Social Media in the Oil Patch

I’ve been trying to interest some of my colleagues in the Communication program in a project that works to document the use of social media in the Bakken Oil Patch. So far, there have been no takers, so I thought I’d pitch the idea a bit more widely. 

Over the past 5 years, the use of fracking to extract oil from miles beneath the surface has transformed communities in the western part of North Dakota. For all the effects on the physical communities around Williston and Watford City, there has also been a parallel development in the region’s social media presence. From the rise of Greg the YouTube sensation (check out Kyle’s picture!) who describes on YouTube his struggles to make his way as a new arrival in Williston to the Real Oilfield Wives, a website and Facebook page, dedicated to the life of oil field wives. Facebook pages dedicated to Watford City Newcomers and My Life in Williston share space with pages dedicated to Watford City’s new Indoor RV Park and the tragedo-comic Bakken Oilfield Fail of the Day. The business oriented the Bakken Dispatches speaks in the same forum as the Facebook page, This is Mandaree, which documents the influence of drilling in the Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation. Amy Dalrymple’s Oil Patch Dispatch provides news from the patch in a blog type format. The North Dakota Petroleum Council maintains an active Twitter feed. A simple search for #Bakken on Twitter provides a significant insight into the range of activities present in social media outlets. Photographers and documentary makers share space with local businesses catering to the Bakken boom. While I am not trained in the study of social and new media, I have been pretty interested in how Facebook and Twitter collapse the distinction between various voices. Industry advocates (driven in part by marketing strategies) stand shoulder-to-shoulder with support groups and critics of activities in western North Dakota. The interaction between media outlines, critical voices, individuals, and communities provides a window both into the nature of these new media voices and the emerging communities of the patch. Some student, somewhere, needs to analyze this to understand how these virtual communities, marketing strategies, viral phenomena, and twitter strategists contribute to how we understand the Bakken and the North Dakota oil boom  at the intersection of community, individuals, and technology.

In other, somewhat related, news from the Bakken, we were a bit shocked to hear that there was a stabbing death at the Capital Lodge in Tioga. This is where we tend to stay when we’re out in the Bakken. Sort of a bummer.