Neighbourhoods

Community development and digital inclusion – SMILEY baseline report published

The baseline report for the SMILEY evaluation of community development and digital inclusion (Social Media Initiatives in Local East York), co-authored by Alison Gilchrist and myself, is now available here.

The report explores the results of a survey carried out in Derwenthorpe and the neighbouring areas of Tang Hall and Osbaldwick.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation is developing a programme to deliver digital inclusion interventions and support existing digital inclusion initiatives in these areas. Our role is to assess the impact of the programme activities, which are intended to support the development of social links and networks between residents within and between these three localities.

Our results suggest a sharp contrast between those who recognise and appreciate the potential of digital media to contribute to local life, and those who do not. We found that for almost half of those who have been involved in a local community issue, this has come about as a direct result of online contact ('once', 'a few times', or 'often'). But at the same time, a significant 40 per cent of respondents did not see any potential in local community uses of the internet, either through connecting with active local groups, or as a way of raising and influencing local issues.

In several respects we found that approximately 20 per cent of respondents seem to experience digital exclusion. For example,

• eighteen per cent say they are ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ comfortable trying out new digital technologies
• twenty-two per cent say they lack, or lack confidence in, their online digital skills
• one person in five does not expect that the internet could help them to keep in touch with friends or social contacts locally.

The baseline survey was conducted between November 2014 and January 2015. It was carried out by five community researchers in Derwenthorpe and the surrounding areas. Download the full report. There’s more on the SMILEY project here.

Our evaluation will go on to examine if and how JRF's interventions lead to the improvement of digital skills and literacy, generate a positive online identity for the area, and support community development and the integration of Derwenthorpe residents with neighbouring communities.

 

Can anything be salvaged from this?

Apparently, the Wellington suburb of Tawa is the most "neighbourly" in New Zealand.

Over the life of this blog I’ve referred a few times (e.g.) to the notion of ‘league-tabling’ neighbourliness, usually with a sense of half-disguised disquiet – a concern justified I think by the managerialism of recent governments. Much less frequently, I may just have expressed suspicions, once or twice, about the integrity of top-down commercial online systems operating at neighbourhood level.

Let’s pop back to New Zealand, where it seems league-tabling has become a reality not through the insensitivities of target-obsessed ministers but as an expression of tacky commercial drive, through the online service Neighbourly. This is new to me, although I realise it may have been happening elsewhere around the world.

As far as I can tell from this article (in a source owned by the same un-embarrassable company that owns Neighbourly), the suburb of Tawa has got to the top of the leaderboard by virtue of having more than 1100 residents signed up to the online system. That’s it. That’s the measure of neighbourliness. Dang, simple, how come I didn’t think of that?

OK, I know, good stuff happens around online neighbourhood connections. And this isn’t ‘serious’ league-tabling; but it’s clear that some people take it seriously and think it has meaning. Which in turn makes it that bit easier for even a well-meaning government to follow suit in a determined manner.

 

What to do about local community information?

What’s needed to re-invigorate local democracy? Well we could start with an honest assessment of the state of local community information, and who contributes to it.

Some years ago Hugh Flouch and I ran an unconference at Ofcom for people interested and involved in local online networks (sometimes unhelpfully called ‘hyperlocals’) in London. A number of recommendations emerged for modest pieces of work – e.g. around standards, training in journalism and editing etc – which wouldn’t have required much funding to ensure they happened. As far as I know no funding was secured and none of this work was ever carried forward.

Despite the early enthusiasm and promise, and many remarkable examples of good practice, the local online networks movement can hardly be described as being in rude health; and I’m sure there is much reinvention of wheels. Meanwhile the state of local information provision around the country is dire. A new paper by Martin Moore for the Media Standards Trust notes that around the country, local council meetings now regularly go unattended and unreported.

Moore argues that:

• Innovation in local news and information is urgently needed to address the decline in local newspapers and to help support and reinvent local news and community information for the 21^st century
• Without such reinvention we risk weakening our civic communities and our local authorities becoming unaccountable
• There is a window of opportunity for the UK government to seed, through an independently run competition at no cost to the taxpayer, a flowering of innovation in news and information and civic technology at a local level
• The opportunity for innovation and growth will decline as non-UK technology platforms further colonise local media space.

There's a little hyperbole here - local authorities won't suddenly become 'unaccountable' - but the argument is sound. I would have preferred less emphasis on competitive funding schemes, which have arbitrary effects, and more on (i) small-scale targetted grants that add value across the sector; and (ii) the social, economic and governmental benefits of involving more citizens in the production of their own news and the discussion of their own issues.

