eDemocracy Update

Research shows that social media won't halt political disengagement (aka "I told you so...")

I wrote a rather lengthy post-cum-essay earlier this year speculating that MPs and elected politicians might be out of a job within the next 10 years time.

My argument was based purely on my own thoughts about how the participatory web is rapidly overcoming barriers which made full participatory democracy (as opposed to the representative democracy we have currently) more viable as a political system.

This contrasts the populist line you get in mainstream media where journalists and others like to ride the band-wagon that the Internet and 'Web 2.0 tools' such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook etc is allowing people to reconnect with politicians and politics. David Cameron is the usual UK example trotted out with Obama now the figure-head in the US.

I've said all along that technology itself is not capable of reconnecting politics with people. People feel politically disenfranchised because the political systems in most Western democracies are specifically designed to keep most people removed from processes of empowerment. In the same way that businesses traditionally kept 'consumers' at arms length.

If politicians and political parties want to reconnect with people then they need to change the way they do things. Doing the same old thing using new technology *will not* politically re-enfranchise people. 

This is a slightly contentious view but since posting it I've discovered an unpublished PhD thesis by Kerrill Dunne from Sussex University which examined the role and effectiveness of political forums in renewing political engagement - or rather stemming political disengagement.

Kerrill's research takes an empirical look at the value of using online forums to reverse political disengagement and it concludes that political online forums will not reverse political disengagement. More specifically discussion forums do not fail because of some inherent design fault, but because political disengagement is tied to citizens' dislike of liberal thin democracy (i.e. British democracy based on representative
democracy, liberalism and a free market economy).

In discussion about his research on the DoWire E-Democracy forums, Dunne, explained his findings in more details. Political disengagement he argues boils down to two main theories: firstly a reaction to the fact that in representative, liberal democracy as long as enough people vote (or engage in the process) then the system works thus by its very function it fails to maximise participation. But secondly:

"political disengagement is growing because modern democracies do not support strong participatory or direct democracy [...] this theory argues that political disengagement is a disease of the liberal thin democratic model. (i.e. representative, liberal democracy)"

Offering a favoured theory in light of his research, Dunne remarks that:

"I agree with the latter [second theory, because research (see chapter 4 of thesis) has shown citizens are dissatisfied with the current political system and are turning away from it because representatives are unresponsive to them the political system does not support any form of direct democracy and individuals are not interested in politics because they do not identify with political parties or trust politicians [...] Offline citizens are saying that they are not satisfied with the current political system and online, they are less likely to participate in forums rooted in it."

Based on Dunne's study it would appear that public disengagement is not something that web 2.0 tools can solve alone. Rather the political and social system in which these tools exist must change for people to reconnect with politics.

Technorati tags: participatory democracy, Kerrill Dunne, digital politics

Doc Searls on digital capacity building in the new admnistration (and what Lord Carter can learn)

A few weeks Doc Searls laid down his vision for how the incoming President Elect could use the Internet to stimulate the US economy. coincidently, Docs' post came about a month after the UK government’s Department for Business, Economy and Regulatory Reform (BERR) launched its own plans for using the digital economy to regenerate the UK’s economic fortunes. I have my own concerns about BERR’s plans for what it calls ‘Digital Britain’ which I laid out recently. Doc’s vision is inspirational however, and the UK government should read his blog post carefully. In case it doesn't however, here's a few things worth noting.

Doc outlines a number of key issues for consideration but at the core of his vision is the need for greater infrastructure – specifically “fiber-optic” – although a solid case for wifi is also made.

And then what to do with this increased infrastructure? Doc believes that it can only lead to greater productivity among everyone - individuals as well as small businesses; thus boosting, creativity, production, consumption, the economy and mankind:

“new devices based on open source technologies demonstrate how easy it is to scaffold and build innovative new products and services that make money and expand the scope of civilization.”

However, one of the major barriers to this potential great leap forward lies not in the impracticality of increasing infrastructure nor does it lie in the predicted costs of the investment program (estimated at $300bn).

No, the big barrier to making this significant economic and social step forward lies in the thinking and strategic mindset with which the government and business approaches the issue.

To quote Doc again:

“We can’t see the potential for that [digital economic] growth as long as we’re blinded by phone and cable company offerings, which treat the Internet as the third act in a 'triple play'. Even though most home phones are now digital, we still “dial” to connect and get billed by the minute. And while analog cell phones are gone, even “smart” digital phones are locked up by phone companies and their phone-making partners. Next February [By 2012 in the UK] all over-the-air television broadcasting in the U.S. will go digital, matching cable and satellite TV distribution systems that have been digital for years. Yet we still watch “programs” on “channels,” just like we started doing in 1950.”

