Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo anchor Katie Couric discuss rise in social movements
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo's global news anchor, Katie Couric, have discussed the rise in social movements as a result of online communications as normal people find their voices.
Speaking as part of the IAB Mixx conference in New York, the pair conversed about online communications, the lack of women working in digital and Facebook's newly launched Atlas platform, but it was their discussion on the rise of social movements internationally where the two were united in their viewpoints.
Asked by Couric about how Facebook was driving such a rise in social movements, Sandberg explained that the company's mission was to give people a voice through technology to improve their lives.
She highlighted an example of two brothers who used Facebook to raise $100,000 and find volunteers to help build a village which would allow them to reach their local hospital which was days away.
However, the social campaign that both concentrated on while discussing Facebook social movements, was that of The Stealthy Freedoms of Iranian Women, which saw Iranian women post pictures of themselves in public without headscarves. The page apparently has been 650,000 people engaged, according to Sandberg, and is filled with images and messages.
"My favourite message was a grandmother, mother and daughter where the grandmother wrote: 'I wanted my granddaughter to feel the wind on her hair before it turned grey.'
"That's a punishable offence to go there and go public without a headscarf, but women are doing it publicly and they are putting it out there. They are expressing themselves. For a woman in Iran to be seen in public without a headscarf, that is as much expression as they have and that is changing a lot for Facebook. It is what is generating a lot of our content," explained Sandberg.
Couric continued to ask how Facebook protected anyone involving themselves in a social movement against governments. Sandberg responded by explaining that, should it be necessary, Facebook pages could be set up anonymously.
"On your profiles people post as themselves," explained Sandberg. "If someone goes on Facebook and chooses to post a picture without a headscarf, they are doing that because they want that free expression that we provide.
"On the other hand, we have a lot of activity, such as the Arab Spring, where people didn't want to do it with their real identity and we offer pages where they can say bad things about their government anonymously and we protect that."
Couric was also enthusiastic about the growth of grassroots movements within online communications and talked about having recently worked with Mothers for Sensible Gun Laws, which brought together mothers from across the US to change laws and allowed them to organise in a way that they would have been unable to through their disperate locations.
She also highlighted another campaign - Stand Up to Cancer.