All posts in the topic Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions (Short link)
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- There are 25 posts — by 13 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Michael Allan at Sep 27 10:09 UTC
In a future speech at the Sept 29-30 EDem 08 conference in Austria - http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem - chock full of researchers I hope to address the research/practitioner divide with your input. 1. For those "practitioners" amongst us, what research have you found useful in your work over the last year? Share a link if you can. 2. For everyone, what are some of the most important research questions that need to be explored in the e-democracy/e-participation/e-campaigning/e-advocacy fields? What would actually help us do a better job in our work or justify our efforts (or tell us we are e-waste ;-)). As I have shifted from 1/4 practitioner, 3/4 expert to 3/4 practitioner and 1/4 expert (which is 10x more work) I have experienced a greater mismatch between what people are researching and what knowledge the field actually needs to improve democratic participation. Steven Clift
To my mind, the most critical research product would be the demonstration of
a relationship (correlation? Causal?) between levels of discourse or
information flow and substantive measures of community success. In other
words, can we buttress the normative case for a robust public sphere with an
empirical demonstration of its utility to human welfare?
For lay practitioners and governments looking into e-participation/e-democracy,
here are some questions they might have:
* Based on practices to date - what are the key success factors? What will
take away the risk of trying?
* What are the big no-no's when going down this path?
* How do you measure success?
* What are the best examples of large-scale successful projects, where do we
get information on what they did to be successful?
Political science is very much theory-driven and sees research as designed for theory verification. On the other hand, practitioners are more inclined to approach projects in an open-ended manner, capable of theory generation from observation and experience. The more positivist slant of some academies leads it to prefer quantitative methods (eg survey) over qualitative methods (eg ethnography), even though the latter have greater potential to reveal the kind of meaning and explanation that practitioners want. For example in e-democracy work, action research is a methodology that formalises the iterative, interactive and emancipatory endeavour of practice, as processes get refined to meet the needs of the community. Some research methods texts in political studies don't even mention it. Ron Lubensky Citizens Parliament Project Researcher Dept of Government & International Relations School of Political & Social Studies The University of Sydney h Melbourne, Australia p 61 03 8307 0967 | m 0411 412 626 e <email obscured> b http://members.optusnet.com.au/rlubensky/ w http://www.citizensparliament.org.au
> In a future speech at the Sept 29-30 EDem 08 conference in Austria - > http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem - chock full of researchers I hope to address > the research/practitioner divide with your input. In summing up my own work, the divide appears to be threefold: code, theory and practice. I am currently developing a medium of assent in the form of an electoral system for project Votorola. Its design may enable it to serve, in certain instances, as a vector for the transfer of decision-making processes; to move them away from centers of power and into the public sphere. This possibility is raised by its peer-to-peer architecture, which is specialized for community-wide consensus building, and consists of several overlay networks that are shaped to the structure of the communities in which they are embedded. My initial work has focused on coding these networks: namely a trust network for the authentication of voter lists, a voting mechanism for the nomination of candidates, and a drafting medium for the proposal of laws and other norms. At the same time, I have been drawing correlations with social theory, in particular with Habermas's theory of communicative action. The next step is to introduce a measure of practice in a series of beta trials. http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/outline.xht Code came first. The original domain was not politics. The basic concepts came out of biology (recombinant text) and were intended for application in art (creative literature). Theory came next. Once I discovered the e-democracy applications, I began reading political theory, but I couldn't find any solid connections there. Next I turned to broader social theory, and that's where it connected. Combining code and theory has allowed me to pedict the practice (at least dimly), especially in its broader societal effects. Surprisingly none of that has reflected back on the code - its design hasn't shifted from the original concept. Practice has come last. As an engineer, this makes me uncomfortable. I'd rather the code follow the practice - tooling it up - and not vice-versa. But the code is simple (six man-months of effort) so any design shift shouldn't be too painful. That's my experience, to date,
> 1. For those "practitioners" amongst us, what research have you
> found useful in
> your work over the last year? Share a link if you can.
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this, but I have not been attracted
to formal research in the area of e-democracy. I guess the reason
being that this field is still very young, and any research is bound
to reflect 'what is' and not 'what could be'. I regard some of the e-
democracy projects themselves to be the best tools of research. For
example, the services that mysociety.org (TheyWorkForYou, PledgeBank,
WriteToThem) provide is likely to have an effect on voting patterns,
on constituent's letters to MPs and on general political activity. I
couldn't begin to think how these qualitative improvements could be
measured. However, by simply visiting these websites you can begin to
understand the effects that "e-democracy" is having on individuals and
small groups, through qualitative means.
