Social Media and Government:The Big(ger) Picture

Dr Axel BrunsAssociate Professor

ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and InnovationCreative Industries Faculty

Queensland University of Technologya.bruns@qut.edu.au

http://snurb.info/ – http://produsage.org/

Social Media

• Common characteristics:– Open participation:

self-selecting, self-managing communities

– Fluid organisation: leaders emerge from the community

– Ongoing processes: participants compete, improve on each other’s work

– Common property:shared ownership of community and its outcomes

(Image: http://flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/)

Success in Social Media Engagement

• Engaging with social media communities:1. Be open.

For users (access) and with users (transparency).

2. Seed community processes by providing content and tools.

Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation.

3. Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities.

Engage promising community leaders as they emerge.

4. Don’t exploit the community and its work.

Drawing on their ideas is fine, but respect and acknowledge users.

(Adapted from Bruns & Bahnisch. “Social Media: State of the Art.” Sydney: Smart Services CRC, 2009.)

(http://www.canada.com/technology/Facebook+vows+improvements+after+user+backlash/1426664/story.html)

What Platforms?

• Use existing platforms?– Potential to tap into established communities– Better word-of-mouth opportunities– Faster deployment possible– Users reassured by trusted third-party platform provider– But: loss of message / moderation control

• Build your own?– Longer development, but better feature / community control– Need for staff to seed and spruik community process– ‘Build it and they will come’ not guaranteed– Potential user mistrust of government as platform provider– But: no need to rely on third-party provider

Need to combine both in most cases:– e.g. own site for core information and specialist functionality,

mainstream social media site for community engagement and word of mouth– Provide framework and tools for users to build their own:

e.g. data.gov – offering government data for user mash-ups

What Communities?

• Individuals, community?– Participation in social media often motivated by peers:

• Viral word-of-mouth from friends• Implicit or explicit competition for best contributions• Friendly peer pressure to join the community From individual to communal ownership

• What kind of community?– Broad-based, inclusive:

• Widespread take-up difficult to achieve• Diverse communities harder to (self-) manage• But: more diversity of voices, more democratic model

– Specialist, selective:• Possibility to tap into existing groups• Users more committed and constructive• But: potentially elitist and exclusive model

(Archived version of first DBCDE blog post, http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/2009/july/future_directions_blog/topics/minister_tanners_welcome)

(Excerpt from comments to first DBCDE blog post, archived athttp://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/2009/july/future_directions_blog/topics/minister_tanners_welcome)

What relationships?

• Different models:– g2g:

• Internal services integration• Unified Web portal• Cost savings• Not necessarily desired by users

– g2c:• Better services delivery• Use of new communication technologies (Web, mobile)• One-on-one relationship with users

– c2c (or, g4c2c):• Government provision of community platforms• Creating self-managing communities• Devolving responsibility to users• Cost savings, greater community resilience

What Initiatives?

• Wide range of e-Government, e-Democracy ideas:– Need to clearly articulate government and project aims– Need to identify likely areas for early initiatives– Best to start with manageable areas:

• Specific topics, specific communities• Limited geographic focus at first?• Work with existing online communities?

– Survey projects and tools being developed elsewhere:• Government 2.0 Task Force• ePractice.eu service to share best practice in e-government• e-Democracy (EDEM) conference series, and Centre for e-Government• Council of Europe recommendations on e-democracy (with comprehensive list of

e-democracy tools) and Forum for the Future of Democracy• Modern Democracy magazine’s e-democracy roadmap

Where do we want to go from here?

(From Modern Democracy 1 (2009), pp. 8-9,http://www.e-voting.cc/static/evoting/files/ModernDemocracy_2009_01.pdf)