I’ve recently been designing a questionnaire survey to be administered at a local level in east York, for a JRF-funded project. Among the questions we’ll be asking will be a few about local channels of information – how important are they? do local people contribute to them? and could local people be contributing to them more? Is a local resident-run website likely to encourage community involvement in local issues, or discourage it? Would it make for a more positive sense of local identity or a more negative one?

By taking a non-tech, community development approach to such questions we may gain insights that will be valuable in re-invigorating the neighbourhood online networks movement: that certainly seems to be needed.

 

Not borrowing sugar and blaming technology

Thanks to the simple efficiency of google alerts, my attention was drawn to this peculiar statement:

‘In many ways, technology has erased the proverbial world in which if a person ran out of sugar, he or she would go next door to borrow a cup from a neighbor.’ (Source).

I don't think the idea of online technology erasing neighbourly relations has much basis in reality. I think the author might be taking one ‘proverbial’ world - if the word (which means 'well-known') is used ecccentrically in the sense of ‘imaginary’ – to conjure another ‘proverbial’ (imaginary) world.

I’d love to hear if there is any known instance in recent history of someone finding themselves in unexpected need of a cup of sugar, and falling back on the generosity of a neighbour to supply it? It sounds like fairly unusual behaviour; but rather more probable than the erasure of neighbourly relations through online technology.

 

Online networks in low income neighbourhoods

A report into the viability of local online channels in low income areas, which I wrote with Hugh Flouch for Networked Neighbourhoods, has now been published. It describes and reflects on four experimental projects we carried out during 2011-2012 in separate localities in England.

The basic rationale was to test whether resident-run online neighbourhood networks could be established in low income neighbourhoods and if they could be shown to bring social benefits.

One of the sites, in Low Hill, Wolverhampton, has lost momentum but the work has given rise to other promising online activity on the estate. Two other sites – at Littlemoor near Weymouth, and the area around Lings Wood on the outskirts of Northampton - are stable although they struggle to sustain active participation. The fourth, based in three villages in north Shropshire, is recognised as a very successful initiative which quickly achieved stability.

The report adds weight to claims that local online channels can be established inexpensively in low income areas, that they can be made sustainable, and that they contribute to the quality of local social life.

The report is here. There is also a two page summary, and a post on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog.

 

 

Stimulating digital conversations in low income areas

Should we be investing in the potential of online networks in low income neighbourhoods? A recent study from the Young Foundation suggests it’s hard to generate online participation, claiming that:

‘The technology makes participation easier for most, but it does not affect the underlying behaviours and values that really motivate people to get involved.’

Meanwhile we’ve seen the publication in the US of an e-democracy.org report on an ‘inclusive social media’ project in two ‘high-immigrant, low-income, racially and ethnically diverse urban neighbourhoods’ in Minneapolis-St Paul. Some of the lessons here are about how digital conversations are seeded, and the need to have someone on the ground for a few hours a week stimulating interest face-to-face and online.

But it can be hard to get sites flourishing. There are real challenges to do with understanding marginalisation. Sometimes people who experience exclusion may perceive what others might think of as ‘empowering’ opportunities, with indifference.

Hugh Flouch and I have just published a review of the reports, with thoughts on the issues, over on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog.

 

Housing and social media

Yesterday I took part in a live panel discussion on social media in housing, for the Guardian’s housing network, and blogged a note about it here.

 

Effectively censored

This lady can’t get her home village of Effin accepted on her Facebook profile page. Facebook apparently screens out some place names, claiming in this case that the village is too small to be featured as a home town on the website.

And yet the phrase ‘Effin Facebook’ seems very familiar.

 

Online, local social capital, and network diversity

Some years ago there was interest in the possibility of what was known as ‘cyber-balkanisation’ – the expectation that online activity would create silos of communities of interest at the expense of diversity of networks; and perhaps that local communities based on face-to-face contact might atrophy as a direct consequence. I even wrote an article for the New Statesman about it, it must have been at least ten years ago.

Now here’s research to confirm that social networks are not less diverse when mediated online, and that online use makes a ‘positive and substantive total contribution’ to network diversity and hence to the social capital that is accessible through personal networks.

This is the most recent output from Keith Hampton and his colleagues based on the data collected for the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

I've just posted a summary review of the paper over on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog. The journal article linked above is subscription only, but Keith offers a draft here.

 

Connected neighbours-to-be

Here's a little story (with more behind a paywall) from Singapore, reporting online interaction between neighbours-to-be. A handful of the future occupants of a 680-unit development have already met up through a community Facebook group. And they don't move in until 2014.