Doc’s argument is for an American market, but there are clear parallels with the UK and its current situation – not least the shared desire of national Governments to inject stimulus into their domestic economies.

Which is where I want to shift my focus to the UK. In the US they are still riding high on the optimism of a new administration. Doc’s post is aimed as a piece of pre-emptive advice for Barack Obama. Here in the UK, the Government has already unveiled its plans to use the Internet to improve the economy. My concerns are that its planned review will not even head in the right direction, let alone go far enough down the right route to really make a break through.

In fact, researching this post I googled ‘Digital Britain’ to see if there was an update on the Carter Review. I found a Marketing Week article from earlier this month (this in itself maybe gives us a steer on the *actual* aim of the Digital Britain review).

The article revealed the review team assembled by Lord Carter. These experts are (in no particular order):

• TV presenter and child psychologist – Dr Tanya Byron
• Chairman of Japanese investment bank, Nomura International - Francesco Caio
• Chairman of the Digital Radio Working Group - Barry Cox
• Editor of political magazine, The Spectator - Matthew d'Ancona
• Former ITV commercial chief - Ian McCulloch.

So all in, a well qualified team of digital experts.

Doc ends his post by urging Obama:

“to make constructive and realistic suggestions about what this new administration can do in just one area of infrastructure investment: expanding connectivity and network capacity in ways that open innovation and growth opportunity for everybody."

I wonder in which direction Lord carter's review will go? Towards greater infrastructure investment and opening up peer production; or towards regulation and centralised creative production?

Technorati tags: Carter Review, Lord Carter, Digital Britain, BERR, Doc Searls

Dear Lord Carter, please read this blog post - Why The Government's Digital Britain Report Worries Me

The UK Government made a significant announcement last week as it unveiled plans to seriously review and examine everything digital and its relation to business and culture.

As far as I'm concerned, the announcement, by Lord Carter, Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, is is a vitally important topic and while it gained some coverage in the UK blogosphere (notably posts by Wadds, Stephen Davies and Dominic Campbell), I think it deserves a lot more debate.

The reason it deserves more debate is that while the Government is appearing to take seriously the opportunities - economic and cultural - offered by digital convergence the language it is using to drive forward a review of these opportunities is worrying.

One phrase in particular I find intriguing:

"We [the Government] will seek to bring forward a unified framework to help maximize the UK’s competitive advantage and the benefits to society."

Now, while no one will argue that maximizing the benefits the Internet brings to UK society is not desirable, and while some would argue that maximizing the UK’s competitive advantage is not a necessary priority it cannot be denied that the Internet is throwing up enormous economic benefits.

But what concern me here is the term "unified framework". This brings to mind the idea of an extremely top-down, bureaucratic regime of Internet governance for certain industries or social/cultural groups that the Government decides is a priority or that would benefit specifically from support.

Of course, I'm prejudging what the government has in mind. However, I am prejudging to illustrate a point. namely, that as any fule kno - the beauty and power of the Internet is that it is a decentralised network where the power of creativity or production is in the hands of the individual user.

As a result, production and methods of production are as unique and *non-unified* as there are individuals involved.

It is perhaps worrying that the Government's announcement seems to indicate a failure to grasp this idea.

Related to this point of decentralised production by end-users is the notion of what actually gets created (and "digital content development" is one of the key Government areas for review).

The announcement observes that digital convergence is "critical to every business in our economy, acting both as a catalyst for creativity and allowing efficiency gains."

But if we look specifically at 'social or peer production' - the user-generated content I suspect the Government is alluding to (especially with reference to "efficiency gains" - then again it is acutely important that the *user-generated* element of this creative content and production is just that: created by the user.

This is significant because it means the Government can't just pick a key industry and say "Right. This is the sector in which we need efficiency gains and more creative content." This, of course, is for the individual with a PC in their study or bedroom to decide.

But don't get me wrong, we are experiencing a major transition in the way economic models, businesses, creativity and social relations behave. And the Internet is at the heart of this transition - both driving it and being driven. The fact that the UK government has woken up to it is extremely heartening. key issues are under review, such as:

• "Broadband Development - examining options for maximizing participation and levels of service across the UK 
• Spectrum: identifying the barriers to the release of spectrum and a fully functioning market in the trading and use of spectrum
• Universal access to high quality, public service content through appropriate mechanisms for a converged digital age
• Intellectual property: the UK Intellectual Property Office will take forward work to deliver a digital copyright framework which supports creativity, investment and job creation in these important sectors"

My concern comes from experience of the way government and organisations function which is usually highly top-down and hierarchical. Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, who is sharing ministerial responsibility for the Carter Review, says as much in the press release:

"Over the last year we’ve worked with experts to get a clear understanding of the issues to address and obstacles to overcome if our businesses and citizens are to take full advantage of technology." [My emphasis]

IMHO speaking to self-appointed 'experts' about how other people ("citizens") should make use of technology is the old way of doing things. And in my view approaching the opportunities of the Internet in this way will achieve the exact opposite of what the Government intends to achieve.