> 2. For everyone, what are some of the most important research
> questions that
> need to be explored in the e-democracy/e-participation/e-campaigning/
> e-advocacy
> fields? What would actually help us do a better job in our work or
> justify our
> efforts (or tell us we are e-waste ;-)).
I would say that the most valuable research comes out of directly
testing ideas, and see how the public react to them. Think about the
impact of Wikipedia on many of our assumptions. Before Wikipedia, we
placed a great deal of trust in experts and elites to maintain the
pathways of knowledge. Wikipedia has challenged this status quo, by
replacing several experts with hundreds of amateurs in the field of
knowledge (perhaps not with thinking), and changed our assumptions on
where reliable information comes from.
I believe that the best research questions start with a hypothesis.
Then, through some creative experimentation, you can test that
hypothesis, and arrive at conclusions. A good approach might be one
that psychologists take. Perhaps this is what practitioners already
do, albeit in an informal way. The problem with such an approach is
the participants need to be able to see some benefit for their troubles.
To me, the hypotheses I would like tested are:
"there is an unsatisfied appetite for democratic participation on the
internet"
"mass collaboration in our political system is possible and desirable"
but I am already on the case with these points!
Tom Kaneko
tom.kaneko wrote:
> To me, the hypotheses I would like tested are: "there is an
> unsatisfied appetite for democratic participation on the internet"
> "mass collaboration in our political system is possible and
> desirable" but I am already on the case with these points!
I think I understand what you mean by "mass collaboration". I think
you mean a functioning public sphere. I just finished reading a book
(written way back in 1962) that ends with these points:
C. W. Mills, by contrasting "public" and "mass," obtained
empirically usable criteria for a definition of public opinion.
In a *public*, as we may understand the term, (1) virtually as
many people express opinions as receive them. (2) Public
commununications are so organized that there is a chance
immediately and effectively to answer back any opinion expressed
in public. Opinion formed by such discussion (3) readily finds an
outlet in effective action, even against - if necessary - the
prevailing system of authority. And (4) authoritative
institutions do not penetrate the public, which is thus more or
less autonomous in its operation.
Conversely, opinions cease to be public opinions in the proportion
to which they are enmeshed in the communicative interchanges that
characterize a "mass":
In a *mass*, (1) far fewer people express opinions than receive
them; for the community of publics becomes an abstract collection
of individuals who receive impressions from the mass media. (2)
The communications that prevail are so organized that it is
difficult or impossible for the individual to answer back
immediately or with any effect. (3) The realization of opinion in
action is controlled by authorities who organize and control the
channels of such action. (4) The mass has no autonomy from
institutions; on the contrary, agents of authorized institutions
penetrate this mass, reducing any autonomy it may have in the
formation of opinion by discussion.
(Mills "The Power Elite", quoted by Habermas in "The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere")
Isn't that extraordinary? Reading that, I was thinking - here it is,
they've documented for us the requirements of the technology! And now
when you speak of an experiment in democratic participation, I can't
help thinking - there, it has already been conducted! Because these
points aren't just theoretical, they are quoted to sum up a work of
historical sociology that covers a period from the late 1700's through
the mid 1800's. According to the author, that is the period when a
functioning public sphere last existed.
So it strikes me as a kind of experiment. If the author is right,
then participative democracy has already been proven. And to
replicate it, all it takes is to run that experiment in reverse. All
it takes is to employ our technology to undo certain effects of the
industrial revolution, of mass production, of mass media - to undo the
party system - and there we'll have it.
Hi Tom,
At 10:26 PM 18/07/2008, you wrote:
>I believe that the best research questions start with a hypothesis.
>Then, through some creative experimentation, you can test that
>hypothesis, and arrive at conclusions. A good approach might be one
>that psychologists take.
You are describing only the research tradition based on the
scientific method. But in interpretive, constructivist and critical
traditions, the research questions search more for deep understanding
and meaning rather than just predictable causation. Also, these other
research traditions do not tend to reduce real-world phenomena to
simple factors, instead dealing with their holistic complexity and
"messiness", with methodologies that are more open-ended. The "stuff"
of the study tends to more qualitative than quantitative. As a
starting example, take a look at the Wikipedia article about a
methodology called "Ethnography".
Experimentation implies at last some control of the phenomenon under
study. In most situations that is not possible--that's probably why
we see so many "comparative analyses" in political science. And
generalising to a real-world situation from a staged experiment is
often problematic. Just because we can't isolate "variables" doesn't
mean that authentic situations can't inform practice. The research
just has to be approached in a different way.
If the most valuable questions to you are about discovering universal
truths, then that is quite okay. But there are others in the research
community who have quite different motivations and epistemological
beliefs and who benefit from scholarly enterprise that is more
experiential rather than experimental.