Sources of local information

Almost two thirds of American adults use at least three different types of media every week to get news and information about their local community, according to the latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Fifteen per cent of them rely on at least six different kinds of media weekly. Broadcast sources still dominate: 74 per cent say they get local information at least weekly from a local tv news broadcast and/or the website of their local tv news station. The figures for radio and newspapers are 51 and 50 per cent.

Only fifty-five per cent of adults say they 'get local information weekly or more often via word of mouth, from family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors' which is fairly disappointing since as a species we've had quite a lot of practice and the technological barriers are mostly manageable. Nonetheless, for 14 of the 16 local topics asked about, the survey found that word of mouth was the fourth most cited source or higher — usually ahead of radio.

The researchers have made a valiant attempt to keep categories clear and allow comparisons to be made, but the whole field of community information has always been hard to systematise. For example, the interpretation of 'local' is usually open; and the influence of a serendipitous information ecology, and the effect of push on pull, are enormously difficult to distinguish methodologically. Word of mouth is given significance but the survey questions don't distinguish personal emails or texts (presumably these count as 'word of mouth' in the way that informing someone by telephone might do).

The most striking finding seems at first sight to be this:

'41% of all adults can be considered “local news participators” because they contribute their own information via social media and other sources, add to online conversations, and directly contribute articles about the community'

- but this is not what it seems. The category of “local news participators” includes, somewhat generously, people who say that they 'share links to local stories or videos online with others' for example, or those who 'have commented on local news stories or blogs they read online'.

All the same, the survey finds that eight per cent of all adults (10 per cent of internet users) 'contribute to online discussions or message boards about their community.' Expect this figure to increase; and expect the Pew Research Center to be the ones to identify that increase as it happens.

 

Riot-hit neighbourhoods: the role of local online

While many Londoners have been suffering vandalism and looting in the past few days, there was much discussion about the role of social media. Not much of it recognised the positive contribution of neighbourhood online forums.

Hugh Flouch and I have just published a short article on the Guardian's Joe Public blog, illustrating how local sites can quietly fulfil the kind of role that politicians and police would want to see, while the mainstream media feed on spectacle and emotion: sharing information, challenging misinformation, urging calmness and offering reassurance.

And as we've seen in many instances today, these sites also have a central role to play in the healing process, as local people get together to clean up and provide resources for thoe who have lost homes, businesses and belongings.

 

 

Loneliness, isolation and social media

JRF have published a useful and clear literature and practice review for the Neighbourhood Approaches to Loneliness programme.

It's worth reiterating a few points. As I've noted before -

• loneliness is not the same as isolation - it's an unwelcome form of isolation which has social (and by extension economic) consequences;
• loneliness is not age-related (the Gulbenkian Campaign to End Loneliness is focused on people in old age, and I fear this serves to perpetuate the social dismissal of the issue among other age groups);
• loneliness is quite separate to the sense of belonging or not belonging to a place; and
• the way we address it could be influenced by the power of social media in strengthening and sustaining local connections.

There seems to be a widespread assumption that loneliness is increasing. The Mental Health Foundation's excellent report last year suggested as much but does not seem to confirm it. I think we should be alert but sceptical.

As it happens, with a little time to do some catching up over the past few days, I've managed to read one of Keith Hampton's recent papers, on the relationship of internet and mobile phone use to network size and diversity. Among the points made with characteristic thoroughness are the following:

• reports that social isolation has increased significantly in the USA since 1985 seem to have been exaggerated and in fact isolation may have declined; and
• there is no evidence that the use of internet or mobile phones diminishes the size or diversity of people's core networks. Specific uses of social media were found to have a positive relationship to network size and diversity.

The Neighbourhood Approaches to Loneliness programme includes a question about new media, but JRF's approach to technology has always been tentative, not to say reluctant. It would be good if they would grab the initiative in this case, and really open up the potential here. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the evidence on local online channels gives us plenty to go on.

Previously:

• Local social ties have weakened, but where's the evidence?
• Loneliness and mental distress

 

Local online network supports co-production: 'we don't expect to have to do this on a regular basis'

Hugh Flouch and I have been doing a routine for some time now talking about the way local online networks help residents to co-produce the quality of their local environment. Now here's a little gem of an example, from Harringay Online, the site which Hugh set up four years ago.

On April 18 at 14.13 Darrell Osbawn posted the following message:

'Fairlands Park is in a bit of a state. The Council knows about it and is organising some staff to come and empty the bins etc. However, there is a lot of small litter spread across the grass areas and rocks/sticks all over the play areas which the Council probably won't get. Is anyone interested in meeting at the park sometime in the next few days to spend an hour of so to help sweep the play areas and pick up the loose rubbish? If so, please send me a PM on here and we can organise a time to meet and clean.'

