Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Media Literacy

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Have you ever been to one of those workshops which begin with the words “I want you to tell us something about yourself that nobody else in the room would know” I‘m not going to have a grumpy old man moment about my views on this but I will confess to something that not a lot of people know; I used to be a school teacher. Many years ago, admittedly, but I was that teacher. I say this because one of the subjects that was taught way back then was Media Studies. I have deconstructed images, highlighted the sub text, framed the picture, explained a “tracking shot” created that sound effect and recorded the play. This was all about understanding mediation, that the media was not a window on life but a point of view with an underpinning set of values that we somehow felt young people needed to recognise and understand. 

What we didn’t have then was the internet. We witnessed the first micro computers and their development (we really believed that 640k would be enough for anyone), the  9600baud modem, e-mail (we couldn’t imagine what anyone would want to use it for either), networks (so you could share expensive peripherals like NLQ dot matrix printers and high capacity (sic 10 Mb) storage, colour, tcp/ip and then the mosaic browser and with it a sudden dawning of what it all could mean. By that time I had left teaching and the government of the day had declared that media literacy was no longer necessary as a subject. What was important was literacy, numeracy and science. Soon to be added to the list was IT. 

Now, it seems, we have come full circle, as is the way of things, and we have a Digital Participation Consortium under the auspices of Ofcom. 

AOL   Cabinet Office   DC10plus
BBC   Champion for Digital Inclusion (Race Online 2012 Team)   DCMS
Bebo   Change Agency   DCSF
Becta   Channel 4   Digital UK
BIS   Cisco   Digital Unite
British Library   CLG   Directgov
Broadband Stakeholder Group   Community Media Association   e-skills UK
BSkyB   Oxford Internet Institute   Get Safe Online
BT   Portland PR on behalf of Apple   Google
Tate   Post Office   Intel
Timebank   QCDA   ITV
UKCCIS   Research in Motion (BlackBerry)   LearnDirect
UK online centres   Scottish Government   Media Literacy in Scotland
Virgin Media   SkillSet   Media Literacy Task Force
Wales Media Literacy Network   Museums, Libraries and Archives Council   Media Trust/Community Channel
Welsh Assembly Government   Mobile Broadband Group   Microsoft
YouthNet   MySpace   NIACE
Northern Ireland Executive   Northern Ireland Media Literacy Network    

 The big difference between then and now is that then there was a definable media. Big organisations which had vast resources making content for the rest of society. They’re still there and the principles of mediation and the underlying values of large scale producers still apply. These are Charles Leadbeater’s large stones on a beach. What we have now are the small stones, the collaborative, hyperlocal publishers of content.

There has been a tendency to think of hyperlocal as a benign benefit to communities and as a way of broadcasting the community voice, giving it a platform and making it heard. I share that view. However, I would also like to share with you a recent experience that the need for media literacy has never been greater. I was having a light hearted conversation via Twitter with Lewis Shepherd in Washington about whole food and socialism along the lines of “What’s socialist about whole food?” when a re-tweet appeared in the stream: 

“3rd Red Scare? RT @penval @lewisshepherd Socialism apart – what’s not capitalist about whole food?” 

These things appear and disappear all of the time but given that I was thinking about the whole media literacy piece I took time out to investigate a little further. A check on the profile of the sender brought me to this:

 redscarebot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I usually ignore the automated stuff I was intrigued so I had a look at the web site and found myself here:

Digital Hisory Page

This site is allegedly fronted by the University of Huston. It doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2006 and, if the contact page is to be believed it has been subjected to some vigorous spam attacks. On the face of it this is a factual web site which provides information and worksheets for teachers about American History. Some of it is quite good, I learned things. When you start to dig it becomes somewhat more insidious. Certain groups in the US are labelled, specifically: Italians, Irish and Asians, they are migrants. Other groups are omitted, specifically indigenous Indian tribes. African Americans and the Civil War are a mere footnote in history. Jewish people are “non-Christians”. According to this web site indigenous Americans are white, middle class and Catholic.

 None of this is explicit, it’s all inferred and it’s all supported by “facts”. It’s quite amateurish and you would have to be rather crass not to see the issues that are raised here but it does serve to remind us that there is an element of internet media literacy that we didn’t have to deal with when the “media” was a clearly defined, easy to see, big stone.

