LIL-DEM stakeholder report released

Posted on October 3, 2017 by Bruce Ryan

Click the graphic to download the report

We are very pleased that we can release our report on the LIL-DEM project. This report is based on our initial examination of the data from a Scotland-wide online survey of community councillors. Please click the graphic on the left to access the report.

Over the next few weeks, we will explore some of the issues raised in this report, but for now we want to thank the 1300 community councillors who responded to the survey, the community councillors who helped publicise it, and the people who helped us refine the questions. (These include Improvement Service staff, colleagues here at Edinburgh Napier University’s Centre for Social Informatics, and some Edinburgh community councillors.)

new project: MIL-DEM

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Bruce Ryan

Lyndsey Jenkins

We are very pleased to say that we will soon start a new project. This project, called More Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement, will delve deeper into the data gathered in the IL-DEM project. It will run from the end of September to December 2017. We thank Edinburgh Napier University’s Research and Innovation Office for funding this project.

We are delighted to welcome Lyndsey Jenkins to this project. Her statistics expertise will greatly enhance our data-exploration and hence the outcomes from this project.

‘Practices of community representatives …’ presentation at i3 #i3rgu

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Bruce Ryan

Peter Cruickshank‘s presentation on our paper Practices of community representatives in exploiting information channels for citizen engagement is available from his slideshare site. This presentation, delivered at information: interactions and impact, was based on some of our work for the IL-DEM project. Peter discusses:

what community councils and who community councillors are; why they are interesting; how this motivates our research
a necessarily brief history of information literacy (IL); the recent-ish SCONUL model of IL; and Activity Theory (Wikipedia)
how we did the research; and our findings, set out in order of the SCONUL pillars:
- about how community councillors learn about their roles.
  - For example, it was noticeable how few stepped far from the information and training provided by local authorities. (There are issues with that – see the next blog post.)
- about how they keep up to date with local issues, and gather information on citizens’ opinions. (The latter is their main statutory duty.)
  - For example, planning to fill information gaps lacks rigour, and there are noticeable variations in information-gathering practices.
  - But information-gathering and sharing can help build much-needed social capital (Wikipedia)
how Activity Theory can help explain these ‘broken pillars’
some thoughts on IL as a measurement and explanation tool
some policy implications.

We are grateful to CILIP‘s Information Literacy Group for funding this research, and to the organisers of i3 for this opportunity to publicise our work.

PS: other Centre for Social Informatics presentations at i3 are showcased on Hazel Hall’s blog-post.

Napier research conference slides

Posted on June 21, 2017 by Bruce Ryan

Come and see our ‘digital poster’ at #NapRes17. ‘A tale of two models talks about our IL-DEM project

If you can’t make it, here are our slides.

LIL-DEM – examining our survey responses

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Bruce Ryan

The online survey for the second Information Literacy for Democratic Engagement project has been running for about three weeks now. We intend to keep it live for another week, so we can’t say anything about what community councillors have told us – yet! However, we can say there are some interesting patterns in how people tackled the survey.

As of Saturday (25th March) evening, 747 people had completed the survey. We want as many people as possible to take the survey, so if you’re a community councillor who hasn’t taken the survey yet, please click here. It may be slightly complex to complete all questions but it really should only take about 15 minutes, and you’ll be contributing to a major piece of work contributing to knowledge of practical ways to support community council work. If you’re not a community councillor, please pass on this link to any you know: https://survey.napier.ac.uk/n/LILDEM.aspx. Continue reading →

Community representatives and online communication

Posted on March 14, 2017 by Peter Cruickshank

Continuing to explore why people post in the face of no response. But maybe this is asking the wrong question – are lurkers an issue at all? Read on…

Spartakan

In previous research, we have observed the poor record of online engagement of community councils in Scotland, though I doubt this is issue is restricted only to this context. With some notable exceptions, Community Council online presences are characterised by low activity. Only around a quarter are actively online whether on Facebook or web, and even when there are high levels of primary postings, there is low secondary engagement in the form of comments or responses, never mind sustained online debate.

This has been characterised as “lurking”.

The question I am exploring at the moment is:

To what extent is a passive audience (lurking) an issue to community representatives when they are posting material online?

One question this raises is why so few citizens participate online. This has been one theme of (e-participation) research into online democratic processes since the field began at the start of the millennium. There has…

View original post 966 more words

Lurking and what leaders know about their invisible audience

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Peter Cruickshank

I’m thinking about how community leaders who post online can think about their audience – are the “just” lurkers? Is that a bad thing? (Of course, it turns out they can be seen as a good thing – find out why)

Spartakan

Let’s talk about something obvious: Leaders (for instance community councillors) share information online but the paradox is, that they often don’t get a visible response. Why do they do it then? What are their expectations of how the information they present will be used (eg a news item or a blog post)? In particular, why would a community councillor go to the bother of posting material online when there is demonstrably little chance anyone will comment on it?

Lurking is good

Lurking as been discussed since the beginning of internet forums at the start of the millennium, when “lurking” was defined as “…reading discussions on a board, newsgroup,… social networking site, listening to people in …[an] interactive system, but rarely or never participating actively” [8]

The leader to lurker framework: but what about other on- and off-line channels?

It has always been the case that the number in the audience…

View original post 1,063 more words

Community, Knowledge, Connections

Category Archives: Hyperlocal democracy