Less than two days later, thanks partly to the way social media helps people to organise informally, eight residents had turned out, filled ten bags of rubbish, notified the council to pick them up, and the job was done. Follow up is here.

Note the observation:

'We don't expect to have to do this on a regular basis. It was only necessary because the Council has/had not emptied the bins for 2 weeks.'

Subsequently it has been noted that due to recent public sector funding cuts the Parks Hygiene Team has been reduced from 15 to 5 persons; and the question raised:

'How can a borough be covered by 5 people, bins & litter picking?'

Your Square Mile? Why?

There’s been lots of fluttering lately about the Your Square Mile initiative, which has attracted bags of funding to do, er, well, to behave like a branded top-down idea, as far as anyone can tell. Cathy Aitchison, David Wilcox and other good folk who make up the Our Society network have been trying to prise out information about it. The latest is that:

The Big Lottery Fund is enabling Your Square Mile to build a digital platform – on PC’s, mobiles and public access screens – that will enable the interchange of ideas, advice, support and benefits to citizens throughout the UK.

Explanation to follow, presumably? It sounds as if there is a basic assumption that one single platform will be appropriate for the communication needs of every definable neighbourhood in the country.

There is a study to be done of the damage caused by highly persuasive people who seem to feel compelled to impose template social 'solutions' on others.

I enjoyed Julian Dobson’s thorough posing of questions the other day. It got me wondering if the Your Square Mile idea - closely associated with another national policy-favoured empty catch-phrase idea the name of which escapes me for the moment - really deserves such painstaking attention.

People are struggling to hold on to any goodwill towards the initiative, but are watching closely, probably for three related reasons – secrecy; the top-down approach and lack of values; and the fact that the project’s founder Paul Twivy has apparently attracted a great deal of money in scarce times, that might otherwise have gone into the community sector.

I liked Alan MacDonald’s reaction:

‘My first set of questions is - why does an idea depending on voluntary effort require so much paid work and, I believe, generous expenses to initiate it?  Why does an idea of the digital age communicate so badly? (My latest example is a tweet saying 'Join the debate' which led me to a web page where I couldn't leave a comment)  Why does the web and social network presence of this idea require a big grant from the Lottery when all you need for a major website, Twitter and facebook feed is fifty quid, open source, skills and will power?’

The explanation came a few minutes later from Jeff Mowatt: 

I'll tell you Alan, as it was related to Indira Gandhi when her grandfather advised here that:

"There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that do the work and those that take the credit. Try to stay in the first group, you'll find less competition."

And finally, since comments on blogs are so easily missed, I want to reproduce these observations from Aidan Kelly on Julian Dobson’s post:

‘people can't be bought. Money can enable quick reactions but it rarely attracts the right people. Those people who are passionate about their community, don't want to be told what to do, or even paid by an external organisation to collect ideas. There is something that is almost insulting in the concept that an external, outsider should come into a community and assume ownership of the problems and issues that the community faces. These are [not] unemotive subjects they are real people.’

 

 

ʻDoes William Rose make faggots?ʼ Neighbourhoods seen through online timeslices

A few months ago, as part of our research for the Online neighbourhood networks study, Hugh Flouch and I began trying to find a way to assess the diversity of content of our case study sites (Brockley Central, East Dulwich Forum and Harringay Online).

We established three 'timeslices' - different six hours periods on separate weekdays during the research period - and examined most of the content that was posted within those times. Even though we are both familiar with thriving local websites - and Hugh is the founder of Harringay Online - we were struck by the diversity of material that came out.

The results are summarised in our latest paper, ʻDoes William Rose make faggots?ʼ We organised the material into thirteen categories, as follows:

• Built and green environment: streets, fencing, vermin, litter and recycling
• Transport and travel
• Local services, facilities and shops; monitoring and campaigning
• Homes and houses
• Exchange, lost and found
• Looking after children
• Governance and politics
• Disturbances and irregularities: antisocial behaviour and violence
• Entertainment and recreation
• Local news, local people and local history
• Wider world politics and current affairs
• Homespun philosophy: distractions that are not time-sensitive
• Meta-interactions and moderation.

No-one familiar with neighbourhood networks will be surprised at this range, and some may be able to suggest other categories not captured by our process. Nonetheless it is revealing - matters as serious as shootings, stabbings and rapes are as much the matter of the digital conversations we monitored as are local history, jokes, stories or indeed the question of what the local butcher can conjure from offal.

In our view it is this diversity of material, more than any single area of interest, that makes these sites rewarding to participants. This is what ensures that the sites flourish as local communication ecologies - environments sensitively managed which encourage growth and diversity, which are always changing while also, so far, remaining independent and sustainable.