The people and organisations who sit on the Ofcom Digital Participation group are as good a representational body as you are likely to get. I wish it well and have faith that they will consider the full impact of the hyperlocal revolution in all of its forms. This is not just about making us all more aware in  a digital world, it’s fundamental. Recently the European Union issued a communication on Media Literacy where it said:

 “Democracy depends on the active participation of citizens to the life of their community and media literacy would provide the skills they need to make sense of the daily flow of information disseminated through new communication technologies.”

COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION 20.8.2009 on media literacy in the digital environment for a more competitive audiovisual and content industry and an inclusive knowledge society

 This, for me, says it all and because this is a sentiment to which we all subscribe I think we should be mindful of the media literacy issues that will arise from our hyperlocal endeavours.

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Democracy is Communal

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

When those of us engaged in the bottom up, democracy space complain bitterly about those in the top down democratic organisations perhaps we should remind ourselves about political mandate and statutory function. Hierarchical local government organisations will focus on those things for which they can be seriously held to account: a vulnerable youngster left outside a school because their transport didn’t arrive, an elderly patient left lying on the floor of their home because the care worker didn’t turn up or a child at risk not taken into care and being seriously harmed. While the day to day irritants of life that result from the inefficiencies or failures of local government cause the majority of us the maximum grief the local authority will focus its efforts on the biggest users of its services (with good reason) and we will be left raging against the storm.

None of this is to say that local government shouldn’t be responsive. Nor should it mean that those with the political mandate to deliver those services in a particular way should be allowed to hide behind the wall of officialdom. Far from it, but the conversations are taking place in different spaces. What then are the dynamics that change the spaces? Social Media should not be about instant referendums; precisely how they implement the “Public Reading” proposals outlined for the Conservative Conference will be interesting. Social Media should be about conversations between individuals in communities and the creation of consensus. A political understanding arises from the conversation and it is the consensus of the crowd that moves us to a place where we can influence government. We may have to use the other channels, the official ones, but we do so with the strength and conviction of a community. Once a consensus exists it also becomes a powerful vehicle for consultation and then the top down space starts to merge into the bottom up.

I finally had time recently to read some of “Rebooting America” the collection of essays put together by Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifry, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy. The very first piece by Zach Exley struck a chord with me; “Democracy is communal”, a theme taken up by David Weinberger in his piece on Echo Chambers where he says that conversation shapes democracy.

Social media exists in different conversational spaces. Where you are having the conversation will dictate the kind of response you get. Here, the conversations are where I think they exist, I hope that others will put them elsewhere and articulate their case for so doing.

 Spaces

Participation can be democratic or it can be subversive. It can be bottom up or it can be top down. Local government exists in the democratic, top down space. Social Media can exist in the democratic bottom up space. What matters is that we understand that the conversation spaces are more varied. We rarely think about astroturfing but in the political influencing stakes it’s a powerful weapon. In the on line world hackers can make their voice heard in very subversive ways. How should we consider the Googlearchy? If the voices of communities cannot be found, they cannot be heard, does this make the Googlearchy a subversive force? Where does the power really lie?

“Talk About Local 09″ Unconference on Saturday 3rd October wasn’t Woodstock but it was an event. Excellent workshops and spontaneous presentations with lots of passion. Social Reporting is defining itself as a particular group that is demanding a status in respect of mainstream media. There are sound, practical reasons for this as well as an expressed desire for legitimacy. The day also reflected the other side of Social Media, the participatory, activist, cohesive communities side. The elements that make up these communities of practise can complain bitterly about the institutional deafness that local authorities exhibit when confronted with their failings. It may just be that the conversations are happening in the wrong place. The power of social software in a networked world to build social capital, articulate consensus and create innovative solutions means that this could, some would say should, become one of the means to achieve the duty to inform, involve and consult because through consensus it empowers communities. That being the case then the digital inclusion agenda becomes even more crucial if we are to involve the biggest users of locally delivered services.

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Hunting Elephants

Saturday, September 19th, 2009
Wordle

Most people, I imagine will have read the piece called “Hunting elephants”. If not, do, you can find many versions by doing a web search on “Desktop Elephants”. I don’t even know who wrote the original so I can’t credit them properly; suffice it to say, despite its age it has real meaning today. 

