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.

By way of a pre-launch of the London’s Digital Neighbourhoods research, Hugh Flouch contributed to a couple of conferences this week.

On Wednesday Hugh was at RIBA speaking at e-democracy 09, the UK’s main conference on e-democracy which brought together the European e-participation community in London. Other speakers included My Society’s Tom Steinberg and Will Straw from Left Foot Forward.

The following day Hugh was at the first MyPublicServices event, organised by Patient Opinion. The day aimed at shedding more light on the potential of the web to impact on our public services, and focussed on a debate about how to harness conversations on social media to make services better and more inclusive.

As a basis for both his sessions, Hugh outlined the current state of play with the UK’s burgeoning citizen-led digital wesbpaces. London was used as an example of the scale, diversity and level of audience engagement already being achieved by the UK’s citizen-led sites.

A draft version of the typology being developed for the research, was presented to illustrate the diversity of UK Hyperlocal.  The key differences between the different types of local citizen sites were brought sharply into focus by a simple four-box model. Hugh also offered some insight into how different types of sites may be best used:

We also shared a preview of the areas of impact the research project will be looking to:

If you’d like to keep up to date with the research as it progresses, please drop us a note at research@networkedneighbourhoods.com and we’ll add you to our mailing list.

On 28^th & 29^th October,  Siôn Simon MP the UK Culture Minister invited a small group of people to the Department of Culture Media to discuss the future of local media in the UK. The aim was to identify specific actions the government could take to ensure a healthy online local news sector including both traditional media organisations and the hyperlocal community.

There was an interesting mix of traditional media folk and a good handful of hyperlocal/community website types from both the UK & the USA.

A fascinating discussion ended in the group making a series of recommendations about what the Government should and should not do to support a healthy local media.

Below in unedited rough format are the suggestion we offered up:

Things Government could / should do

Legal

• Sort out libel laws, stop wasting money on writing national occupational standards and develop digital literacy.
• Reform libel laws.
• Water down/remove draconian libel laws.
• Clarify legal responsibilities and liabilities of publishers of user-generated content.
• Immunity for defamation arising from comments.

Funding

• Open arts funding to journalism.
• Can we have a UK Knight Foundation to promote enterprise?
• Run competition X Prize to innovate.
• Increase size of community radio fund and open it up to all community media.
• Subsidise local public service reporting for use by anyone (or tax breaks).

Access

• Free Wi-fi in cities – please!
• Broadband for all.
• Get MORE people online.
• If you get people online – they will figure out the rest.
• Let the market determine localities and interests. The Govt needs to be transparent. Not a nanny.

Training/attitudes

• Incentivise employers (subsidies, grants etc.) to train staff in citizen journalism technologies.
• Work in schools as a valid local platform for area-wide learning and citizen journalism.
• Support grass-roots digital training for active citizens.
• Train citizens to be leaders not writers.
• Promote a culture where bloggers are treated with the same respect as journalists.
• Treat hyperlocal authors, publishers, bloggers the same as traditional media.

BBC

• Defend BBC and notion of public service (as opposed to market funded) information.
• Open up BBC and other public service skills and support resources in e.g. journalism and law to 3rd parties.
• Prevent BBC from launching more localised sites.
• Require BBC to make video news content available to grass roots publishers and not just legacy players.
• BBC create innovations fund.
• Prompt the BBC to provide its technology for distributed media/journalism.

Local Authorities

• Prevent councils from distorting publishing market by running ad-funded propaganda newspapers.
• Get councils to publish data (in an open format).
• Develop guidelines for councils so they realise they should treat local bloggers as they would the local press.
• Provide clearer guidelines for council publications e.g. should they have a ‘property’ section like Huf News does.
• Make sure local authorities treat hyperlocal reporters the same way they would traditional media – easy access to councillors / police etc.
• Require councils to audio / video stream meetings and provide on-demand archive.