'Fantastic and important' - the Online Neighbourhood Networks report

Tuesday saw the launch, at Mary Ward House in London, of a report on online neighbourhood networks which I co-authored with Hugh Flouch. In spite of torrid weather conditions, around 90 people showed up and we had a hugely positive day.

There's a four-page summary of the research, an extended summary, a full report, several video interviews and some background papers. Over on the NN blog we've posted an informative note about it: here I thought I would allow myself a few personal reflections.

I've probably put more into this report than anything else I've ever written. It is consistent historically with some things I wrote fifteen or 20 years ago, but the issues seem excitingly fresh, I suppose because they are less speculation and more evidence. And it's a report I've been wanting to write for years - at least since I met Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman in Toronto ten years ago. I listened to how Keith was processing his findings from the pioneering Netville study and returned to the UK wanting the community development field to appreciate the implications of neighbourhood online networks and take a lead in developing the movement. Fat chance.

I managed to get some dosh from central government to get Keith to England in 2004, and he gave some inspiring presentations. In one post I wrote at the time I noted:

'Government is paying attention, but (apart from the interest of the Oxford Internet Institute) where were the academics?'

Maybe I was partly misled. I'm writing this from a hotel in Oxford, having been invited through the ever-enterprising Tim Davies to present our research to the aforementioned OII this evening. Only Tim turned up. Some students apparently have deadlines tomorrow. Staff have better things to do.

While an hour spent chatting to Tim is not the kind of opportunity I'd ever pass up, this is very telling.

Overnight I'd received an email from Keith Hampton saying that, having read our report, he thought it was 'a fantastic and important piece of work'. The OII, having no track record in taking the local social aspects of internet use seriously, is not even motivated to find out if he might have a point.

I do realise that doesn't really matter too much. It's not all that surprising to reflect that among the first people to be left behind by ideas or social change will be academics studying the internet. What's gratifying, and does matter, is that a load of practitioners get it. Hugh and I have had a flurry of reassuring comments: William Perrin described it as 'superb original research', Steven Clift refers to 'neighbourhood awesomeness coming out of the UK.' Most of all I appreciated some generous remarks from Richard McKeever:

'Recognising how people actually live in neighbourhoods and identifying the additional convening and organising power that can be added by the use of online networks is the right way round.'

More thoughts soon on some of the issues.

 

Locality, diversity, and internet use

A new study published by Keith Hampton and colleagues confirms that internet use has little if any negative impact on the diversity of people’s networks. There are now fewer and fewer voices claiming that internet use will lead to the rapid descent of the human race into dysfunctional incommunicative bestiality (religious leaders and academics like John Locke in his book The devoicing of society have tried to spread misguided alarmism). Things have settled down a bit lately and hopefully with this research, based on and reinforcing last year's Pew study (which I reviewed here), we can all get back to what we were doing.

(Image from).

The article assesses network diversity and technology use in relation to participation in traditional social settings including public spaces, semi-public spaces, religious institutions, voluntary groups, and through neighbourhood ties. It concludes that the use of social media primarily supports diverse networks through participation in these settings. On the whole, internet users have networks that are more diverse than those who do not use the internet, although causality cannot be demonstrated definitively:

There may be bi-directionality; use of traditional social settings may drive some technology use, which in turn drives more use of the settings.

The importance of local place is thoroughly re-confirmed, even without reference to neighbourhood online sites:

The findings show only limited evidence that place-based relations have less resonance with Internet users; this was in one setting (neighborhoods) for one type of technology (social networking sites) – and an alternative explanation, as has been found in other research (Hampton, 2007), is that those with few neighborhood ties are more likely to adopt social media... Place is not lost as a result of the affordances of new technologies, but place-based networks are reinforced and made persistent.

The authors go on to conclude that social networks may be more persistent now than at any point in modern history.

ICTs afford relationship maintenance in ways that reduce the likelihood that ties will ever become completely dormant. Unlike in the past, when networks of high school and neighborhood ties were abandoned with marriage (Kalmijn, 2003) or migration (Hagan et al.,1996), it is increasingly likely that both the relation and the content of the relation’s messages remain persistent over time as “friends” on social networking services and as data stored and engaged with online. As our finding about the use of social networking services suggests, this directly benefits network diversity and access to social capital.

 

Diversity and representation on local websites

I've had a few conversations and thoughts lately (beginning with the London Neighbourhoods Online [LDN10] event last month) about diversity and representation on local websites. I just wanted to capture them for the time being.

The founders I've spoken to about this have set their sites up with a vague sense of social purpose but no explicit intention to promote community cohesion. The sites don’t set out to be or claim to be democratically representative or culturally representative or accountable.

