Tyron Woolfe: Is it harder to get information to the Deaf community despite the rise of digital media? (with BSL)

In this blog I am wanting to share my thoughts about the challenge in reaching Deaf people with a message or a call to action.  Hopefully this post will lead us all to share ideas.

To watch Tyron signing his blog, click play below, or scroll down to continue in English!

Long gone are the old days, sometimes seen as “golden”, where we all eagerly waited for a monthly magazine to reach our homes with news from the Deaf sphere (e.g. British Deaf News, One in Seven, Talk and others), or for the old teletext magazines, No Need to Shout (BBC) and DeafView (C4) which were refreshed every week.  

Or when we frequented our regional or local deaf club on a weekly or monthly basis to socialise primarily, but also to find out about stuff.

Or where we would wake up early on Sundays to catch that lovely BBC programme, See Hear (not forgetting other series such as Sign on). There was also a tri-monthly magazine from the World Federation of the Deaf, I’m not too sure what’s happened with that recently.

Older generations in the UK will remember Deaf events and campaigns attended in mass numbers, be it the annual British Deaf Association conference, FYD Sports Festivals, A.F. Dimmock’s well known tours, deaf ramble groups etc.  The success of these were more or less achieved via physical methods; letters, adverts in magazines etc.

We didn’t really have the internet at our hands in those days.

Over the past two (or is it three?) decades there has been the huge development and growth of:

– Email

– E-newsletters

– Yahoo e-groups (special mention of Deaf-UK-jobs which reached 20yrs last week with more than 20k jobs advertised, Alison Bryan the moderator did all of this voluntarily, and deserves a medal)

– Facebook, Facebook groups

– Instagram feeds and Instagram stories

– Twitter, Twitter chains

– YouTube

– Linked In

– Websites

– Blogs, especially Limping Chicken!

And there are probably other things that I have yet to discover!  There is also a wider ability to send out information with the click of a button to a range of social media channels rather than having to do everything several times.

There’s also the ability of audiences to control what they see, e.g. blocking people/organisations, hiding those who post out too much information, things we don’t agree with or rubbish, or we can quieten particular people for 30 days.  

There’s GDPR which audiences can use to stop companies sending messages or holding their data. I tried it with the Guardian Online the other day, couldn’t believe the number of data fields I had to physically opt out from if I wanted to control what data was being kept!

But the question of: “If it’s all digitally easy to send information out etc, then why is it so difficult to get action, to get big turn outs compared to the old days?” keeps coming to mind.

The Deaf sphere of course, as we all know has changed.  But the ability to send out information to Deaf people surely is so much easier than the days of post and stamps?

Is it that the call to action is difficult?

Is it that we are overloaded in a crowded sector where all players in the field are vying for your attention? At the time of writing this blog there are approximately more than 75 deaf organisations in the UK, as well as schools and groups who will send out tweets or posts more than once a week.

Is it that we are measuring the wrong thing as success? For example, the number of likes a post gets? The number of retweets? Do they really result in any change? How do we know?

Is it that we are confused between what is self-promotion and what is useful information?

Is it that we are tired of “cryptic” messages? For example “@Mr Joe Bloggs it was wonderful to meet you, look forward to working with you in future” – does this put people off or does it make them interested?

These questions play in my mind every time I read something or every time I see something posted in the Deaf sphere.

The more or less recent growth of live-streaming has been positive in many senses, especially to promote but also to gauge interest in audiences, for example London Deaf Drama Group.  

For some events, it raises the question of why bother going to events so far away when you can just watch from your screen and save so much money and time. Indeed!

At Deaf LGBTIQA where I am the acting chair of this small voluntary group, we have recently done a video and text about the importance of Cervical Cancer Screening.  A tweet and facebook did not result in immediate active sharing/retweeting but I soon learned that you had to write the post in a particular way to get other twitter handles to take action.  Also that sending out something on a Tuesday afternoon is not the best time to trigger action – hmm!

Stop Press – Hurray! Cervical Screening Twitter handle, @CervicalScreen1 has just retweeted the tweet from Deaf LGBTIQA, it feels like an achievement because it is going to a mass audience (more than 8000 at time of writing) who follow them, compared to our current immediate following (286 at time of writing).

