CHICO \u2014 The internet isn\u2019t what it used to be, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s dead for Butte County leaders. Quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
While newspapers and TV news had better glory days, for better or worse it\u2019s clear the internet has taken the lead in the dissemination of information.<\/p>\n
Emerging from dark days of COVID-19 lockdowns, local politicians and government leaders have more recently been using internet media to create messages of their own \u2014 alongside participating in traditional news outlets.<\/p>\n
This year alone, Chico Mayor Kasey Reynolds launched a 1-minute long show in March called \u201cMayor\u2019s Minute\u201d highlighting local events and city infrastructure updates, and Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea started a podcast in May called \u201cThe Sheriff\u2019s Mic\u201d to discuss the topic of public safety in depth. They followed shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom launched his podcast in February, \u201cThis is Gavin Newsom.\u201d<\/p>\n
City councilors are also reaching constituents with their social media accounts regularly, including Chico City Councilor Addison Winslow, who curates informational posts on Chico policies, as well as Oroville City Councilor Shawn Webber who posts daily about public works, code enforcement and public safety information.<\/p>\n
The nature of social media, being a sort of modern \u201ctown hall,\u201d as put by Webber in an interview with this newspaper, in many ways is revealed in online content and comment section, both progressive in discussion and destructive in trust.<\/p>\n
Yet the motivation behind these leaders efforts in media creation can be seen as an honest contribution to local discussions, and in many ways, an attempt to combat tides of hatred and misinformation.<\/p>\n
Webber, who was elected to Oroville City Council in 2022, said he personally decided to not be a part of hatred on social media in a world coming out of COVID-19 lockdowns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was almost like angry vitriol between and from both sides. I\u2019m not saying one side. I\u2019m saying straight up, both sides, angry vitriol, and the insults, and the hurls, and the slurs, and the anger,\u201d Webber said. \u201cYou could read the anger. I mean, you feel it. It\u2019s palpable. You know, it\u2019s like, if somebody said this sentence in real life, it would just floor a room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of getting pulled in by anger, Webber said he made an important point to go against the divisive grain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI choose to look forward to the good things. You know, the lovely things. The wonderful thing. I choose to look for that every day, and that\u2019s a choice. Or I could just sit back, and I could hyperfixate and focus on something negative, and point out, and be very, very critical, Webber said \u201cI don\u2019t want to be that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leveraging media<\/p>\n
On his Facebook page, Webber posts parks being built, public works crews repaving roads and snippets of local speakers at community events. He also played a role posting evacuation and emergency shelter during the Thompson Fire in 2024, helping families get connected and safe at the Church of Nazarene, the declared evacuation point at the time.<\/p>\n
He had no training in media, and only joined Facebook when he began running for government. Yet said he found a calling to communicate to his constituents with a positive intent behind his messaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to be informed about what\u2019s happening with our parks or what\u2019s going on with these roads or what\u2019s happening with the budget or whatever\u2019s going on \u2014 People are eager to be informed. And so I found that to be a winning formula, how to simply get out there and pump out a positive narrative,\u201d Webber said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Road To Redemption\u2019<\/p>\n
Webber knows negativity \u2014 he\u2019s seen some dark days as a former Butte County bank robber. That\u2019s right, a former-bank-robber turned city councilor is now using social media to disseminate information.<\/p>\n
The sentence is striking, and one likely wouldn\u2019t recommend their children following Webber upon first read. But a bit of understanding into Webber shows how transformation goes right here in Butte County in a story maybe not so likely to be told in the days of traditional media.<\/p>\n
Sheriff Honea\u2019s podcast covers Webber\u2019s story in its fifth episode, \u201cRoad to Redemption: From Bank Robber to City Councilor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShawn Webber is a good one because that is a story about redemption,\u201d Honea said. \u201cThat\u2019s a story about how someone who was involved with the criminal justice system in a very negative way. Turned his life around, right?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think that\u2019s an important part of being the sheriff is recognizing when people have overcome adversity, have turned their lives around, have gone through the system. My thought process is, you know, as sheriff, that\u2019s the outcome that I would want to see with every single person that my deputies arrest and we put in jail, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Honea said he seeks to interview officials in different disciplines on public safety, and so far he\u2019s interviewed a former Sacramento Sheriff about recruitment challenges; Cal-Fire Butte County Fire Chief Garett Sjolund about fire safety and Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey about how the Bidwell Mansion arson began.<\/p>\n
In an interview with this newspaper, Honea said his intent behind the podcast is to expand on the nuances behind public safety and the criminal justice system \u2014 and during his tenure, his role in providing for the public safety has \u201creally expanded beyond what I think the traditional role of the sheriff has been.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy predecessors never had to deal with massive fires or potential dam brakes or all of those kinds of things that are not specifically law enforcement related, but definitely have public safety ramifications.\u201d<\/p>\n
No more negativity<\/p>\n
Honea and Webber both share a view that negativity is not their way when posting online.<\/p>\n