For a limited time, issue 5:1 of EPISTEME is freely available to be downloaded: http://www.eupjournals.com/toc/epi/5/1
Michael I expected you to end that with an exclamation mark - if only it were that simple and if only those generalisations were applicable internationally. I don't know when there was last a functioning public sphere in England? If I recall my classics correctly the original (Greek)democracy failed due to the public deferring their right to participate to do other things, which has been repeated through history with 'bread & circuses' to scapegoats. It would be easy to split between public and mass, but I certainly don't think mass is an appropriate word in the UK setting and it has been relatively recently used in a similar context e.g. mass observation but that could equally have been used as public observation? The difference between the two has been successfully employed in continental (from the UK perspective) philosophy as presumably the quote from Habermas demonstrates. I personally have been examining participation from the recent use of the word 'customer' by governments as opposed to 'citizen', which has been interestingly examined in a number of documents from Canada over the last dozen years and whether the emphasis on citizenship needs to return to encourage trust and participation? Mick http://greatemacipator.com
Mick Phythian wrote:
>
> ... and if only those generalisations were applicable
> internationally. I don't know when there was last a functioning
> public sphere in England?
According to the author's definitions, a public sphere last functioned
from the late 1700's to the mid-1800's in England, and elsewhere - but
it appeared first in England, and reached its height there.
> ... It would be easy to split between public and mass, but I
> certainly don't think mass is an appropriate word in the UK setting
> and it has been relatively recently used in a similar context
> e.g. mass observation but that could equally have been used as
> public observation?
(you Brits are so refined in your politics - we just scream :)
It's often unclear what people mean by "public". Mills's definitions
have the benefit of clarity. According to his definitions, all modern
democracies are tempered by mass opinion, more or less passive and
manipulated; and not by public opinion, more or less active and
autonomous.
> I personally have been examining participation from the recent use of
> the word 'customer' by governments as opposed to 'citizen', which has
> been interestingly examined in a number of documents from Canada over
> the last dozen years and whether the emphasis on citizenship needs to
> return to encourage trust and participation?
You contrast the roles of:
* passive consumer of government services
* active citizen
But maybe the active citizen needs as much mistrust and opposition to
government, as trust and participation? Historically anyway, the
public sphere of active, private people was critical of government and
often in opposition to it. It was not a willing and cooperative
partnership. Though maybe it will be different, this time around -
there are reasons to think so.
> > ... All it takes is to employ our technology to undo certain
> > effects of the industrial revolution, of mass production, of mass
> > media - to undo the party system - and there we'll have it.
>
> I expected you to end that with an exclamation mark - if only it were
> that simple...
The image makes it sound impossible - to undo the effects of history
and run the experiment in reverse, like turning back the clock. But
there's a plausible approach to it. Rather than undoing the results
in *time*, we can undo them in *space*. So if history has closed off
the open spaces in which the public sphere once flourished, then all
we need to "undo history" is to re-open those spaces. All we need, in
other words, is an architectural approach.
With an architectural approach, we can easily deal with the mass
media. In a mass medium, (1) the few speak and the many listen. At
the same time (2) it is difficult or impossible to answer back. The
structural opposite of a mass medium is a peer-to-peer medium. The
telephone is an example, another is email (or letter mail). Both
participants in a phone or email exchange are able to speak as equal
peers. But these are examples of private media, and we've had these
for long time.
Only recently (I suppose) do we we have examples of peer-to-peer media
that are public. One example is this mailing list. We respond to
each other person to person. At the same time, we have a wider
audience of subscribers and Web readers, any one of whom is free to
jump in and reply, with a posting of his or her own. So this and
other kinds of public, peer-to-peer media are very much the "undoing"
of mass media. With them, we've already solved half of the
engineering problem.
Mass production has a several aspects to deal with. Maybe we only
need to touch on one of them - a pattern of mass *consumption* with
respect to government (your own interest, and also covered by the
author). In the modern pattern, we consume government services much
like we consume industrial products. Maybe that is why some of us
expect to be offered a functioning public sphere, as a kind of
government service.
Then again, parliament was once the institutional embodiment of the
public sphere, in direct confrontation with the authorities. Maybe
that is where we get the notion of a public sphere in connection with
the government? But parliament no longer serves that role. It no
longer speaks for the public sphere - there is none - instead it has
come to speak for the political parties. The parties themselves *are*
the authorities - the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of government - and
they use parliament as a stage on which to represent themselves
(according to the author) in a mass, formal spectacle. The real
business of the parties takes place behind the scenes, in
parliamentary committees and so forth. In light of this, we need to
answer Mills's remaining points. We need to engineer a public space
for discussion that:
... (3) readily finds an outlet in effective action, even against -
if necessary - the prevailing system of authority. And (4)
authoritative institutions do not penetrate the public, which is
thus more or less autonomous in its operation.