And SignHealth has also retweeted to their followers (7445 at time of writing).  But then again perhaps we should not leave it at that? Surely the best measure should be how many deaf women actually have a cervical cancer smear test? 

A few weeks ago a group of buddies and I were concerned about more and more news about deaf men not coping with mental health.  

We created a video which was then edited and then I added captions on. It was agreed to share it at 12noon on a Friday, and reached more than 2000 views by the Monday morning.

I think the topic was the key factor, but also the video featured 6 friends who each have their circle of friends.  But that’s just my opinion. However statistics tell us there are over 70,000 BSL users in the UK. Even accounting for those couples or families who view posts together, its nowhere near the total. How do we know we have reached the Deaf sphere?

Social media can cause anxiety for some people for sure, and we know a lot has been researched/written about this although not specifically with Deaf people.  

I met so many Deaf people whilst travelling in Latin America who were worried they could not afford to go to Paris, where the WFD Congress 2019 takes place.  So many posts appear on their feeds from the wider Deaf International sphere, which makes it sound like everyone is going. Most people from Latin America just cannot afford to go.  They seemed really concerned that they would miss out by not be able to go.

There are other examples of how social media affects people, e.g. self-image, posing, boasting, comparative statements etc, but there isn’t enough space in this post to go into that.

This brings us to a recent pattern emerging; people leaving social media or disengaging.  People who are just tired of so many posts and not able to keep up. People who may feel inadequate from seeing positivity and negativity in others’ posts. People exasperated with what others say. Also those who value their own privacy greatly. The reasons vary greatly.

When I was travelling and did a blog or a Facebook update I would also email directly to friends who I knew had left social media.  It was an additional errand but important to do so and I know they appreciated it. I have to be mindful that not everyone who follows/is a friend will see everything I post; social media can be weird in that sense that you will miss an update here and there.

It isn’t just digital though.  I strongly remember back in 2008 at one meeting in the North Region I was giving a presentation to the British Association of Teachers of the Deaf in relation to my job at the time.  I had previously written an article in their national magazine. I quickly realised they hadn’t read it – I asked for a show of hands as to who had read my article before my presentation and none were raised; not everyone has the time or eagerness to read and digest a magazine front to back.

There are physical opportunities to reach people in the Deaf sector, especially Deaf conferences and the infamous City Lit Deaf Day in London.  Yet often the challenge is there to decide how best to reach audiences as not everyone can go to a conference/event, not everyone is on Facebook, and not everyone reads a magazine back to front.  Cost is also a factor – not in terms of money but also time.

Whilst I travelled, the internet and social media brought a lot of sanity for me, I could keep in touch, I could write blogs and share them. I could engage with friends and family.   I could also get a sense of what was happening in the UK (Brexit, what else!). However I made a conscious decision to not get hung up on how many likes or shares a blog or posting got. This was important to do.

For those of you who may not know, posts can be accompanied by hashtags (#).  But to be “on top of it” you ought to be searching the hashtag you are interested in.  Do you?

Last night I talked about this developing blog post with a few good friends.  The conversation led to the hashtag “#deaf”.  It is common for us all to scroll and catch up with our personal accounts on social media – almost daily for some of us, but do we search #deaf? And do we do this regularly? Since it was launched, Instagram has had over 675,000 posts with #deaf – how many of these have you seen? Twitter has had over 130 posts today, and it’s only 9.15am at the time of writing this!

There seems to be a problem though – not everyone uses a hashtag appropriately. And no-one owns a hashtag. A quick skim through the past 500 #deaf posts has show a lot of unwanted posts where individuals just want some attention for example.

Are you someone who is trying to use digital media to achieve or change something? Do you find it challenging? Do you have any good tips?  I would value you sharing any tips.

In the meantime maybe set yourself a challenge, to search for #deaf (or whatever hashtag you particularly like) a few times a week?

Tyron is in his early 40s and loves a good laugh and cuddle with friends and family. He has worked for over 20 years with deaf young people. In between volunteering and loads of networking, he is keeping an eye out for his next career move since travelling. Follow him on Twitter as @tyronwoolfe