If there’s an elephant in the room, we need to find it. The good news is there are signs that people are looking. The murals from the recent Congress Camp http://bit.ly/I0DW6 were a real treat to read because they chose not to ignore the elephant. They asked a series of very pertinent questions:

How do we:  engage citizens in participatory politics and make it habitual (single issue politics)Connect the connectors, create champions, and engage the disengaged.cultivate civic mindedness – make people feel important, crowd sourcing agency

Leverage existing, trusted sources?

Identify real constituents?
What does: accountability really mean, what do citizens really want?
How do: officials move forwards and differentiate spam from real? Elected representatives are reluctant to share, collaborate and add to their burden
  Aggregate
  Making meaning and motivation Noise versus social – who gets heard, participatory technology
What makes: impact, if people know that they are making a difference?
  people input and not just vent?

The bad news is that many of the people in the room aren’t looking for the elephants:

  • CONSULTANTS don’t hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but they can be hired by the hour to advise those people who do.
  • POLITICIANS don’t hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them.

Rule number one: Make sure that you’re talking about the same thing as the other person. What do we mean by Gov 2.0? Is it really Gov 3.0, enabled by Web 2.0? I came across this first when reading the Silicon Flatiron post  that prompted an earlier post: “Is There An Elephant In The Room?”. The Silicon Flatiron Roundtable was a good thing because they were talking about the different elements of the Gov 2.0 debate whereas other places appear to focus only on the area in which they have an interest and as a result the different lines of enquiry start to diverge. Is this important? Well I think so. Web 3.0 is just starting to make itself known. The Internet of Things is what sits behind the new Augmented Reality Apps that are getting people excited. There is a good report from Vox Internet on the challenges for Europe though a deep breath before you start. Web 3.0 will have huge implications for Government and a lot will depend on what we do now. I’m not going to get bogged down in semantics so I’m going to use Gov 2.0 with Web 2.0 and hopefully we will all know where we are.

Marketing has seized on Web 2.0 with enthusiasm. People like Oliver Blanchard @thebrandbuilder are interesting to follow. Oliver describes himself as “Brand strategist, passionate Marketing & Social Media honcho, and harbinger of growth for smart companies”, and he’s not alone. Even the largest media companies are following the Web 2.0 hype: I highly recommend “The Book of Revelations” from Saatchi and Saatchi as a peephole insight into the kinds of things that interest mainstream media companies at the moment. Take time out to look at the S & S home page as well, great images from their campaigns. There is marketing in politics, of course there is, but are we in danger of confusing the channels of marketing with the channels of communication? Are we right to treat citizens also consumers? Don’t consumers have a choice? Once a government is in power we have made our choice so what are the lessons from marketing?

Conversation, Conversation, Conversation.

The empowerment of citizens is an important political manifesto issue. People taking responsibility for their lives and their services locally now has an economic imperative. Where does this leave politicians? Empowerment is all about what? What about mandate? Politicians will argue with some justification that when they were elected they were given a mandate, are we questioning the mandate, what has happened to the power of the ballot box? What is the future of Government? What does the manifesto of Power Politics look like? What is the role of consensus?

The route to the solutions is in front of us, we talk about it every day what we don’t seem to do is to pull it all together.

 

 Pulling It All Together

 

Pulling It All Together
There are some real barriers: Power politics, hierarchies, the googlarchy, the law of the power curve. We know what these are, so why aren’t we hunting the elephant? Because it’s a protected species? Maybe the ecology of people politics is due for a review, so let’s recognise the elephant in the room, look it in the eye and let’s get together.
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Citizen Shock

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Citizen – Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, or national community. – Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities. “Active citizenship” is the philosophy that citizens should work towards the betterment of their community through economic participation, public service, volunteer work and other such efforts to improve life for all citizens. In this vein, schools in some countries provide citizenship education. – Wikipedia

Shock – Acute stress over reaction (also called acute stress disorder, psychological shock, mental shock, or simply, shock) is a psychological condition arising in response to a terrifying event. It should not be confused with the unrelated circulatory condition of shock. – Wikipedia

Two things have prompted me to commit these thoughts to print: the idea that Social Media is nothing more than an enabler for Gov 20 – a comment doing the rounds of #Gov20 last week – and the idea that people have disengaged from politics and need to be somehow re-connected.