Those we've looked at in our London study are clearly dominated by people who are relatively affluent, educated and empowered. These are the people who put energy into helping the site grow, contributing and generating social capital (vaguely defined) and civic involvement to sometimes enviable levels.

Around them and among them live clusters of less affluent people, renters rather than owners perhaps, people from minority groups and with English as a second language, perhaps people who may not have home internet access but who use telecoms shops in the high street to call family in other countries and access websites in their own language.

Meanwhile, let's acknowledge that participation on some of these neighbourhood sites can call for a high level of confidence and assertiveness, which may be closely related to levels of literacy. These are text-based environments and the currents are fast-flowing.

Some of our respondents expressed bald criticism of the lack of representativeness, while others suggested that perhaps the sites could make more effort to be inclusive. For example, one wrote:

‘Seems to be for white middle aged people, basically.’

And others:

’I would imagine the website doesnt attract a contribution from a full range of social demographic backgrounds to reflect the actual community as a whole’

‘doesn't seem to represent the diversity of the local community, particularly ethnically and in terms of social class.’

This is more about cultural capital than social capital. Most of the cultures in question have strong family-based networks re-inforced locally. The easy and insensitive English way of detaching ourselves from our elders, leaving them to live out their years in isolation or in homes, is going to seem strange at best to people from Bengali, Turkish or Kurdish cultures for instance. They also network around their foodstores, their cafes and hairdressers, cultural centres and places of worship. So it could be argued that these groups have less need for a structured form of neighbourhood network. This assumption may be misguided. And if it is accurate, there is still a danger in it, which I'll come to.

The logic of the technology allows local ethnic minority groups to set up their own space within or alongside the dominant site. At least one of the sites has tried to encourage this, and it's hardly surprising that so far it has not happened.

We should also recognise that pseudonymity on local forums permits a hidden diversity. We were given a striking example of this at LDN10. On the internet, no-one knows you're a black single-mother who drives a bus. However, that gives no visibility to diverse perspectives.

The point that bothers me is this. Neighbourhood websites are set to increase and to have greater influence. Our survey of council officers and elected members shows recognition within councils that they see online forums as ideal for identifying issues of concern to residents. Local politics gets discussed by those elderly Cypriot men in their local cafe, and it gets discussed on local online forums; but in terms of potential influence over what happens, there's no comparison.

There will come a time when there is a pronounced tension between the legitimate but unsystematic influence of local sites on the one hand, and their lack of representation of diversity on the other. It's worth trying to get in front of that I think.

 

Neighbouring ain't what it used to be

I sometimes feel I'm a bit of a lone voice in calling for an understanding of neighbouring that takes account of social change. Neighbouring ain't what it used to be, and that's only to be expected; most other things ain't, either.

Now here's Chris, who's thought about it a bit, commenting on this blog post about the Vermont network Front Porch Forum. Chris notes wisely that 'being neighborly' has been redefined:

'Many people today, in cities at least, just don’t feel the need to know and interact with people regularly simply because they live next to them. We’ve silently succumbed to the realization that we want better reasons to invest time in strangers...

'I may not know my next door neighbor but do I really need to just because he lives next door? What if we have no interests in common? Don’t worry, I’ll still call the fire department if his house catches fire and I’ll still watch for suspicious people in his yard (in addition to mine), but I just don’t care about his obsessive gardening because I don’t care at all about gardening myself.'

With the advent of the internet and global real-time communications, Chris notes, 'most people in the modern world have simply recognized subconsciously that making friends in person one neighbor at a time is just damned inefficient.'

Local sites and civic involvement

Last Friday Hugh Flouch and I organised a Networked Neighbourhoods roundtable discussion on civic involvement and local online in London. We took advantage of the presence in town of US e-democracy pioneer Steven Clift to bring a few interesting people together for some easy-going discussion and share some early findings from our London study.

Unaware that I was about to be knocked back by a short bout of flu (as I type this, coincidentally and characteristically, here's the Next-Door-Neighbour at the back-door asking am I better) there was even less chance that I might come up with any particular insights at the time; but it was at least a moment to try and relate local websites to the community organising and civic involvement expectations of Big Society.

Among the points I hope I managed to put across were these:

• The transformations to co-production of local quality of life and to a more conversational democracy are not trivial, but they are both within the legitimate aspirations of neighbourhood online networks.
• When we look at these sites and the effects they appear to be having, I don’t think we should be looking necessarily for effects that shore up the old ways of doing representative democracy. Nor should we be looking for the strengthening of strong ties and the creation of close-knit communities: local sites support fluid, overlapping networks of weak ties that incorporate sufficient trust to get things done.
• Those ways of getting things done might extend to Alinsky-style community organising, but you wouldn’t conclude from our material that the link is strong. I think it’s fairer to say that we can see a latent demand for informal, controlled-commitment involvement in local issues – people are creating as well as responding to local opportunities, online.
• These sites are places that accommodate the unclubbable alongside the clubbable. We’ve yet to appreciate the benefit of that.
• Essentially, these sites change the acoustics of the public realm: the voices of local people are increasingly audible, not because a few people shout louder but because conversations are generated, accumulate, and are transparent.