These requirements are not difficult to meet, if we stick with an
architectural approach. What are the forces that could act (if
necessary) in opposition to a government? I know of only three that
are fundamental:
* power
* money
* consensus
Their effectiveness depends on the scale of application. All three
are equally effective, but only consensus can be generated by
discussion in open spaces - and then, only if power and money are kept
out. So these are the design constraints:
a) open space, shot with frameworks to support consensus formation
b) no entry, no handholds for power and other steering media
That is all we need. If we build it, the public sphere will return.
Hi Mick, It's interesting to have this discussion across so many territories, with different experiences of democracy and difficult to do it without getting caught up in semantics. However, you have really intrigued me with this line: "Then again, parliament was once the institutional embodiment of the public sphere, in direct confrontation with the authorities" Which parliament are you referring to? I can't think of a period when the UK parliament has been the institutional embodiment of the public sphere. (Though at its best is may have aspired to be). Equally I can't think of a time when the Parliament did not largely represent the country's various authorities -whether due to the prevalence of wealthy landowners in both houses or those with religious power in the Lords. I'm not really too convinced by the public/mass dichotomy either. I like the idea of public as it's set out here, but in practice some people prefer to express their opinions (regardless of quality) and some prefer to keep their own council or only talk to one or 2 people in private. I think that's human nature. I think we should design systems to be useful to both types of people. Otherwise we are trying to change people to fit the system (which represents our idea of how they should behave). -Ella Ella Taylor-Smith International Teledemocracy Centre Napier University 10 Colinton Road Edinburgh, EH10 5DT Telephone: +44 (0) 131 455 2392 Fax: +44 (0) 131 455 2282 Email: <email obscured> http://itc.napier.ac.uk Napier University is the best modern university in Scotland and 5th in the UK. (Guardian University Guide 2009) This message is intended for the addressee(s) only and should not be read, copied or disclosed to anyone else outwith the University without the permission of the sender. It is your responsibility to ensure that this message and any attachments are scanned for viruses or other defects. Napier University does not accept liability for any loss or damage which may result from this email or any attachment, or for errors or omissions arising after it was sent. Email is not a secure medium. Email entering the University's system is subject to routine monitoring and filtering by the University. Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC018373
I know that providing links may seem a bit blunt compared with the debate on the public sphere here, but I do think that the two best bits of empirical academic work done anywhere in our sphere of work remain: Hampton & Wellman's seminal and beautifully constructed study on the impact of an aspect of the internet on a variety of social cohesion metrics: http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/475 Resnick & Garrett's Pew study on the political knowledge of on vs offline news followers: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Political_Info_Report.pdf I'm always looking for work on the net of this elegance and focus, and if people can post more to this thread I'll be extremely grateful. I'm afraid that even as a mostly-philosophy graduate I think that what academic study of the net needs at the moment is more well constructed, data driven experiments less media-studies flavoured pundits. best, Tom 2008/7/21 Taylor-Smith, Ella <<email obscured>>:
Ella I think we haev confusion between Michael & Mick. That statement was by Michael - I don't recall England having been quite so anarchistic -even during Cromwellian times the Levellers sidn't get a look in! I also agree with you view of it as aspirational and that we do get a lot of people sat in the background. Its perhaps a split btween the neophiles and neophobes and the can'tbearsed. Mick http://greatemancipator On Jul 21 2008, Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote: Hi Mick, It's interesting to have this discussion across so many territories, with different experiences of democracy and difficult to do it without getting caught up in semantics. However, you have really intrigued me with this line: "Then again, parliament was once the institutional embodiment of the public sphere, in direct confrontation with the authorities" Which parliament are you referring to? I can't think of a period when the UK parliament has been the institutional embodiment of the public sphere. (Though at its best is may have aspired to be). Equally I can't think of a time when the Parliament did not largely represent the country's various authorities -whether due to the prevalence of wealthy landowners in both houses or those with religious power in the Lords. I'm not really too convinced by the public/mass dichotomy either. I like the idea of public as it's set out here, but in practice some people prefer to express their opinions (regardless of quality) and some prefer to keep their own council or only talk to one or 2 people in private. I think that's human nature. I think we should design systems to be useful to both types of people. Otherwise we are trying to change people to fit the system (which represents our idea of how they should behave). -Ella Ella Taylor-Smith International Teledemocracy Centre Napier University 10 Colinton Road Edinburgh, EH10 5DT Telephone: +44 (0) 131 455 2392 Fax: +44 (0) 131 455 2282 Email: <email obscured> http://itc.napier.ac.uk Napier University is the best modern university in Scotland and 5th in the UK. (Guardian University Guide 2009) This message is intended for the addressee(s) only and should not be read, copied or disclosed to anyone else outwith the University without the permission of the sender. It is your responsibility to ensure that this message and any attachments are scanned for viruses or other defects. Napier University does not accept liability for any loss or damage which may result from this email or any attachment, or for errors or omissions arising after it was sent. Email is not a secure medium. Email entering the University's system is subject to routine monitoring and filtering by the University. Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC018373