There is a fundamental difference between England and much of the free world – we are a subject nation! We are all subjects of the Crown. This can be quite a leveller; just as I’m a subject so the Prime Minister and the Government are all subjects. Of course, some are more subjected than others. When America declared independence it established for itself an important principle:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That self- evident truth is not written down in England. Don’t mistake me, I have more freedom than many people in the world: freedom to speak, and the right to vote  – I value those things, I appreciate the country in which I live, I am a loyal subject – but I have them because they are granted to me, not as an unalienable Right.

The other element to being a subject nation is that everything is undertaken in the name of the Crown. This is an important distinction. The American Constitution begins:

“ We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

That simple phrase, “We the People” is pervasive. In American courts it is The People versus, in England it’s The Crown versus; in America it’s the United States Government, in England it’s Her Majesty’s Government.

These perceptions are so embedded into our National psyche that it’s influencing the way we talk about Gov 20 and the way in which we evaluate the impact of Social Media. To suggest that Social Media is simply an enabler for Gov 20 is to suggest that it has no value outside of engaging and enabling. The current obsession with data and apps is great, raw data presented to citizens in new ways that are useful and enabling. The new openness is great, once hidden documents now as open source wikis brilliant! But it’s not enough! What has happened to our desire for citizen voice, to let people be heard and listened to? Where did the dialogue go? The truth is that it’s not the people who have disengaged from politics, its politics that has disengaged from the people. It’s not we who have to be reconnected, it’s government.

The talk is of transformed government, efficient, accountable and non-interventionist. Services will be personalised and wherever possible localised. The enabling mechanism will be information technology, it will be the delivery mechanism, the organising force and it will be the channel of choice. Government at every level will speak to the citizens through their channels of choice and the citizens will interact with government in a way that is convenient, anytime, anywhere – Martini government.

The vast majority of statutory services (provided by government agencies or private sector partners) are consumed by less than thirty percent of the people. This thirty percent (let’s not argue about definitive figures now) the final third are also those who use technology the least for all sorts of reasons and so the idea of Digital Inclusion was born. There is some amazing work in the field of digital inclusion, work with individuals and work with communities. It is helping to create community cohesion, build social capital, grow innovative, bottom up solutions to local issues; but is it re-connecting the people with politics? Is it giving the people a louder voice? Whether you are in America or in England, or any other country for that matter I would suggest no, it isn’t – because nobody is really listening.

The Politics of Government long ago gave way to the Politics of Power. We are no longer governed by a set of beliefs which we hold to be true and which we put forward to be debated and evolved.  Politics is about keeping power and that has led our establishments to become hierarchical, inward looking, focussed on command and control and outbound messages.

 In hierarchical organisations the direction of the information flow is down, through the organisation. The impact of the command and control mentality is the creation of a series of glass filters. This means that only positive messages get fed upwards and problems are solved or managed at the base of the organisation. Such organisations tend to be inward looking, focussed on self promotion. The impact of being an inward looking organisation is seen in the need to own and to brand the channels of delivery. All messages from a hierarchical organisation will be outbound. They will advertise success. Hierarchical organisations find it hard to be innovative. Ideas flow down the command and control chain and not upwards. Innovations have to be branded and there is no recognition of the individual or group, so why innovate?

Invariably this organisation will want to maintain a status quo so, by definition, it will be protective of itself and its processes. In so doing this approach will reinforce the lack of innovation and focus the organisation in on itself. These organisations are dysfunctional organisations. The inability to change and to transform means that they cannot easily adapt and learn. In these circumstances people disengage and resort to the organisation only when they have to.

The rapid emergence of Social Media technologies over the last two years has given a new channel for the expression of citizen voice. Through the new channels of interaction knowledge can be shared, interest groups can form, quickly and easily. A collective voice can make a louder noise. The citizen voice wants to be heard, but the old hierarchy, focussed as it is on outbound messages and looking in on itself is incapable of listening. The result is Citizen Shock, a growing recognition that the world is not how it is meant to be, a sense of shouting in the wilderness or raging against the storm. There is a disconnect, but it is not of the citizen’s making.