The pic of myself and Steve Clift was taken by Hugh and I rather like the reflected cycles round our heads.

There's a short report on the session on the Networked Neighbourhoods site here.

Local citizen-based websites

Alan Stanton, a Labour councillor who contributes occasionally to Harringay Online, speaking of the attitude of politicians to local websites:

"We shouldn't try to harness it. We can be part of it, contribute to it and listen to it but shouldn't try and colonise it."

This comes from a BBC News article by Jane Wakefield this morning, which also refers to Brockley Central and East Dulwich Forum, quotes Andy Williamson from the Hansard Society, and even has a few words from Hugh Flouch and meself. All part of the growing interest.

Online communication in neighbourhoods: not just people we know

The latest Pew Internet Project report has just been published, on the topic of 'neighbors online'. It covers the role of face-to-face, telephone and digital technologies in relations between neighbours. I've posted some thoughts about it on the Networked Neighbourhoods site here, including this suggestion:

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.

Older people and local social networks

Last week I went along to talk to a review group working on elder care for the Centre for Social Justice. They wanted my views on how neighbourhood support can be strengthened, and why it should be, to help older people to age in place.

I put some stress on the unrealised potential of new technologies: not so much from the familiar applications like telecare, but more from the point of view of local social networks. It's remarkable how little attention has been paid to the contribution of social media in strengthening and sustaining local connections and thus supporting older people in their neighbourhoods.

Here's an example. Independent Age have just published a report on Older people, technology and community, with the totally misleading subtitle 'the potential of technology to help older people renew or develop social contacts and to actively engage in their communities.'

Unfortunately most of the report is about already-well-known barriers to and uses of technology, not about the development of social connections, although there are revelations for me among the case studies. A main theme for the report is:

Increasing awareness in the public sector of the issue of social isolation and loneliness and encouraging public sector organisations to make adaptations to technology-based services that will help address the problem.

This is all very well but it risks over-emphasising the negative, misses the potential for older people to play interdependent roles, and completely overlooks the opportunity of local citizen-based online resources.

How come this lack of awareness persists? Three years ago Danny Bull, who set up MyNeighbourhoods told me:

‘Our senior citizens have been integral to our growth, fuelled by the possibility of real-world communication as a result of initiating contact with others online. We’ve witnessed everything from elderly users trading books locally to a bit of light hearted flirting.’ (I published the comment here in 2008)

The potential has always been there but I'm beginning to suspect that much of the problem lies with the age agencies and the attitudes of professionals. Understandably perhaps, they seem too often preoccupied with technical barriers that diminish the quality of life of older people. The more you have to deal with those problems I suppose, the more you are going to look at them in mechanistic ways, rather than recognising organic social solutions. (As an aside, there's also a need to differentiate the important range of skills and experience represented by the term 'older people', even though there's been plenty of discussion about how the younger old can support the older old). Neighbours are seldom recognised as part of the solution to older people's care needs (so all credit to the CSJ for their awareness): and as this report shows, people can reflect extensively on technological applications without seeing the potential to stimulate neighbourly support.

Then again, I may be wrong and very little online-enabled neighbourhood support is actually going on. But that's not the impression I've been getting.

'Susannah isn't in Facebook'

From Nick Booth over on Podnosh:

'Up until now Susannah knew everything that went on in the village. But now she's out of touch.'

This is about municipal governance in the Spanish village of Copons, population about 300. So how much of the success is down to scale?

Neighbourhood websites: two new papers published

Hugh Flouch and I have published two papers today reflecting the first phase of our short study on neighbourhood websites in London, funded by Capital Ambition.

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 members.

If you need a plumber

Last night Hugh Flouch and I were talking with group of residents about their local blog. Some discussion about who participates and who doesn't, including the observation that young people prefer to use Facebook and don't appear on the site. Someone suggested:

'They'll follow the blog when they're old enough to need a plumber.'

Not unrelated - and linking back to the question I raised a few days ago about low-income and mixed-income areas - was an observation that when conversation has built up and there are well over 100 comments on a post, "there's usually the word 'property' in there somewhere".

Social inclusion and local sites

To Leeds today for the second Talk About Local unconference on local websites - a more relaxed event than the last, exuding a more confident, 'we know what we're doing' getting-on-with-it air. Nice pic of TAL founder William Perrin taken from the Cover It Live coverage here.

