This report was created by Yasmin Fodil and Anna York for their Harvard Kennedy School masters thesis, and looks at the use of social media to enhance civic participation in the United States and the United Kingdom in order to make recommendations to U.S. federal agencies on how to move forward.
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Using Social Media to Enhance Civic Engagement in U.S. Federal Agencies
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2. increasing the capacity of a society to understand the decision making process in government to help solve complex or “wicked” policy problems,
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4. support the further development of the government-wide support, such as that which is coordinated through the General Services Administration (GSA),
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6. provide opportunities for personal access, training, and experimentation with social media to staff throughout the agency,
7. create cross-functional teams (public affairs, legal, communications, policy, etc) to manage online engagement efforts,
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9. create metrics that align with the organization’s mission and engagement goals,
10. ensure each engagement project includes a feedback mechanism for agencies to absorb lessons from the project evaluation,
19. Deliberative – aims to bring citizens together to deliberate on policy issues, the outcomes of which may influence decision makers
20. Co-governance – aims to give citizens significant influence during the process of decision making (i.e. participatory budgeting, community policing, etc)
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22. Selection Mechanisms – to what extent is the project open to all, or is there a selection mechanism such as election, random selection, self-selection, or appointment? Is the selection mechanism fair? Is it inclusive? To what extent are politically marginalized groups engaged?
23. Deepening participation – “any change which allows a more direct, sustained and informed participation by citizens in decision-making”
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25. Further, declining public confidence and trust in government, in addition to the increasing complexity of public policy problems suggest there is significant potential value for public agencies to improve and expand their activities in this area.
26. The idea of a spectrum of participation outlined in the literature review is helpful for understanding that federal agencies can derive value from online participation through broadening (i.e. increasing the number of participants) and/or deepening (i.e. increasing the level of engagement).
27. In order to establish the extent to which federal agencies are currently capturing this value, we have developed a basic framework that maps online engagement efforts against two variables. The horizontal axis measures engagement – specifically, the extent to which technological tools and platforms that support collaboration and interaction are used for two-way dialogue. The vertical axis acts as a basic measure of a project’s impact, defined by the extent to which citizen feedback, comments and input are incorporated into policy decision-making or implementation.
28. Together, these two variables create a basic two-by-two framework in which current federal agency online engagement efforts can be plotted and compared. For example, most federal agencies’ twitter feeds are used in a broadcast manner, to send out links to press releases and other news-related items rather than as a means to engage in conversation with citizens. On this basis, these twitter feeds rank low on the ‘impact’ scale, despite the use of ‘2.0’-type tools.
29. An initial analysis of the ‘engagement’ channels made available by federal agencies uncovered a high number of ‘low impact’ uses of both broadcast and interactive online tools. The majority of US federal agencies use their twitter feeds and Facebook pages in this way. While this can be an effective ‘brand management’ strategy, and a worthwhile investment by agencies’ public relations units, it does not meet the characteristics of engagement featured in our definition. The two-by-two below illustrates the most visible ways in which federal agencies are currently approaching online engagement.
65. What will be the biggest challenges to full implementation?
66. What kind of support is available to federal agencies seeking to implement a digital engagement strategy? (or similar)
67. What kind of guidance is available to agencies and practitioners in this field to help them match engagement objectives to social networking/digital tools?
68. What do you see as the relationship between online and offline engagement?
69. What kinds of benefits or advantages do social networking platforms offer federal agencies in relation to their engagement goals?
70. What are the different kinds of engagement being used for each of these constituencies?
71. Who are the main constituencies of the federal agencies doing this work? Do you see them as different groupings? (citizens, consumers, collaborators etc)
72. Who were the first practitioners/early adopters?
73. What was the early response from the public and/or media?
74. What types of projects or initiatives do you think haven’t worked well in the US?
88. The aim of this section is to situate the specific work of the subject’s organization or project within the context of ‘Gov 2.0’ and social media in the UK. We want to understand how this field has developed and where the likely new developments will occur.
89. (Generally) how would you describe the current use of social media by government in the UK?