Hi Mick/Michael sorry for the name mix-up Ella Taylor-Smith International Teledemocracy Centre Napier University 10 Colinton Road Edinburgh, EH10 5DT Telephone: +44 (0) 131 455 2392 Fax: +44 (0) 131 455 2282 Email: <email obscured> http://itc.napier.ac.uk Napier University is the best modern university in Scotland and 5th in the UK. (Guardian University Guide 2009) This message is intended for the addressee(s) only and should not be read, copied or disclosed to anyone else outwith the University without the permission of the sender. It is your responsibility to ensure that this message and any attachments are scanned for viruses or other defects. Napier University does not accept liability for any loss or damage which may result from this email or any attachment, or for errors or omissions arising after it was sent. Email is not a secure medium. Email entering the University's system is subject to routine monitoring and filtering by the University. Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC018373
Ella wrote:
>
> Which parliament are you referring to? I can't think of a period
> when the UK parliament has been the institutional embodiment of the
> public sphere. (Though at its best is may have aspired to
> be). Equally I can't think of a time when the Parliament did not
> largely represent the country's various authorities -whether due to
> the prevalence of wealthy landowners in both houses or those with
> religious power in the Lords.
(I hope I don't distort this, by summarizing it.)
This happened roughly two centuries ago. Owing to certain rule
changes, the House of Commons was extending itself a little further
into society. There it came into contact with the public sphere. The
rule changes included a lifting of restrictions on the publication of
parliamentary proceedings. These proceedings began to appear in the
press.
The exclusion of the public from the parliamentary deliberations
could no longer be maintained at a time in which "Memory" Woodfall
was able to make the Morning Chronicle into the leading London daily
paper because he could reproduce verbatim sixteen columns of
parliamentary speeches without taking notes in the gallery of the
House of Commons, which was prohibited. A place for journalists in
the gallery was officially provided by the Speaker only in the year
1803; for almost a century they had to gain entry illegally. But
only in the House of Parliament newly constructed after the fire of
1834 were stands for reporters installed - two years after the first
Reform Bill had transformed Parliament, for a long time the target
of critical comment by public opinion, into the very organ of this
opinion.
(Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.)
The newspapers at the time were unlike their modern counterparts.
They weren't so much the business of a publisher, and they weren't
under the tight control of an editor. They were more like independent
blogs or mash-ups. So it happened that the public opinion, in the
form of critical correspondence and commentary, came to be printed
alongside the Parliamentary deliberations.
The Reform Bill also extended the Commons by enlargement of the
franchise. This brought a larger proportion of the middle class into
the electorate. At the same time, nascent political parties had been
forming. They were almost the opposite of modern parties - they were
a constellation of numerous small groups, without any central control
or discipline, and they tended to form around individual MPs,
candidates, or prominent people. The members of these little parties
met frequently, discussed the latest news, and expressed their views.
So Parliament and the public sphere came together along these
channels. At their intersection, they confronted the authorities of
the establishment - the landed aristrocracy, the merchant monopolies,
the King and his ministers. It was not "anarchy" (as someone
suggested), but it wasn't business as usual either. People were fired
up. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was bitterly fought, for
example, and it hit the land owners and merchants hard.
> I'm not really too convinced by the public/mass dichotomy either. I
> like the idea of public as it's set out here, but in practice...
It's true that Mills's polarization of "public" and "mass" is
something of an invention. But I think it's a useful one. It's like
the two lenses of a stereoscope - it provides a contrast of
perspectives. If the tool is used properly, it can reveal features
that are otherwise hidden. It won't work to focus it on the current
practice alone, for instance. It needs a dimension of historical
change (then and now) as introduced in Habermas's study; or of
technical possibilities (this and that) as I have been trying to
describe (my punditry, as someone said).
Maybe this dichotomy can contribute to answering Steven's question
too. I doubt that e-democracy is going to uphold the status quo -
it's almost certain to bring changes. So maybe the best way to avoid
the fate of becoming "e-waste" is to view the alternatives with a
critical eye.
> ... some people prefer to express their opinions (regardless of
> quality) and some prefer to keep their own council or only talk to
> one or 2 people in private. I think that's human nature. I think
> we should design systems to be useful to both types of people.
> Otherwise we are trying to change people to fit the system (which
> represents our idea of how they should behave).