An organisation that has the potential to transform is less hierarchical, it has empowered individuals and groups at every level, it embraces change and it uses continuous, targeted, two way communication; does this sound familiar? The potential of social media amongst citizens is that it creates groups of shared interest, shared knowledge and a common voice that holds the potential to be innovative. Information flows across the loose organisation and ownership is shared amongst the crowd. Groups look outwards, seeking to draw in membership, or to gain new knowledge and insight. Learning organisations hold social capital and social capital supports innovation.

Hindman’s “The Myth of Digital Democracy” and Flichy’s “Is The Internet An Instrument Of Democracy?” (la vie des idees.fr )make for depressing reading. I believe that it is government that has to change, at all levels. It’s not enough to have a presence on “Twitter” or a “Facebook” page when all that is doing is giving an impression of dialogue when in fact it’s a cynical marketing ploy and the messages are still outbound. It’s not the people who need to re-connect, its government, and until it realises that it cannot re-connect and stay the same the people’s voice will be ignored.

The good news is that shock doesn’t last forever.

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Losing Faith – Hopefully a Temporary Blip

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

“Nous (pronounced /ˈnuːs/, Greek: νοῦς or νόος) is a philosophical term for mind or intellect. Outside of a philosophical context, it is used, in English, to denote “common sense,” with a different pronunciation (/naʊs/).” – Wikipedia.

One of my many faults is that I have no political nous. I am devoid of nous. Despite long years in local government, no nous! It explains, perhaps, why I’m more practical in nature, a doer, an organiser but not a political animal. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have political views, I do, though I tend to keep them to myself an awareness of the lack of nous has taught me that it’s unsafe ground, to be avoided. Having no political nous can be a huge disadvantage which is probably just one of the reasons why I never rose to the heights of leadership in the public domain – I’ll never be a fellow of the RSA -.

I think I’m suffering from a loss of faith. It was brought to a head by this item in the Sunday Times 16/08/09:

Following the encouraging noises that followed Stephen Timms appointment to take forwards the Digital Britain report I had thought, like many others, that there was hope. I understood why the digital agenda was now split between CLG and BIS, an economic imperative will always keep politicians attention. I hadn’t anticipated that even Stephen Timms would have to sacrifice Next Generation Access in the face of the political expediency of getting the budget through before next year’s election. If there is a chance that the Tories will oppose the finance bill because they object to the landline tax then the landline tax must go. Where does this put the Tories on Next Generation Access?

I’m not saying that NGA is a cornerstone of Digital Inclusion – far from it – so why a loss of faith? It’s because it’s a reminder that real power resides in national politics and commercial interests and not, in the hands of the people. Well of course it does, I hear you say. That being the case, what are we all doing? If two million people “Tweeted” and “Blogged” in opposition to the decision do we think it will make a difference?
Two other things this week have contributed to my apostasy.

I was as appalled as most people by the featured “news” item on the Fox News Network about the NHS as a recruiting ground for terrorists: This was not so much that I was offended by criticism of the NHS it was the corporate sponsored racial profiling that was perceived as “okay” in the US because it was part of a Republican campaign about healthcare reform. Do we imagine for one moment that overloading Twitter with #welovethenhs is going to make a difference?

I was also struck by the item on the BBC’s “Click” about a proposed law in Italy which will force Bloggers to publish a right of reply for people who feel that their reputation or honour has been damaged. This is in a country where 50% of the people do not have access to the Internet and the majority of the media is owned by the country’s Prime minister. Will it become law – I’m sure it will, because the power lies with national politics. Do we imagine for one minute that all the blogs in Italy are going to make a difference?

I am a passionate believer in the empowerment agenda. I believe fundamentally that digital inclusion should be a right for every single individual. I see the power of inter-connected ICT as self evident in its ability to educate, give access and, most importantly to give voice. But a voice that is not heard is just a rage against a storm. If the democratic potential of the internet is just a myth then why are we doing this? Yes we can help give coherence to communities, yes we can provide access to services to those who most need them and yes we can share knowledge and understanding; but until we can give substance to the voices of the people, make them heard and make them a power for change we are, perhaps, just tweeting in the wilderness and the world will go on as before.

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