Local youth e-democracy, case Vaikuttamo (2005)

1. The Social and Political Impact of Virtual Communities –
The Vaikuttamo Case: a Successful Community Serving Local Youth e-democracy
Kosonen Miia
Lappeenranta University of Technology
Department of Business Administration
Telecom Business Research Center
P.O.Box 20
Lappeenranta, 53851-FINLAND
Phone +358 50 586 2853
Fax +358 5 621 6699
E-mail miia.kosonen@lut.fi
Cavén-Pöysä Outi
Lappeenranta University of Technology
Telecom Business Research Center
P.O.Box 20
Lappeenranta, 53851-FINLAND
Phone +358 50 554 3633
Fax +358 5 621 6699
E-mail outi.caven@lut.fi
Blomqvist Kirsimarja
Lappeenranta University of Technology
Department of Business Administration
Telecom Business Research Center
P.O.Box 20
Lappeenranta, 53851-FINLAND
Phone +358 40 755 1693
Fax +358 5 621 6699
E-mail kirsimarja.blomqvist@lut.fi

2. The Social and Political Impact of Virtual Communities –
The Vaikuttamo Case: a Successful Community Serving Local Youth e-democracy
ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the social and political impact of virtual communities. It provides
readers with a successful case study of Finland’s first web-based arena and virtual
community serving the local youth e-democracy. The “Vaikuttamo” (Impact) case study
shows how the virtual community was developed and why it has succeeded well in this
challenging field. The article focuses in particular on the development process and the
decisions made at different stages in the life cycle of the community, and their impact on the
success. The key strengths of Vaikuttamo proved to be locality, trustful relationships, close
ties with schools and active maintenance outside the community.
E-DEMOCRACY AND YOUNG PEOPLE
E-democracy, digital democracy and e-government are all phenomena thatare developing
together with ICT sector growth and rapid public-service development processes.
Governments, at least in the Nordic countries, have strongly supported change in the
Information Society and in electronic services. From a broad perspective the change is not
only about transferring the services onto the Internet and making them reachable via different
network infrastructures: it is more a question of profound strategic change in public-sector
services overall, and a new kind of “virtual” citizenship. Support for traditional political
participation will come fromtechnology, on-line information, 24-hour discussion groups and
local virtual arenas such as municipality web sites. (Grönlund, 2003; Hacker & van Dijk,
2000)
Participation, voting and, especially, youth empowerment are important activities for building
up the Information Society. Voting rates have declined during the last few years in both local
and government elections in Finland. Similar results have also been reported also from other
European countries (Macintosh et al, 2003). Surprisingly, large groups of young people have
totally rejected participation in political elections. This has been seen as a strong sign of the
possible destruction of the welfare state, and also a major threat to Western democracy.
Participation in elections of people from all social groups, from different geographical areas
and from all age groups has been seen as the most powerful way of committing citizens to the
costs and delivery ideology of Nordic welfare-state services.
The traditional decision making in the public sector has been strongly in the domain of the
professionals, and it has been implemented in top-down official hierarchies. Elements such as
formal politics, administration and civil society are all in a process of transformation. At the
same time, emerging technology enables citizens to obtain and actively use all kinds of public
information. Information Society rules and regulations have to be rewritten quickly –
especially as young people start using the participation channels actively. Today’s youth is
familiar with virtual realities in the form of avatars or different kinds of virtual features, and
knows how to remain unidentified if necessary.
YOUNG PEOPLE AND VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
Virtual communities have recentlyaroused interest in research and in the literature. These
communities are characterized by the fact that their members meet and interact mostly

