Conversational democracy and neighbourhood online networks

Nesta have organised a substantial event in London next Monday called Reboot Britain, which is about how we can

'punch through the gloom and take advantage of the radically networked digital world we now live in to help revive our economy, rebuild our democratic structures and improve public services.'

Paul Evans has organised a stream of sessions on political innovation. I'm speaking at one of these, alongside Nick Booth, William Perrin and Edward Welsh, which is on the broad-enough topic of Locality: Councillors, Journalists, 'active citizens', community websites and local government communications.

I think I'll focus on the ‘active citizenship’ part of the topic, keep the tech at a respectful distance, and ask ‘What's needed to stimulate active citizenship at local level?’

It'll need a rough distinction between informal and social participation on the one hand, and formal civic and political participation on the other. We need the former in order to stimulate the latter. (Well I know some people do political participation without doing social participation: I've even met folk who voted for them, but we won't have time on monday for the nuances).

To my mind, it doesn't work to suppose that people can be prodded and coerced into civic or political participatory roles when their experience of social participation is impoverished. So it would help if we can develop a thriving communication ecology at neighbourhood level, and get some conversational democracy we can depend on.

In the nick of time, with local democracy gagged and tied to the tracks and the train of public spending cuts thundering down the line, along come gallant dynamic al-action neighbourhood online networks. Hurrah. Let's get out of this metaphor and ask a few questions:

Does the economic logic of these nets imply a more appropriate geographic scale for democratic involvement than currently exists? (Consider, for example, how much difficulty some authorities have in trying to establish meaningful area forums).

Does the inbuilt interactivity imply more conversation?

Does online conversation stimulate offline activity?

Should local authorities be enabling the development of these networks? (Dunh?)

Comments

[David Barrie]

Neighbourhood online networks are no substitute for effective local social participation. But some people seem to be increasingly participating socially online, rather than either on the street or in neighbourhood forums. So it seems a worthwhile cause to promote, explore and maybe put in place the online infrastructures that might bridge between local online networks. I am working in a part of Cardiff where clusters of community are coming together online and chatting between themselves. There are also quite a lot of retired people and students in the area who have no offline social relationship to the area but would like one. While they chatter away on Facebook or email or whatever, isn't it worth a go building online social networking in the area and ways to bridge that in the form of community websites or networks of networks so that real people might connect online and that might be a first stage to communicate offline? as you know, it helps for conversations to be linked up in the places and spaces in which people naturally converse or play. in the real world this happens at the pub or bus stop. for an increasingly online world this happens in other spaces and places. nonsense?

[Kevin Harris]

Thanks David. Why would it be nonsense?

[Julian Dobson]

I'd be interested in your thoughts from the event, Kevin. I'm interested in the way a lot of people who appear to be very well networked and very astute at using networks appear to be oblivious of the fact that most of life goes on outside those networks. I've posted a few thoughts on that on my blog this week - as someone who keeps your feet fairly firmly on the ground, it would be good to have your take on it all.

[Bob Yoder]

I opened a FaceBook account last week. All my Blog entries are fed into it, giving me a mixture of social and political applications. I abolutely love it and think it will be the primary vehicle for my voice...and blogging is now a whole lot more meaningful. I am now blogging within a more healty, social framework and, no doubt, I'll think twice about my content and posting frequency.