Former Yale academic, recently appointed Professor of Entrepreneurial Law at Harvard University, Yochai Benkler, has written extensively about emergent economic models in a digital age.

As suggested above these models rely on social and/or non-market forces to achieve the "efficiency gains" flagged by the UK government. In his Wealth of Networks, Benkler observes that in this emerging economic and institutional ecology:

"the State plays no role or is perceived as playing a primarily negative role ... Just like the market, the state will have to adjust to this new emerging modality of human action."

Benkler suggests we are on the cusp of a new era for economics and creative opportunity as the UK government seems to acknowledge in its planned Digital Britain Report. However, Benkler is explicit that these new opportunities for the economy as well as democracy and human freedom are contingent on the key players (governments; regulators; gate-keeping corporations etc) getting it right from the outset.

The UK Government's announcement doesn't fill me with optimism that this is likely to happen.

Technorati tags: UK Government, DCMS, BERR, Carter Review, Digital Economy

PublicMarkup.org - participatory democracy in action?

I posted earlier this year about the greater possibilities for participatory democracy offered by the Internet.

Well, I've only just come accross the US site PublicMarkup.org but it seems to bring the technology of Part. Dem. one step closer.

The site claims to be:

"an ongoing experiment in preparing legislation more inclusively by opening bills to online, public review.

PublicMarkup.org gives you the opportunity to review and comment on proposed bills before they are even introduced—or while they are pending—in Congress."

It is another great idea by the Sunlight Foundation which gets me thinking, is there a UK equivalent?

Technorati tags: Public Markup, participatory democracy, Sunlight Foundation

When Think Tanks Go Bad: Policy Exchange and agenda-setting

I toyed with the idea of a career in academia for a brief time but decided it wasn't for me owing to its often detachment from the 'real world'.

I find that taking original ideas and applying them - or seeking to understand how they can be applied - to the real world is a more rewarding approach.

This is why I have a lt of time for think tanks: quasi-academic institutions that recognose the power of ideas to shape the real world around us.

Last Friday's Guardian had a fascinating profile of the think tank du jour, Policy Exchange; current favourite thinkers for the Conservatives.

Policy Exchange has "enjoyed a dizzy rise to prominence" according to Staniforth and LabourHome's Mark Hanson, in parallel with the rise of the Conservatives return to the political landscape.

But the Guardian article gives me some cause for concern as Policy Exchange's standards seem to be slipping - or perhaps more fairly, being shaped - in relation to the Tories' rise.

Firstly, there was the extremely worrying piece of research that claimed a number of British Mosques were publishing Islamic extremist literature which was revealed as dubious - if not entirely fabricated by Newsnight:

 

Then there was the bizarre report on UK regional development which recommended (according to the media) many people living in northern cities (e.g. Bradford, Liverpool) should simply move to southern cities (e.g. Oxford, London) as regional regeneration had failed.

There are also a number of other worrying examples flagged by Mark over at his PR Media blog and the Guardian profile, includiong PE's views on welfare ("make's people lazy") and transport ("build more roads").

Of course, I recognise a large part of this may revolve on ideology; some of PE's ideas may not marry with my own personal perspective.

However, I would like to think I am rational enough to stand by policy recommendations based on "comprehensive academic research" (which is how PE described its extremist Islam report).

Take a look at the Guardian's profile and make your own mind up.

Technorati tags: Policy Exchange, Guardian, think tanks, politics, policy

Elephant in the Room: ideology in the political blogosphere

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but somehow didn’t quite get around to it.

Back in July director of LSE’s Polis media think-tank, Charlie Beckett, posted a great analysis of where the UK political blogosphere will go if/when Labour lose the next general election.

I won’t rehash his article, you can read it for yourselves. However, I do want to highlight an important observation he makes that is regularly overlooked: the influence of political ideology on political bloggers.

Many commentators fall back on the argument that right wing bloggers have the flexibility to attack the government while in opposition, while left wing (predominantly Labour) bloggers have to more or less put up or shut up as the party in government.

But Charlie rightfully suggests that the respective types of blogging carried out by left and right wing bloggers may also be influenced by their personal, political preferences.

Or more specifically as Charlie puts it:

“Perhaps the individualism of blogging better suits the less collectivist mentalities on the right.” while “the fragmentation of leftwing blogs is very much a reflection of the divided nature of the post-Iraq, post-Blair left.”

But then Charlie (perhaps deliberately?) undermines this position by reflecting candidly that maybe this cacophony of voices and opinions is “a tribute to the variety in style and substance of what we call political bloggers.”

