This was a very interesting event in London on Monday. As E-Democracy is also partnering with interested researchers - http://e-democracy.org/research - and are about to put a major participant survey in the field, the opportunity to develop projects with far more open and flexible -non-profits- in this space should be highlighted. - Steve ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Steven Clift" <[email protected]> Date: Oct 29, 2014 10:55 AM Subject: mySociety: Do mySociety sites boost civic participation? To: <[email protected]> Cc:
[image: Image by Phil Richards] <http://ift.tt/1DuVieo> What impact do mySociety sites actually have? We could lose a lot of sleep over this important question – or we could do something concrete, like conducting academic research to nail the answers down for once and for all. As slumber enthusiasts, we went for the research option – and, to help us with this commitment we’ve recently taken on a new Head of Research, Rebecca Rumbul <http://ift.tt/1DuVgn0>. Watch this space as she probes more deeply into whether our tools are making a difference, both in the UK and abroad. Even before Rebecca came on board, though, we had set a couple of research projects in motion. One of those was in partnership with the University of Manchester, funded by the ESRC <http://www.esrc.ac.uk/>, which sought to understand what impact our core UK sites (FixMyStreet, WriteToThem, TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow) have on their users, and specifically on their level of political engagement. Gateways to participation It’s perhaps worth mentioning that, while our sites appear, on the face of it, to be nothing more than a handy set of tools for the general citizen, they were built with another purpose in mind. Simply put, each site aims to show people how easy it is to participate in democracy, to contact the people who make decisions on our behalf, and to make changes at the local and national levels. Like any other online endeavour, we measure user numbers and transaction completions and time spent on site – all of that stuff. But one of the metrics we pay most attention to is whether users say they are contacting their council, their MP or a public body *for the first time*. Keeping track of this number ensures that we’re doing something to open democratic avenues up to people that haven’t used them before. Questioning impact But there are plenty more questions we can ask about the impact we’re having. The University of Manchester study looked into one of them, by attempting to track whether there was a measurable change in people’s political activity and engagement after they’ve used one of our sites. On Monday, researchers Rachel Gibson, Marta Cantijoch and Silvia Galandini presented their findings to an attentive audience at King’s College London. The project has taken a multi-pronged approach, asking our users to complete questionnaires, participate in online discussions, or keep a 12-week diary about political and community engagement (thanks very much to you, if you were one of the participants in this!). The result was a bunch of both qualitative and quantitative data which we’ll be able to come back to and slice multiple ways in the future – Gibson says that they haven’t as yet managed to analyse all of the free text diaries yet, for example. In itself this study was interesting, because not much research has previously been conducted into the impact of digital civic tools – and yet, as we know from our own international activities, people (not least ourselves) are launching sites all over the world based on the premise that they work. Some top-level conclusions The research will be published in full at a future date, and it’s too complex to cover all of it within the confines of a short blog post, but here are just a few of the takeaway findings: - A small but quantifiable uplift in ‘civic participation’ was noticed in the period after people had used our sites. This could include anything from working with others in the local community to make improvements, to volunteering for a charity. - No change was found in the level of political influence or understanding that people judged themselves to have. This was a surprise to the researchers, who had thought that users would feel more empowered and knowledgeable after contacting those in power, or checking up on their parliamentary activity. - As with our research back in 2011 <http://ift.tt/1DuView>, the ‘average’ user of mySociety sites was found to be white, above middle-aged, and educated to at least degree level. Clearly this is a userbase which we desperately need to expand, and we’ll be looking carefully – with more research and some concentrated outreach efforts – at how we can do that. - Users tended to identify themselves as people who already had an interest in politics. Again, here is an area in which we can improve. Of course, we’re happy to serve such users, but we also want to be accessible to those who have less of a baseline interest. - Many users spoke of community action as bringing great satisfaction. In some cases, that was getting together in real life to make improvements, but others saw something as simple as reporting graffiti on FixMyStreet as an action that improved the local area for everyone. Thanks to the University of Manchester researchers for these insights and for presenting them so engagingly. We’ll update when the full research is available. * Image: Phil Richards <http://ift.tt/1DuVieo> (CC <http://ift.tt/10dzj7q>)* from mySociety http://ift.tt/1DuViey via IFTTT <http://ift.tt/1bODNcb> ----------------------------------------- Group home for Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/newswire Replies go to members of Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire with all posts on this topic here: http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/3H0E6TCuOEiCQNQoTbZZ6T For digest version or to leave Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire, email [email protected] with "digest on" or "unsubscribe" in the *subject*. 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