 2010 and 2012, civil society activists in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere credited social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook for enabling civil society to organize themselves in social movements and take mass action to hold those in power to account. While on-the-ground activists had worked for years to build social movements in the so-called “Arab Spring”, social media boosted these activists by creating wide public awareness of protests. Social media also gave people a way to communicate quickly. Social media helped people overcome isolation brought about by “pluralistic ignorance”—the lack of