And that line is perhaps the key takeaway for political analysts, commentators, journalists and PROs.

Political bloggers are lumped together on party lines primarily (although not always) by others – most often the political analysts, commentators, journalists and PROs.

Blogging allows grassroots politicos the opportunity to become active around an issue or series of issues that may not always fall on party political lines. We then retrospectively interpret these as party political as our political system is clearly delinated and doesn’t really allow us to think beyond the Lib/Lab/Con/Green(?) silos.

Of course there are some caveats: Sites like ConservativeHome, LabourHome and Lib Dem Voice are clearly party affiliated, but it can be agued that they are affiliated only in name as many of their ideas differ from the official party line.

Similarly, many political bloggers happen to be party affiliated. But again, this doesn’t mean they always follow the party line. I would go further and argue that joining a political party will become more and more irrelevant for politicos (as it already has for most of the population.

As David Wilcox has already argued:

“It used to be that you joined associations because it was a way of meeting like-minded people and getting help, facilities, information and other things difficult or costly to organise for yourself. These days it is much easier to find people and resources online.”

Moreover, blogging allows politically motivated people to organize themselves around particular issues that reject or cross traditional political party boundaries.

Charlie poses the question:

“What will happen to political bloggers when the government changes?"

I want us to consider this point another way – what will happen to government  when political bloggers change the way we (self)organize ourselves into issue driven groups, no longer reliant on the traditional and formal structures of membership organizations which have been built on a model first established by thinking during the early days of western Enlightenment more than 200 years ago.

The answer to that question says a lot about the condition of political debate in this country. Both left and right have seen the internet as a chance to push for power.

Technorati tags: Blogging, politics, Charlie Beckett, Enlightenment

Digital Dialogues Part 3

I saw the release of the Hansard Society's third and final Digital Dialogues report before taking my annual leave the other week, but didn't get around to writing about it.

Since then Simon Dickson has provided a welcome review over at his blog which I recommend you go and read.

A couple of things stand out for me:

1. I've discovered that the Food Standards Agency is blogging and gets  agood review from DD. This is a new government blog to me so I'll be checking it out.
2. The DD report is available in html - but it doesn't link to any of the blogs or digital initiatives it is reviewing which is a bit frustrating.

On another unrelated, but promising, note I had coffee with Justin Kerr-Stevens before my hols and he was discussing whether he should make a request to the Office for Public Sector Information (OPSI) to reveal all governmental RSS feeds available as part of its Unlocking Service.

Well he did, and received a response within days. Simon adds his thoughts to OPSI's speedy response too.

Technorati tags: Digital Dialogues, Hansard Society, OPSI

How the McCain camp are running blogger relations

As an addendum to PR Week's news last week that John McCain is reaching out to right-wing UK bloggers, Staniforth and LabourHome blogger, Mark Hanson reveals that the McCain camp is currently briefing US bloggers via conference call.

Hanson writes that the briefings for the US Republican presidential hopeful are:

"hosted by Liz Mair, McCain’s Head of Comms. They are done by conference call and carry a briefing from staffers followed by open Q’s from bloggers who have dialled in."

Inviting bloggers onto conference calls is fairly standard practice for smart blogger relations in the US IMHO but continues to reiterate that bloggers are now seen as just a relevant media stakeholders as journalists.

Mark's blog post doesn't reveal whether the bloggers conference call is held jointly with journalists but he does provide a link to a taped briefing which may well answer that particular question.

Technorati tags: PR Week, John McCain, Mark Hanson, blogger relations

Downing Street sneaks out new site images via Flickr

The digital comms team at No 10 Downing Street are currently on fire doing all the right things in the online space.

Not only have they started using Twitter in a way that should be a case study for other government departments and administrations around the world they are using their Flickr photostream to give people a sneaky look at the new Downing Street website.

I won't go into too much detail about the site and its features, as Simon Dickson (who's company, Puffbox, has been involved in the development) gives a thorough overview on his blog.

However, expect lots of social media-type functionality as the new site has been built using Wordpress!

Via Neville Hobson / Simon Dickson

Technorati tags: Downing Street, Gordon Brown, Wordpress

PresidentialWatch08 - Visualising the US political blogosphere

PresidentialWatch08 is a really nifty website that represents all the US political blogs visually and organised by political persuasion.

I've not had a real play with it yet but you can zoom into the network and see which blogs link to others, get an idea of blog size/popularity (based on links) and see screenshots of the each site. Pretty damn cool.

I recall Antony Mayfield had something similar around the this time last year, but this would be a great tool come the next UK general election. Any offers?

[via my Edelman/Spook colleague, Marcus Dyer.]

Technorati tags: PresidentialWatch08, Politics, US Presidential Elections,