I agree. Your points apply especially to the design of the human
interfaces. The public sphere is necessarily a "public of private
people", a place where the two come to meet. The historical context
is interesting, because the author situates the original institution
of the public sphere, not in Parliament, but in the salons of the
middle-class families. It was there that the private and the public
came to meet.
Hi, A public without women then. (No offence Michael - it's a problem with Habermas, that women are not considered necessary for a public sphere) -Ella Ella Taylor-Smith International Teledemocracy Centre Napier University 10 Colinton Road Edinburgh, EH10 5DT Telephone: +44 (0) 131 455 2392 Fax: +44 (0) 131 455 2282 Email: <email obscured> http://itc.napier.ac.uk Napier University is the best modern university in Scotland and 5th in the UK. (Guardian University Guide 2009) This message is intended for the addressee(s) only and should not be read, copied or disclosed to anyone else outwith the University without the permission of the sender. It is your responsibility to ensure that this message and any attachments are scanned for viruses or other defects. Napier University does not accept liability for any loss or damage which may result from this email or any attachment, or for errors or omissions arising after it was sent. Email is not a secure medium. Email entering the University's system is subject to routine monitoring and filtering by the University. Napier University is a registered Scottish charity. Registration number SC018373
Michael Allan > Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 10:13 AM
> This happened roughly two centuries ago.
<cut>
> These proceedings began to appear in the press.
But what proportion of the population could then read? Or have access to the
newspapers?
We have undoubtedly made progress since then, but last night a Channel 4
documentary stated that 5 million adults in the UK could
not read or write. That is 10% of the adult population of the UK, all excluded
from access to written information, in 2008. Maybe
they get their "political" information (sensu lato) from watching television.
But if they cannot read and write, they almost
certainly don't vote in any public elections. Do they participate
(effectively) in other ways?
Can these 5 million adults use computers? Do they use computers? Maybe they
can and do, to gather information from on-line videos?
Implications for eDemocracy, eParticipation?
James Gilmour
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18:36
Michael wrote (in response to Mick):
> You contrast the roles of:
* passive consumer of government services
* active citizen
> But maybe the active citizen needs as much mistrust and opposition to
> government, as trust and participation? Historically anyway, the
> public sphere of active, private people was critical of government and
> often in opposition to it. It was not a willing and cooperative
> partnership. Though maybe it will be different, this time around -
> there are reasons to think so.
Without having read it, I think that's probably a misinterpretation of Mick's
work. Customer versus citizen is not passive versus active. On the contrary,
customer-based relationships can be extremely active, both in commerce and in
public services. The growing use of personal budgets in health and social care,
for example, is an example of a customer-based relationship which
invites/demands service users to become proactive, even creative, in how they
spend their benefits. It's essentially an individualised relationship with the
state, but it could be argued that this type of consumerist democracy still
constitutes what Eriksen calls a general public sphere of consumers,
'co-deciding' (in the current jargon) about public policy outcomes through
their spending decisions.
Citizenship in the type of deliberative democracy you are proposing actually
often tends to manifest itself in smaller, 'strong publics' - in different
segments of the public sphere, which act as policy networks, project teams,
communities of critical reflection (like this one!) or oppositional/subaltern
enclaves.
But why set up an opposition between the roles of customer and citizen? Can't
we do/be both?
You might be interested in the following references:
Bovaird, T. (2005) ‘Public governance: balancing stakeholder power in a network
society’, International Review of Administrative Sciences 71(2): 217-28.
Eriksen, E. (2007) ‘Conceptualising European public spheres. General, segmented
and strong publics’ in Fossum, J. & Schlesinger, P. (eds.) The European Union
and the public sphere: a communicative space in the making? London: Routledge:
23-43.
Simon Smith
Simon
Thanks (also for references). You clarified my position but where I am
getting to is the consumerisation of the citizen. In the context you
describe that is perfect but there is a tendency for politicians or
their servants to label them as customers without giving them a choice!
Simon Smith wrote:
> it could be argued that this type of consumerist democracy still
> constitutes what Eriksen calls a general public sphere of consumers,
> 'co-deciding' (in the current jargon) about public policy outcomes through
> their spending decisions
but that's in contrast to most public services, where customers/consumers don't
make any spending decisions, and it's not obvious how the decisions they can
make influence spending. It's more like the private sector, where customers'
spending decisions at the supermarket or the car showroom have a direct
influence on issues like fair trade, retail location and climate change which
might be considered matters of public policy. Often the individual decisions
made in those contexts are in conflict with the policy approach that
democratically chosen representatives decide.
Maybe the consumerisation of citizens is not so much a ploy by politicians and
their servants to reduce opposition to their authority, more a retreat (both by
citizens themselves, and by politicians and their servants) from democratic
mechanisms that aren't perceived as working to market mechanisms that are; or
from a situation that exposes conflicts between individual and collective
interests, to one that hides the conflicts within individual choices.
Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote:
>
> A public without women then. (No offence Michael - it's a problem
> with Habermas, that women are not considered necessary for a public
> sphere)
Do you mean - not considered necessary by the authorities? By those
who wrote the electoral rules? They wouldn't have considered my vote
necessary, either. I'm working class, and I couldn't have passed the
means test.
To hell with them! I'm educated, so I would have been an honourary
member of the middle class - so would you, on that basis - and from
there to the public sphere. If you could read and write, then you
were in. Letter writing, for example, was all the rage. People
poured themselves into their correspondence. Letter collections were
published to a wide readership. The first novels were in letter form.
Many of the novelists were women, and some of them were great artists,
such as George Eliot. Her books were *talked* about, and had
political influence.
> But what proportion of the population could then read? Or have
> access to the newspapers?
It was small by today's standards, but it was growing fast.
> ... 10% of the adult population of the UK, all excluded from access
> to written information, in 2008. Maybe they get their "political"
> information (sensu lato) from watching television. But if they
> cannot read and write, they almost certainly don't vote in any
> public elections. Do they participate (effectively) in other ways?
> .. Can these 5 million adults use computers? Do they use computers?
> Maybe they can and do, to gather information from on-line videos?
> Implications for eDemocracy, eParticipation?
I think the solutions will be partly technical, and partly social.
Some voting mechanisms are very open. The one I'm working with can be
used, in theory, even by small children and the mentally infirm,
allowing them to contribute positively (net improvement of decision
quality). Work still needs to be done to make that a reality.
On the social side, maybe people will take the influence they gain
from e-democracy and turn it to improving the situation for those who
are less fortunate. I cannot imagine that anyone would *choose* to be
illiterate, or that others would want to *keep* them so. I think that
people in the future will take a lesson from their ancestors - those
who built the last public sphere. Didn't they also build the modern
world? They had ingenuity, and a kind of power. But they also had
compassion.
Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the
steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them:
it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.
(George Eliot, "Adam Bede", 1859.)
An interesting exchange all around.
Michael Allan wrote:
I cannot imagine that anyone would *choose* to be
illiterate, or that others would want to *keep* them so.
My comment:
Education can be dangerous. Dictatorships might limit or at least not
prioritize education because the more knowledgeable the individual the greater
the likelihood he/she might contest the system politically in the future. The
large percentage of illiterate Portuguese at the time of the April 24, 1974
military coup that overthrew the dictatorship is an example. Even most of
those that were literate had only the most basic education (4 years of primary
school).
Carlos Cunha
>>> Michael Allan <<email obscured>> 07/23/08 6:56 AM >>>
Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote:
>
> A public without women then. (No offence Michael - it's a problem
> with Habermas, that women are not considered necessary for a public
> sphere)
Do you mean - not considered necessary by the authorities? By those
who wrote the electoral rules? They wouldn't have considered my vote
necessary, either. I'm working class, and I couldn't have passed the
means test.
To hell with them! I'm educated, so I would have been an honourary
member of the middle class - so would you, on that basis - and from
there to the public sphere. If you could read and write, then you
were in. Letter writing, for example, was all the rage. People
poured themselves into their correspondence. Letter collections were
published to a wide readership. The first novels were in letter form.
Many of the novelists were women, and some of them were great artists,
such as George Eliot. Her books were *talked* about, and had
political influence.
> But what proportion of the population could then read? Or have
> access to the newspapers?
It was small by today's standards, but it was growing fast.
> ... 10% of the adult population of the UK, all excluded from access
> to written information, in 2008. Maybe they get their "political"
> information (sensu lato) from watching television. But if they
> cannot read and write, they almost certainly don't vote in any
> public elections. Do they participate (effectively) in other ways?
> .. Can these 5 million adults use computers? Do they use computers?
> Maybe they can and do, to gather information from on-line videos?
> Implications for eDemocracy, eParticipation?
I think the solutions will be partly technical, and partly social.
Some voting mechanisms are very open. The one I'm working with can be
used, in theory, even by small children and the mentally infirm,
allowing them to contribute positively (net improvement of decision
quality). Work still needs to be done to make that a reality.
On the social side, maybe people will take the influence they gain
from e-democracy and turn it to improving the situation for those who
are less fortunate. I cannot imagine that anyone would *choose* to be
illiterate, or that others would want to *keep* them so. I think that
people in the future will take a lesson from their ancestors - those
who built the last public sphere. Didn't they also build the modern
world? They had ingenuity, and a kind of power. But they also had
compassion.
Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the
steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them:
it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.