3. through the use of computer-mediated communication. It is important to see how virtual
communities are located at the boundary between formal organizations and social groups that
exist, despite the absence of procedural and institutional authority.
There are different interpretations of how people act in virtual communities. On the one hand,
they are said to do just about everything people do in real life, and on the other it is claimed
that virtual communities are likely to change our experience of the real world. People believe
that the members of these online communities leave their bodies behind and migrate to a
virtual realm. Such communities are characterized in the literature by four central features.
Firstly, most of the members will never meet face to face, yet nearly all of themcarry an
image of their community in their minds. Secondly, the communities are supposed to be
sovereign and free from the interference of outsiders. Thirdly, they and their members seem to
carry the idea of horizontal comradeship, although most of themare unequal and the members
exploit each other. Finally, they are believed to be limited, although even the largest ones
have boundaries with other communities – meaning people belong to several communities at
the same time. (Slevin, 2002)
When public-sector officials started to build up virtual arenas for young people, they also
started to support a new kind of interaction and new kinds of processes and relations between
young citizens and adults, including parents, teachers and politicians. How do you recognize
trust and psychological group dynamics, and how do yousupport all the different dynamics in
the virtual world of youth? Earlier research has emphasized the critical role of trust in most
arenas involving social interaction, e.g., communication, commitment and collaboration
(Blomqvist, 1997, 2002). According to the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, trust may be
the most effective means of decreasing social complexity (Luhmann, 1995). It has also been
identified as critical in the evolution of virtual collaboration (Järvenpää & Leidner, 1998) and
virtual communities (Castelfranchi & Tan, 2002).
Face-to-face interaction, as well as character and cultural similarity, are known to build trust
naturally. Virtual arenas and collaboration between asymmetric actors make the natural
evolution of trust challenging. Castelfranchi & Tan (2002) list four potential types of trust in
computer-mediated interaction: trust in the environment and the infrastructure, trust in the
one’s own agent and mediating agents, trust in one’s potential partners, and trust in the
authorities.
THE VAIKUTTAMO CASE
A new kind of e-democracy community for young people – based on locality, learning
and influence
The following case is an example of a virtual arena for youth built up by the public sector.
The objective of the Vaikuttamo project is to encourage young people to express their
opinions on the local matters that concern them. The development team was the first in
Finland to create an active web-based arena and virtual community, www.vaikuttamo.net, to
serve the local youth e-democracy. The case study shows how Vaikuttamo was developed and
why it has succeeded well in this challenging field.
Background

4. Vaikuttamo is a part of a project called “Students as a local influence”, being carried out in
the region of Hämeenlinna, southern Finland. It is primarily aimed at young people between
13 and 20 years of age. The size of an average youth age group in the city of Hämeenlinna is
about 620 (31st
December 2002 statistics), which means the target audience of Vaikuttamo
totals about 3,700. The main contributors are local schools and the Media Centre, which is
coordinating the project. The Media Centre is funded by the European Union and its aim is to
promote know-how related to information technology in the region of Hämeenlinna. The
parties involved and the procedures adopted in the project are presented in Figure 1.
The project started in autumn 2001 and the first version of www.vaikuttamo.net was
published on 27th
March 2002. Vaikuttamo was awarded the prize for the best e-learning
project of 2002 in the Eschola contest, and received the quality award for virtual schools from
the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Education in April 2003.
V A I K U T T A M O
School
Students
Teachers
Youth
Officials
M E D I A C E N T R E
Discussion
Forums
Learning
materialsProjects
Editing
Figure 1. The structure of Vaikuttamo
Goals
The goals of the project are to promote young citizens’ willingness to participate in and
develop their own environment, to strengthen local e-democracy, and to create a virtual
culture of action between community officials and young people. A further aim is to develop
information-technology –based working procedures in schools in order to promote learning.
Vaikuttamo enhances young people’s knowledge of local democracy and offers different
ways of contributing. Students know their own rights and have a chance to influence local
matters. In particular, they become acquainted with electronic contributory channels, their
operational principles and netiquette. They are able to take a critical stance towards the
information presented in different media, they can use the software and hardware needed to
generate information, and they are able to utilize the media to present their own matters of
concern.
Content

5. Vaikuttamo can be used in schools both at the basic level in different subjects and at a deeper
level in students’ own projects. “The contributor of the week” and “Gallup” sections are
edited in turn by pupils at various schools and, at the same time, the topics are discussed in
the discussion forum. Table 1 categorizes the functionality of the site.
Table 1. The content of Vaikuttamo
Category Short description of the content
General 1. Background of the project
2. Information on the site editors
3. Search and feedback options
Guidelines 1. How to contribute: a short manual for participating
and influencing (letters to the editors, petitions, voting,
demonstrations)
2. Media: how to use the public media as a means of
influence
Information 1. Our town: overview and history, information on
community services, finance and decision-making
2. Under watch –list: communal decision-making
matters that concern young people
3. Calendar view: current events
4. Students’ unions in schools
Interaction 1. Speaker’s corner: discussion forum, several
categories
2. Real-time chats with officials
Pupils’ own contributions 1. Stories from youth to youth: school, town, their own
country and the world, archives also available
2. ”The contributor of the week” and “The player of
the month”: a person or a group of persons being
interviewed, archives also available
3. Projects and video clips: produced by the young
people, around various topics
4. Gallup
Links Among others: the site of the local youth forum,
the “Moodle” learning environment
The Development Process
Key questions in the early stages of community development include: for what purpose will
the community be developed, how will its Web site be implemented, how are its usability and
social mechanisms being planned, how are the end users’ needs evaluated in advance, and
what kind of discussion forums and other functions should the site include. (Preece, 2000)
Later, once the community has been introduced, key questions may include: how many
users/members does it already have, what kind of user roles have turned up, how feedback
and suggestions will be collected from users and what kind of feedback has already been
given, how behavior in the community will be controlled and how administrators will deal
with dysfunctional behavior. In the case of Vaikuttamo, the project team was asked to assess

