Networked Neighbourhoods

Networked Neighbourhoods organised a roundtable discussion on local websites last week, to take advantage of a visit to London by US e-democracy pioneer Steven Clift and to offer some early findings from our London study.

With the session chaired by the GLA’s Emer Coleman, we sought to offer an easy-going discussion given that it was a hot Friday afternoon in central London.

Steven reflected on his considerable experience in online community-building, in particular through e-democracy forums.  He spoke about how, at the neighbourhood level, sites were originally seen as ‘not politically threatening’ but broke ground because they provide ‘dialogue with people who disagree’. They also offer something to those who are not ‘the meeting types’.

There was some interest in the insistence that participants in these forums use real names. Steven argues that it gives stability, and it’s fair to say that anonymity and pseudonymity can affect discussion. It might put some people off, but it might help avoid for example this sort of exchange,

‘Anon@ 19:46 and 20:01. Who cares about your warnings if you’re too timid even to give yourself an assumed name’

– in a comment posted here, presumably with a sense of irony, by someone calling themselves ‘Now Then’.

Or this lovely example where a councillor responds to a pseudonymous resident:

‘Obvisouly I wont have logged any casework under the pseudonym of wonderwoman. Could you please contact me direct…’

Check out the e-democracy set of civility rules.

Where negativity erupts on a local site it needs to be moderated of course, and there was some discussion around this. Brockley Central founder Nick Barron, who hosted our meeting on behalf of Edelman, warned against making a big issue of this:

‘good hyperlocal sites have contributions that are much more positive than local newspapers, talk radio, or any other mainstream media, or indeed most conversations in the pub.’

Steve Clift explored some of the findings of the recent Pew Internet study (which we discussed here) and spoke about issues of social inclusion, arguing for example that from his experience,

‘You can’t just colonise, it takes time and money to do real inclusion.’

Hugh Flouch and I presented some early findings mostly from our survey of local forum participants, noting for example that where the police got involved on a site (Harringay Online), a significant proportion of respondents said that their attitude towards them had been changed for the better; and where a councillor participated online (East Dulwich Forum) similarly, people reported an improved attitude towards elected members.

We also raised some questions about the future contribution of local online to community organising and civic involvement, suggesting that local sites do not seem to offer a strong link to Alinsky-style community organising envisaged by the Big Society Network.

And while these online spaces clearly do contribute in some ways to the strengthening of traditional representative democracy (for example through the more efficient dissemination and linking of information) it may be more important to recognise their contribution to conversational democracy and making visible a latent demand for informal, controlled commitment to local issues. People are creating as well as responding to new opportunities for participation and co-production, but generally not within the context of formal, structured civic involvement.

The discussion raised a number of points about the role of local sites in relation to local democracy, including for example whether a site could become registered as a statutory consultee; the extent to which democratic mechanisms (such as scrutiny and referenda) can be bolted on to local sites; the possibility of linking flagged-up ‘local issues’ on a digital map (reminiscent of some of Giles Lane’s early urban tapestries work, eg); and an important point made by Tim Davies (seen in the pic behind speaker Steven Clift) about a future with plural sites at local level (raising the question, if local authorities are not up to speed by the time clusters of sites start to appear, will they be completely left behind?).

We wish to thank Steven for his experience and inspiration; all participants for their contributions; Martin Dudley for the image uploaded above; Emer Coleman for her time and expertise; Edelman for generously providing the venue and Capital Ambition for providing the catering.

Networked Neighbourhoods has begun a new project looking at how local formal and informal care networks can use social media to help older people age in place. Funding comes from the IDeA’s Efficiency and Transformation Capital Fund and we’ll be working with Haringey Council and Age Concern Haringey.

The project aims to reduce the burden on public services by helping older people to live independently where possible. It will do this by working in two areas of Haringey borough to:

• Establish and support networks of local advocates to empower older people in their care choices. Advocates will help older people manage their individual budgets and will help stimulate informal support in the neighbourhood.
• Bring together older people, carers, care workers, local advocates and other volunteers and professionals to form a learning network, in order to share understanding of formal and informal neighbourhood support for older people.
• Exploit the potential of local citizen-led websites and social media to help people in these networks to share information, provide support and advice, and mobilise local support for older people both online and offline.

In doing this the project will provide customer insight into service provision while increasing levels of interaction and support at neighbourhood level.

This week we ran a workshop for council officers across London, to explore the issues raised by neighbourhood websites from their point of view. The meeting included short presentations on the three case study sites, Brockley Central, East Dulwich Forum and Harringay Online and some vigorous discussion from the participants.

A short account of the workshop, together with the presentation slides, is available on the project microsite at London Councils.

Kevin Harris

The BBC has been taking a growing interest in citizen-led local websites, the latest instance being an article published today by BBC Technology Correspondent, Jane Wakefield.

Jane uses the three sites being studied in our London’s Digital Neighbourhoods research - Brockley Central, East Dulwich Forum and Harringay Online – to help build the argument that politicians’ attitudes need to change if the potential contribution of local sites is to be fulfilled.

She quotes Councillor Alan Stanton, a regular contributor to Harringay Online, who says:

Most councillors are deeply suspicious… Many are still at the stage of ‘we are the council and we tell you what to do’.