Access to data

• Free all the data intelligently, faster and better. The more I think about it, the more I think this is the nearest there is to a single key.
• Make information free by default (rather than FOI by request) and then keep out of the way and let hyperlocal blogs and twitter deliver.
• Put out geocoded data easy to use.
• Free up data and FOI.
• Fund Geo-location tools / standards for info.
• Release postcodes and other geo-data to encourage innovation.
• Require all Govt / Public information to be published web first.
• Set standards for publicly funded information.
• Broaden FOI to include anyone spending public £.
• When you free our data, combine it with an engagement plan that provides support to those that want to use it.

Other Ideas

• Encourage ultra small scale experimentation with low overheads and low cost of failure.
• Use open hyperlocal approach to enhance Total Place agenda and pilot different models.
• Have a clear vision and strategy for democratic renewal / reform, which guides their investment.
• Monitor and evaluate civic impact of citizen journalism – net benefit or harm to civil society.
• Act as a catalyst to encourage openness to dialogue with neighbourhood/hyperlocal sites.
• Consider and publish impact assessments of major interventions eg newspapers.
• Add journalism as act of supported volunteering.

Things Government should not do

Funding

• Fund IFNCs. They will duplicate the BBC and distort the market.
• Invest in new structures without consideration of their sustainability and legacy.
• Fund unsustainable local publishing initiatives which don’t have ongoing (+multiple) funding sources.
• Drag out the death cry of publishers through subsidy.
• Bail out failing publishers or support traditional business models.
• Bail out Channel 3 local/regional services.
• Spend time/money on platforms.
• Build a platform for news.

Councils

• Stop council papers.
• Don’t stop councils publishing.
• Don’t stop councils publishing magazines, but set parameters to avoid undermining independent publishers (eg carrying ads).

Exclusion

• Exclude people – Have multiple engagement platforms online and offline.
• Forget that 15m are not online and that traditional media still has a role to play for many citizens.

BBC

• Decimate the BBC. Yes it’s not perfect and could do more, but if we over slice and dice we may be worse – not better off.
• Introduce expensive top-down solutions and one- size-fits all platforms.

Other don’ts

• Make their own apps for opening government data.
• Use Government defined boundaries/identities to determine provision of tools and resources – should enable self-definition of need/ [illegible]?
• Assume information holes to plug are traditional media shaped.
• Let big organisations have too much influence – they’ll stifle.
• Define journalism by platform.
• Be a nanny!

Seminar Invitees

• Richard Allen (Facebook)
• Nick Booth and Hannah Waldram (Podnosh)
• Jon Bounds (Blogger)
• Paul Bradshaw (Birmingham City University)
• Roland Bryan (Northcliffe’s Local People project)
• Hugh Flouch (Networked Neighbourhoods)
• Joanna Geary (The Times)
• James Hatts (Bankside Press)
• Sarah Hartley (The Guardian)
• James Heath (BBC)
• Jeff Jarvis  (Journalist)
• Tom Loosemore (Channel 4)
• Ruth MacKenzie (DCMS)
• Douglas McCabe (Enders Analysis)
• Matthew Palevsky (Huffington Post)
• William Perrin (Talk About Local)
• Sylwia Presley and Neha Viswanathan (Global Voices)
• Damian Radcliffe (Ofcom)
• Alan Rusbridger (The Guardian)
• Siôn Simon (Minister for Creative Industries)
• Rachel Sterne (GroundReport)
• Julian Thompson and Michael Delvin (RSA)
• Tom Watson (MP)

Back in 2003, blogger Phil Windley published an article with the eye-catching title I’ve used for this article. He was picking up on Don Tapscott’s now standard work about one of the key implications of the media revolution on the corporate world. (The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business).

In reviewing the book at publication, CIO Insight characterised its message like this:

The digital revolution is shredding, forever, the curtain that once hid all sorts of information about corporate behavior, operations and performance from public view. Yet few companies are ready to handle the new scrutiny—and this transparency is proving to be increasingly costly and upsetting for companies struggling with new levels of exposure.