I got in a huddle with a few others to explore the contrasts between local sites in low-income neighbourhoods and in more affluent or mixed areas. There were about 10 of us, but it must have been a subject of interest because when we emerged, it turned out a separate group had formed to discuss the same topic. That's a risk with the unconference format I guess.

They were probably a bit posher than us, I'd say. I bet they had comfy seats.

I proposed the session because I'm interested in two possibilities:

• local sites in low income areas are realistic but may require different approaches, including sustained community development;
• local sites in mixed areas will appeal to, and be exploited disproportionately by those accustomed to power and influence - crowding-out those in the neighbourhood who might have the most to gain in terms of increased social capital.

Anyway we're not proud, so here are a few points (in no particular order) that I picked up or which occurred to me during our session:

1. Bad press (labelling) can be a provocation that gives rise to a local site.
2. There still seems to be little perception in the community development field of the potential of local sites. (Some weary head-banging on this...)
3. In a low-income neighbourhood, the other forms of media that are funded by advertising don’t apply to you, so what else have you got that might speak for you?
4. There may be a tendency to under-estimate levels of internet penetration in these neighbourhoods. (Some credit for the high levels was apportioned to Facebook).
5. A degree of inertia about issues locally suggests the need for an intense level of intervention (but see point 2 above).
6. Get people together in a room. The offline is as important as the online. If you live in a neighbourhood where you can't get people together in a room, you betta get some CD and hope you're not stuffed by point 2 above.
7. Beware the tyranny of text: this tech releases video and sound, so use it.
8. The behaviour in social media spaces is something that some people just don’t get. (Like trust – some people become immediately distrustful in online conversation).
9. We may have to make the case for amplifying the voices that otherwise don’t get heard (but see point 2 above...)

I had to leave after lunch but there's a real buzzy feel to this movement now. Back in 2008 I organised an event with CABE which led me to predict that 09 would be the year of local websites. OK, not far wrong.

Practicalities of local online

Here's a handy and timely post on Talk About Local, starting a discussion about those awkward issues that can afflict local websites. Like anonymity (although the slight irony that contributions to the TAL blog are still, msyteriously, anonymous seems to have been overlooked); the ‘we’re too small’ problem; and the ‘we’re too big’ problem. Among the wisdom shared:

• when people are talking to you about their burning passion, ask them to write, take photos or videos about it. Most people don’t just write in when you ask them but they are happy to share their interests...
• make your methods of contributing as simple as you possibly can... Never mind snazzy technology, give them a beer mat to write on...
• don’t forget to ask people for help in really simple ways, don’t assume they know and just aren’t helping. People love to help, especially if helping takes the most minimal amounts of time...
• keep in touch with small traders. They know everything that is going on and generally a bit of time to tell it to regular customers.

Co-delivery sir? Certainly, which kind would you like?

The other day I posted a note about co-delivery, making an aside about policing. Soon afterwards, looking for something else of course, I came across this short 2009 paper by Tony Bovaird and Elke Loeffler, on 'user and community co-production of public services', published by the Third Sector Research Centre.

 
They report survey and focus group research in five European countries, looking at the (co-)production of community safety, the local environment, and public health. The ranking is revealing: crime reporting, and most aspects of crime prevention, clearly rank lowest, even though the top indicator is 'take care to lock doors and windows'.

Bovaird and Loeffler conclude that people are most willing to make a contribution to public services 'when it involves them in relatively little effort and when they do not have to work closely with other citizens or staff or professionals in the government.'

Reassuringly, the researchers do not see this as beyond the influence of policy:

'the behaviour of citizens is more likely to give rise to individual co-production, unless encouragement is given to mechanisms which lead to more collective co-production. The research has suggested the possibility that third sector intermediaries and that internet-enabled technologies are likely to fulfil the requirements which make collective co-production easier and more likely.' (Emphasis added)

That last sentence combines two long-held concerns of mine - the first (third sector intermediaries) being a community development credo and obviously encompassing street reps, for example; the second being precisely the argument that Hugh Flouch and I have been making about neighbourhood online networks. We're hoping that we can confirm it convincingly in our current research.

 

 

 

Networked Neighbourhoods

Here's my Networked Neighbourhoods colleague Hugh Flouch giving a very decent account of himself on the BBC's Daily Politics show (at about 3 minutes) the other day. He talks about neighbourhood online networks and does his best to resist the establishment's tendency to centralise and nationalise what's happening locally.

The project he refers to is looking at about four local sites in London and exploring how they contribute to social capital and affect people's willingness to work with local agencies. We're due to finish in the summer and I'll report more here as we go.