In the time Webber has been active on his Facebook platform to speak directly to his roughly 3,300 constituents, as well as Oroville at large, he has gone forward voicing his messages knowing not everyone will like him.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s aware of his own appearance: He\u2019s white, an evangelical, conservative Christian. But he knows his district is a \u201cmelting pot of everybody, you know, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Muslims, gay, heterosexual \u2014 whatever \u2014 everything that you could imagine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo if I were to only represent from the worldview of the certain political ideologies that maybe I adhered to, then I wouldn\u2019t be doing the service to my entire community by just doing that because then that would be, it\u2019d be a very narrow focus,\u201d Webber said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m elected by a bunch of my constituents who were very liberal, some very conservative \u2026 I felt I had a duty to try to represent, unilaterally, all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he was running for council, Webber recalls seeing \u201cboth sides of the aisle\u201d saying \u201ccrazy stuff,\u201d and making accusations. \u201cAnd if I remained positive in my messaging, then I got more positive response back. And I was also at that time, I was watching closely like the local political pages, the politics and discussion page, and I was watching the sheer divisiveness of it \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just watching this and I\u2019m thinking, man, this is just so toxic. And so that was right there in the middle of my campaign \u2026 I started realizing that the messaging absolutely had to be positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding resonance<\/p>\n
Honea said he became interested in making podcasts after spending a lot of time listening to them during COVID-19 lockdowns. He discovered he was really into informational podcasts coming from business and politics creators.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I found was, they were relatable to me because of my own personal experiences,\u201d Honea said. \u201cAlso, the politization of COVID, the desire to understand different perspectives and so forth kind of drove me to this whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honea said he reads the newspaper every day, but he really liked the organic nature of how podcasting could delve deeper into a specific topic, and appreciated the nature of the medium\u2019s on-demand listening.<\/p>\n
For his job, he regularly speaks to groups about public safety related issues, and over time he decided that if he could do a podcast, he could create the an \u201cexperience for more people who could consume the information when they were available to consume it \u2014 it would allow me to talk about public safety related issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the intent behind his podcast is to make public safety related issues in another format, one that he had a connection to.<\/p>\n
\u201c(It) allows me to bring on subject matter experts or guests, and then we can delve deeper into those topics. We\u2019re not as curated. We\u2019re not as edited,\u201d Honea said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like, hey, it\u2019s like you and I are sitting down for a cup of coffee and we\u2019re just talking about an issue and we\u2019re inviting the entire community to sit around the table and listen to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Webber said he knows that when he makes social media content, he\u2019s setting himself up for scrutiny \u2014 but he\u2019s ready for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know for 100% that if I do a video on a road, that there\u2019s a strong possibility that I\u2019m going to be teed off on by a bunch of people about, \u2018why aren\u2019t you repaving them all?\u2019 And I go into it knowing that. But it\u2019s more important for me to educate.\u00a0 And to show the positivity that it is,\u201d Webber saaid. \u201cSometimes decision makers make decisions out of fear of what people are going to think about it; what the repercussions will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staying safe on the net<\/p>\n
In a sea of information \u2014 arguably misinformation with notions of division \u2014 people and groups can take educated precautions to help stay safe on the net, just like looking at both sides of the road.<\/p>\n
Webber said he insulates and protects his children from all things on the internet, but he warns them that there\u2019s a lot on the net that can be really damaging.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think educating your child is key, having a conversation with them about the dangers. The biggest danger I think we see in social media is strangers having influence over our kids through whatever they may be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Webber and his wife Maria Webber now have two daughters who just graduated high school, and after watching closely for years \u2014 not allowing them to have any and every phone app \u2014 he knows he can\u2019t shield them forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are now at the age where it\u2019s like, you know, I\u2019m releasing them into that, you know, I\u2019m going to trust you as an adult, you can make good decisions,\u201d Webber said. \u201cThe best lessons of life are the ones that sting the most. I\u2019m not saying go out there and intentionally make mistakes, but sometimes you got to touch the flame to understand that it\u2019s hot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honea said he has a granddaughter, and that he speaks to his daugher. about how they hope they can forestall as long as possible exposure to smartphones and tablets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think social media has made it so much more difficult to be a young person, especially, you know, a preteen and a teen than it has ever been before. And I think it\u2019s harder for parents to navigate that because there is so much trash out there on social media that invade the lives of kids,\u201d Honea said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore when a kid came home, hopefully they were in a safe and protective environment, insulated from the outside world. Now if they\u2019ve got a phone, they can be in their bedroom and the entire world can get to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honea has the personal experience of having to control misinformation; being the sheriff he is motivated to make sure residents have information to make safe decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with social media is, and, you know, it is one way to provide people with information, but it becomes a cesspool of, you know, it can get easily hijacked,\u201d Honea said. \u201cWhat we find with some of the citizen run information pages is that a lot of times the initial information, although fast, is not always accurate.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou spend all of your time essentially arguing with people who aren\u2019t really interested in the facts or just interested in the drama that is so prevalent on social media. There are other times where if it is an inaccuracy that, you know, has a negative impact on public safety or could, you know, you know, drastically, you know, or could result in, you know, a loss of confidence in public safety or other issues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICO \u2014 The internet isn\u2019t what it used to be, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s dead for Butte…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":135490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[8367,276,712,1370,728,50,2295,27951,80,44994,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-135489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-butte-county","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-newsletter","15":"tag-northern-california","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-sacramento-valley","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115006990824131470","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}