(George Eliot, "Adam Bede", 1859.)
I've drafted up some of the research questions/topics to share at the EDem2008
conference in Krebs next Monday.
These are some of the things that as a "practitioner" I am interested in seeing
research that helps shape effective action in the field.
Do you like any of them?
Steven Clift
Research Questions/Topics - 20 Questions.
1. Time use studies - Where are people (and different types of people) actually
spending their time online/on-screen? Insights would be much more useful than
just what people are clicking on regularly or have done once or regularly.
Governments et al continue to underestimate the value of e-mail and have little
understanding of the preciousness of an actual "citizen" site visitor .
2. How do you design personalized information services about politics and
government that people will find useful?
3. Is Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn etc. building a sense of "public life" -
bridging social capital? Does it manifest itself in local communities? Are
there blocks/barriers that keep networking oriented to private/business life?
4. Civic/government video on-demand via cable television, Tivo access, etc.
advantages/possibilities versus computer/Internet-only.
5. How does one have the greatest influence on open source projects in terms of
introducing social good goals? Can you gain support for integrating geographic
support against the expectation that the Internet is global and helps one
escape place?
6. We need broad baseline representative survey that moves beyond Internet use
in elections or political news seeking to participation in governance,
community building, neighbor to neighbor connection etc. -
7. With Issues Forums and other local e-democracy "interventions" we
longitudinal starting point surveys on general population/participant/former
partiticipant online political activities/trust in government/civic
desires/forum expectations/etc. that allow comparisons before and after
interventions.
8. Cost-benefit analysis - With limited funding, what can a community get out
of 10,000 Euros, 100,000 Euros, 1,000,000 Euros - what creates the most value
now, what investments lower costs for next generation activities.
9. Research on government staffing and budget allocations to e-democracy
activities. Does a government have staff assigned to provide e-democracy
services? If yes, how many and where are they positioned? Does a government
have a "democracy portal" (or website section) and do public participation
staff (if they exist) or public information (PR) staff maintain that
directory/content? Compare governments to other governments, per capita
spending on e-democracy. Allowances for parliamentary/executive structural
differences would be required.
10. Interview those in power anonymously about their real attitudes toward
public participation and e-democracy opportunities. Would they allocate
resources (how much) to provide personalized notification of new
decision-making content even if it would provide the public timely access and
potentially reduce their power? Quantitative and qualitative surveys of elected
officials and civil servants.
11. Compare the legal frameworks and recent law/rule changes that require the
use of the Internet for greater government transparency, openness,
consultation, etc. Identify what brought about those changes (election
promises, agency proposals, citizen lobbying, etc.) and draft model legislation
with policy options clearly laid out.
12. Identify the resistance points to timely and deep online access to
decision-making information and public meeting documents - before, during, and
after meeting.
13. What is the impact of timely information access - some before and after
research.
14. Estonia. Estonia. Estonia. The document register, e-cabinet, x-road, TID,
consultation portal, etc. - dig in and provide analysis of who, what, when,
why, where, usage, and lessons.
15. Open source opportunities for e-democracy. What are the twenty top
candidates for e-democracy tool creation of mutual interest by
governments/civil society/media? Compare potential costs and sustainability of
new stand alone tools versus creating modules for use with leading open source
content management systems.
16. What is the path to direct legislative, etc. database sharing in XML from
government to third parties? Why do groups like MySociety (UK), GovTrack (US),
etc. need to "scrape" legislative data from websites to convert into XML for
others instead of direct real-time government provision? Related question -
Most local governments do not have legislative information systems like
national and regional parliaments. Design a prototype local legislative
(decision-making) system and open standards.
17. What are the best models for parliamentary/legislative
technology/information staff to work together to advance online services -
vision, staffing, future features? What features do these inside leader
see/seek to develop and how can they be supported?
18. Compare opportunities for public investment in public interest content and
interactivity online with and beyond the confines public broadcasting. Compare
public broadcasters, major media/news web 2.0/e-democracy/e-participation
strategies and approaches within and across countries.
19. Analyze citizen-based "local-up" uses of online tools and models for
political participation.Document success/failure factors.
20. Model a system that provide yearly distribution of 10 Euros/Dollar per
capita from government in your country to support civil society and multi-level
government e-democracy/public interest online content/interactivity/servces.
Design a mechanism that distributes those resources and provides for
accountability and the leveraging of experience, technology, and project
accountability.
Steven Clift wrote:
> I've drafted up some of the research questions/topics to share...
> Do you like any of them?
>
> 19. Analyze citizen-based "local-up" uses of online tools and models
> for political participation.Document success/failure factors.
We in the grassroots vote for this one.
I guess we're happy with any list that extends far enough to include
us. Number 19 is OK. We know we're on the periphery...