6. both of these sets of questions, and the development work in general, including its strengths
and weaknesses.
The Planning Phase
The history of Vaikuttamo goes back to the year 2000. Only one third of young people voted
in the municipal election, and this fostered the idea of a new channel of influence and
participation. The idea started to take shape in autumn 2001. The project manager introduced
the basics of the concept to local officials and to a local media company, Ambientia Corp.
The officials supported the idea right from the beginning, and the project manager was able to
develop strong ties with local schools and teachers because he had a position as history and
civics teacher.
The costs of the project were evaluated during autumn 2001, and some meetings were held
with the local youth forum. There was no systematic need assessment with them, because the
project manager rather wanted to inform others about his original idea. The concept was such
a new one that there were hardly any models or examples available in Finland or elsewhere.
Thus defining the purpose and assessing the needs, the first phase of the development process,
was carried out inside the development team without end-user participation. The project
proceeded quite rapidly because the manager had a clear vision of the result. Interaction in the
development team gave the final shape to the Vaikuttamo entity.
The next phase of the development process involved the installation of the web pages, and the
web arena was built during January-February, 2002. The first concrete action was a
competition to give a name to the arena. At first the pages were called Speaker’s Corner
(discussion forum), but this was changed later to Vaikuttamo. There was hardly any technical
planning in this phase: most of the work involved the content of different sections. There are
two types of discussion forum, a bulletin-board system called Speaker’s Corner and a real-
time chat site. Both of these are simple basic applications, which are innovative only in the
way in which they are used.
The main theme in the usability planning was simplicity and an emphasis on the division of
the different sections of the content. Because the team did not know whether the pages would
ever attract any users, Vaikuttamo had to be as easy to use as possible. Thus no registration
policies were included, for example. As the administrators mentioned, the new arena did not
arise from user interest or action: it was rather the case that the users were given some
“playground” and then the team just waited to see whether it attracted any interest. The first
version of the web pages was published in March 2002. In terms of the development process
this meant moving forward into a new phase, during which the users entered into the new
community.
Users and User Roles
The primary target group of Vaikuttamo is local youth between 13 and 20 years of age,
although, other target groups include teachers and local officials. By October 2003, the
project had engaged four grade schools, four upper-level schools and three senior-high
schools in Hämeenlinna. In addition to this, some schools from neighboring towns were also
involved.

7. On weekdays, there are 300 users on average, which is about eight per cent of all the youth in
this age group in Hämeenlinna. Even during the summer holidays there have been about 1200
users per week, which has surprised the administrators. Interesting conversation topics and
positive publicity in the media in particular promote the usage of Vaikuttamo. There have
been temporary “peaks” when the project has been given awards in different contests.
Vaikuttamo has about 10-20 active “heavy-users” who are able to use the new channel
fluently to express their opinions, interact and participate. They may also know each other
personally. User roles were evaluated as rather stereotypical: there are active participants,
observers and troublemakers. The administrators also mentioned one special user group,
“forced ones”, which use the arena because their teacher has told them to do so.
Assessment and Development
As in other virtual communities, Vaikuttamo’s development is a continuing process. No
separate sessions for assessing its functionality have yet been organized. Instead, most
feedback about possible problems and flaws has reached the administrators through the
discussions in Speaker’s corner, and has concerned technical problems or the moderating.
Above all, according to the young people, the officials have not taken a big enough part in the
conversations and this has caused some dissatisfaction among them.
The development of the Vaikuttamo community is reactive and based on the action itself, not
on separate questionnaires or interviews. There are two basic reasons for this: the
administrators feel there is only a very small group capable of giving reasonable ideas and
suggestions, and another problem is their age. Thus these ideas may be in the area of “Let’s
have more games”. Most of the development is based on the team’s own view, in adapting the
user interface, for example. Naturally, the administrators have observed the number of users
and the type of use. Speaker’s Corner and Contributor of the Week are among the most
popular pages. Action is cyclic: the community regularly becomes active and then again more
passive. The most important activating factor seems to be interesting discussion topics.
So far there has been a low incidence of troublemaking. On average, only about six to eight
messages are removed each week, in most cases due to the use of swear words or other kinds
of excesses in expressing opinions. Because the administrators actively follow the discussion,
these messages have not caused much damage. In their view, the basic reasons for the lack of
troublemaking may be the external control in the Media Centre, outside the community, and
the fact that the local youth have learned the purpose of its use. The administrators especially
emphasize the need to take the right attitude towards troublemaking: some people always act
obstructively and the whole community cannot be restricted just because of them. Thus user
registration will not be included in the community, at least at this stage of development.
According to the project team, the primary strength of the implementation is that the local
youth have found the arena. It is difficult to pinpoint why Vaikuttamo has succeeded in its
challenging task, but the team mentions the following:
1. Locality. Communities on the Web are typically based on interests, but in this case, a
more traditional model of community formation has developed. Cultural similarity can
help to create a more trusting environment.
2. Relationships. Vaikuttamo has found support in schools and among teachers because
the project manager had worked as a teacher.