From recent conversations with contacts in large corporations, it’s apparent that a good number have heeded Tapscott’s message. Many others seem caught like rabbits in the headlights and are yet to follow.

We’re now at the point when local councils across the UK are struggling with the same issue. But things have moved on since 2003 and the flood waters of the media revolution have swollen with the rise of citizen-led websites and networks.

The challenge many face is more intense than it is for corporations. The response for councils means their struggling with 21st Century technology within the context of a 19th Century democratic system.

Whilst a comprehensive response may require a wholesale shift of mindset and culture, there are some quick wins to be had which will help organisations keep pace.

Writing on the Gartner blog network this week, Andrea Di Maio, explained that we need to rethink our perspective on Government 2.0:

The problem is that government 2.0 is not about organizations and institutions. It is about the way in which constituents aggregate and socialize knowledge in ways that change their expectations and how they relate to government institutions.

Bravo, Andrea, pretty much along the lines of what we’ve been saying.

Government at both the local and national level will only start really reaping the rewards of 2.0 once it’s ready to release the reigns of control over its current channels of communication and rethink the notion of its webspace.

Invited earlier this week to give our views to Camden Council on their new website, we offered them a model of local webspace where both the Council and the community have a share. The technology is now ready to enable a new type of relationship.

Here’s how I drew it out for them on the wall at the King’s Cross Hub:

A more fluid approach to sharing information and enabling a range of virtual spaces to have conversations amongst citizens and between citizens and government is likely to be the most powerful way to leverage the potential of new media channels for both government and community alike.

In a blog entitled “Democracy is Communal”, the folk at Penval take a look at this issue from a slightly different perspective.

Hugh Flouch

On Wednesday this week the Networked Neighbourhoods team ran an afternoon workshop on behalf of the Capital Ambition team at London Councils.

The workshop brought together key figures from London Councils, the GLA, Government Office for London, the Leadership Centre, London boroughs and community development workers around the issue of how London’s burgeoning network of community websites can deliver real value to communities and local authorities alike.

The afternoon was set up as the result of a conversation between Capital Ambition Director Steve Johnson and Networked Neighbourhoods founder Hugh Flouch.  Hugh explained:

We share the same conviction that neighbourhood websites have the potential to deliver real value to residents and local councils. There’s a body of tantalisingly fragmentary evidence about the benefits they bring and lots of great anecdote, but what we really need to move to the next level is a good solid research base.

The workshop was the first step in a research programme that London Councils are planning. This will take us beyond the claims and hype and develop a reliable body of evidence showing the true impact and future potential of neighbourhood websites.

Hugh Flouch started off the afternoon with an analysis of the scale, scope and levels of engagement of London’s rich local digital landscape.  He outlined a typology into which he classified almost 2,000 community webspaces in London and shared a wide range of sources that provide apparent evidence of the impact of community websites in areas including:

• Engagement
• Empowerment
• Social cohesion
• Satisfaction with local area
• Wellbeing
• Building citizens’ capacity

Translating the theory into real life results, Hugh and Martin Dudley  shared their experiences and learning from running two successful community websites – Harringay Online and Bishopthorpe.net.

With food for thought aplenty, participants then enthusiastically joined in with a workshop game devised and led by Kevin Harris. The Networked Neighbourhoods game is designed to help explore what happens when issues of perceived importance to local people erupt on a fictional online network. Three groups each worked on an example of a real issue taken from the archive of an existing local site – to do with a local disturbance, a park that needs smartening up, or conflicts over school fund-raising.

Discussions that followed explored the wide range of issues that had been surfaced by the afternoon and began to put in place the key questions for the London Councils research programme.

Capital Ambition’s Steve Johnson, offered the following reflections on the workshop:

I was delighted with people’s level of engagement through the afternoon and the insights that emerged. Getting a better understanding of how community websites can add value to communities and support the work of London’s local authorities is clearly going to be enormously beneficial.

London Councils will be announcing the next steps in the research programme over the coming weeks.