Networked Neighbourhoods’ Hugh Flouch and Kevin Harris are both quoted. Building out of Hugh’s experience of building successful local sites and now researching them, the article notes his view that there are lessons for local councils seeking to mimic the successful sites:

The first lesson for local councils is to loosen the reins of control and be prepared to let citizens take the driving seat.

Kevin suggests that networks such as these are

..part of a fundamental shift towards conversational democracy.

The latest Pew Internet Project report has just been published, on the topic of ‘neighbors online’.

It’s based on telephone interviews with 2,258 Americans, and while I didn’t read anything that hit the wow-box it certainly helps us think about communication at neighbourhood level. The questions asked about face-to-face interaction with neighbours, telephone contact, and a range of local online resources.

Unsurprisingly (and as last year’s Pew Internet study demonstrated) internet users are just as likely as non-users to discuss local issues face-to-face. People in higher income households and with higher educational attainment are more likely to talk face-to-face with neighbours about local issues.

Between 4% and 11% of all those surveyed exchange email with their neighbours about local issues, read a blog dealing with local issues, or are signed up to a locally-focussed online forum or social network. This is baseline data, hopefully Pew will repeat the questions every now and then.

For me the most interesting finding was this:

15% of internet users who know none of their immediate neighbors by name read community blogs or join a community-focused group on an online social network.

This compares with 14% of those who know all of their neighbors. Maybe communicative folk will use f2f, telephone, email, twittever they can, to communicate. But there are obvious differences. For example, generally if you’re going to speak to a neighbour on the phone, you’re going to ‘know’ them first; if you connect with a neighbour through an online forum, you don’t need to know them. Non-communicative folk who realise they are disadvantaged by lack of connection and information now have local spaces where they can lurk comfortably and still become informed. Dat’s progress for yer.

As always with this kind of material, the meaning of the findings is subject to what we understand by ‘knowing’ our neighbours; and by the significance we attach to that. I maintain that it is not knowing neighbours by name that matters in terms of a supportive local social environment, but recognition. I can’t say whether or not the north American context is comparable, but I observe that Keith Hampton has found it necessary to stress the importance of weak ties against a tendency to privilege strong ties. If our understanding of the contribution of online to neighbouring is focused on strong ties, we could be missing, or misinterpreting, a lot.

Last year’s Pew Internet Survey asked a question designed to ascertain whether the internet had affected people’s understanding of the word ‘discuss’ in relation to ‘important matters’ and ‘significant ties’. (The researchers did not find that it has). If they can do that, maybe they can work on the question of whether the internet may be affecting our understanding of the word ‘know’ in relation to ‘neighbours’. And perhaps more importantly, we can start looking at how local online resources allow us to connect with people we don’t know.

Kevin Harris, Networked Neighbourhoods

Race Online 2012 aims to bring people and organisations together to improve the life chances of the 10 million people who have never been online, particularly the four million who are also socially and economically excluded.

We’re enthusiastic about the aims of the movement and so have signed up as an official partner.

The first background papers have been published in the London’s Digital Neighbourhoods study.

The first is an initial typology of the kinds of site that can be found, and attempts to distinguish and relate them according to purpose and interactive style.

The second is a more extended paper which attempts to summarise existing knowledge about community networks, online and social capital, and the engagement of online participants in civic issues.

Since preparing these papers we’ve carried out a number of interviews and focus groups. We now begin analysing our survey data and directing our attention to the implications of our findings for local council officers and elected officers.

A summary of our project is given on the London Councils website.

We’ve just added a page about the Digital Neighbourhoods project to Capital Ambition’s Connected London area of the London Councils website. We’ll be adding project updates  as we go along.

Hugh Flouch appeared alongside former London mayor Ken Livingstone on the BBC’s Daily Politics show, 19 January, as part of a programme about the political implications of social media. Hugh spoke about the Networked Neighbourhoods current research project with London Councils, as well as the neighbourhood site he established a couple of years ago, Harringay Online.

You can view the programme here. The discussion follows a short introductory film after about 3 minutes.

Seems like you gotta run to keep up with webantics these days (and don’t we love it).  As much as it may reflect my lagging a little in this particular  race, the Deep Web is a new one me.  Here’s how those klever folk at Kosmix describe it:

The Deep Web is the portion of the Internet not accessible to traditional search engines.  Social networks, media-sharing sites for photos and videos, library catalogs, airline reservation systems, phone books, and all kinds of scientific databases lurk inside the Web, practically invisible today’s search tools.

The volume of this hidden content is enormous: some estimates have pegged the size of the Deep Web at up to 500 times larger than the slice of the Web we see on search engines today.

The commercial opportunities of getting access to this cornucopia are obvious. But the article also set me to thinking how this sort of capability might play in the local webspace game.

Just this week I found two new local webspaces in my neighbourhood -  an area that’s made up of 1 ward + and half + a bit.  Both are rich in local content in their own ways.  It’s a tantalisingly bountiful local webworld out there. What more could local webfolk do with if we could get access to the gems buried far inside the deep web?

On the flip side of course, the State will also have access. Imagine the power of combining efficient sentiment analysis with effective mining of the deep web. Of course there’s some real public service value creation to be had out of it all, but I have to admit that the thought also leaves me with a frisson of fear.