8. 3. Control. Vaikuttamo has external control outside the community, in the Media Centre,
which takes care of the administration and moderation. This helps the community to
concentrate on relevant topics and to prevent dysfunction.
4. “Automatic membership”. When one age group leaves from school, another comes in
its place. On the other hand, membership is not based on free choice, as it should be in
democratic virtual communities. It is worth considering whether this kind of
community could flourish if it were totally voluntary.
The amount of information and material has been a problem for the first version of
Vaikuttamo. When the team planned and implemented the arena, they did not imagine that it
would grow so quickly. In terms of usability and planning, the team considered it an example
of the way things should not be done. Other drawbacks have been problems in following the
discussion, and the age range, which has been too wide. Young people of different ages are
interested in different topics. Therefore, the children’s own Vaikuttamo was eventually
implemented in October 2004. Moreover, discussion forums should be made easier to follow,
especially for the officials, and users should be able to find the most important topics from the
flow of information.
CONCLUSIONS
The Vaikuttamo development process has been experimental rather than strictly planned or
goal-oriented. This is due the nature of the new arena: the project team could not have known
whether a community would emerge at all. Moreover, exploration and experimentation are
needed for innovation (Miles et al, 2000). However, the process has included similar
developmental phases and decisions in terms of community purpose, target audience,
functionality and common policies as occur in any virtual community.
The reasons for Vaikuttamo’s success can be summarized as locality, strong ties with schools
and teachers, and external control from outside the community. Together they have enabled
Vaikuttamo to empower the local youth and to develop a positive feedback loop, where the
community becomes even stronger through its regular action. The most important area for
development is in securing the commitment of local officials. The team should be able to find
new tools and models to encourage officials to participate in electronic forums.
There are still only a few experiments in which both the youth culture and the official and
political decision-making culture meet in the same arena. This kind of e-democracy and
learning environment is still in its early stages. It is not only a question of the lack of
infrastructure, as there is also a lack of both knowledge and courage in terms of combining
formal and informal information, discussions and the empowerment of young citizens. Trust,
communication, a common language, and the willingness to understand young people’s needs
and their expression are keys to the development of an innovative Information Society.
The evolution of trust is a key to communication and collaboration between different sub-
cultures. In the Vaikuttamo case, the project manager had a boundary-spanning role. He had a
clear vision, and he was able to build trusting relationships with the authorities, active student
users and schoolteachers. Because of his background as a teacher he could understand the
needs of schoolteachers. It also seems that there was sufficient understanding of various
users’ (young people and teachers) needs, even if users did not participate in the development
as such. There also seemed to be sufficient trust in the infrastructure, the technology and the

9. users, but trust between young people and the authorities has yet to be developed. As a whole,
it seems that Vaikuttamo was accepted very well by the local youth, who felt it was their
arena. Even if the lack of involvement of the authorities was seen as a drawback, it may have
created the impression, that Vaikuttamo really is the place for the young.
In conclusion, it could be said that young people in the region have been active within the
project and have succeeded in making their voices heard better than before. The social impact
could be characterized as the new and even revolutionary way of empowering, activating and
encouraging citizens to engage in dialogue and develop shared welfare services. The political
impact could be enormous, especially if different political parties could see the wide
possibilities of direct virtual communication with citizens. This kind of development could be
the most important step after formal democracy process was taken into use in Western
countries. The best outcome would be that these new virtual services would support local
empowerment and foster a shared concern about the development of local communities in the
face of alienation and the negative effects of globalization.
Definitions of the Key Concepts
Virtual community
Virtual communities are “social aggregations that emerge when people carry out public
discussions on the Net long enough” (Rheingold, 2000). A virtual community could be
defined to “consist of people, policies, a shared purpose and information systems” (Preece,
2000, p. 10). Both definitions refer to socializing and networks built in cyberspace: this is
what virtual communities are primarily about. Moreover, they are based on members’ needs.
Trust
Trust is defined as “an actor's expectation of the other party's competence and goodwill”
(Blomqvist, 1997).
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