Blogging And Citizen Journalism
Came across this the other day in the way many of the best websites are found – randomly.
It’s a blog for Worcester, Massachusetts, covering lots of different issues for the area, but also covering, in a live blog style, what goes on at council meetings. Have said it before, but it often does take someone outside of an authority’s structure to explain and comment on proceedings that can otherwise seem bizarre from the outside in order to bring them to life in a meaningful and engaging way.
This blog for Worcester does that really well, seeming to keep things lively whilst not descending into one sided criticism (or for that matter one sided praise).
Whilst it’d be interesting to know how much impact and readership the blog has, it seems pretty clear that approaches like this have the potential to be really powerful in connecting people and politics, which is what this should all be about at the end of the day.
So, why doesn’t it happen more over here? It’s not the resources certainly, all you need is a free wordpress blog and some people with time and interest to run it. It seems hard to imagine that there aren’t one or two people in each UK local authority area who would have what was needed.
Personally, I think it’s probably down to the reason so many local e-democracy projects in the UK have fallen flat, the relationship between the authority and the residents. Rightly or wrongly, an attitude seems to exist that opening things up to the public in a meaningful way is just a recipe for trouble, or that people haven’t the capacity to understand the decision making processes, even if explained clearly. Whilst local residents are seen as ‘customers’, then there’s an unequal power relationship going on. In reality, they’re actually the employers of the council, or at very least its equal partners. In a true democracy, government is the people at the end of the day.
It’s a vicious circle that builds mistrust on both sides really, hard to break out of whilst it persists, but blogs like this could be just the thing to move things forward. Problem is, how do you encourage them?
Councils have little motive to due to the inherent mistrust or underestimation of the public that often exists. The local media has little motive to due to increased competition. The private sector isn’t going to push it to councils as there’s no money to be made from helping people set up basic blogs (or there shouldn’t be anyway). Government could promote it, but the view from government in this area tends again, like councils, to be a little patronising at times, thinking people will need reams of training courses, mentors and support to achieve something like this.
So, it’s left to the people themselves really to get this sort of thing going. It’s not difficult, and the cost / benefit equation is potentially awesome. Perhaps it’s a process that should be left to grow organically anyway. How do you promote people to speak independently without imposing an agenda on them?
Might come back to this issue, what do you think?
Just for the record…
I came across a site recently where a Northampton, Massachusetts Planning Committee meeting was videoed and put online (I think for the first time). I got sucked in somehow. What struck me most was the criticism afterwards someone made on the site about what they’d seen. Holding the committee accountable for their (lack of) procedural care. Basically the committee had put out an agenda for a public meeting but had actually spent most of the time debating a subject that hadn’t been on the agenda – which would just not have come to light through the official minutes. Consequence was that any one who had a interest in that subject would not have known to attend the meeting and take part in it.
As the videoing was obviously a new initiative, those on the committee clearly forgot about the camera and made a few rather injudicious comments about (unnamed) folk in the town or on other committees, which might have been lost in the minutes and would have therefore been ephemeral, but which are now preserved for playback! Courageously – and presumably for ethical reasons, these were left in (comments weren’t too harsh but in a small town, ouch!). At the end of the meeting the chair said ‘did you get all that’ – he’d obviously just remembered it was running. It sounds so dull but was fascinating as a study of personalities, small town politics, communications and the wired world and its effects. I’m going to have to tune in to the next episode to see how things resolve and whether the particpants behave differently (more aware of the camera) and whether they’ve sorted out the agenda issue / whether more people turn up to the meetings! But only one more episode. I’m not that sad.
30 Jan 2009 at 12:36 am