We increasingly live in a blended world where strong community ties are now part of local "public life" online (think of all the local online groups, online school groups, use of social media by community orgs, local hashtags, etc.).
However, it seems to date that most efforts are **reflecting** and not proactively **generating** new social capital. They are not working to intentionally have people meet new people in-person nor newly connect people to jointly address community issues, etc. Online ice breaking --> in-person community engagement/participation and social capital generation as traditionally measured. I think this nut needs to be cracked. We need new field research to figure out what is possible, what works, what doesn't. So, here is my research request ... We are collaborating with the development of a research proposal along these lines. What we could use are references to current statistics and research that do a great job of articulating the benefits from (likely non-online) efforts seeking to generate new social capital or at least measure the value of strong ties from an economic or social perspectives. I am interested in how we might build on past asset based community development work as well. Suggestions? Send links/references to: [email protected] team (at) e-democracy.org BTW - We have over 15,000 active participants on our local online neighborhood/community forums. A handful of our forums are critical mass "super" forums that reach upwards of 30% of households. >From our uniquely open source, non-profit base we seek to go deeper where we are already well established to see what new lessons can be discovered and shared widely so that no matter what platform communities are connecting, "what works" advice can be shared widely to help us all build stronger communities. To me, the blend of online first to offline community engagement/building AND then back to online is one such area crying out for experimentation. With Millennials putting down roots and starting families, on-boarding them into our traditional sense of place-based communities needs to have more than just online dead-ends tied to geography with little that works to build further trust and community participation that works build up. Nor should we settle for this activity in only wealthy, well-educated areas, that are the easiest to connect but relatively speaking generate the least overall social benefit because new social capital generation happens anyway. Noting how much effort has been put into building our base of participants outside of other proprietary and closed networks (e.g. Facebook, NextDoor, etc.) we are looking for opportunities to be an open knowledge generator. My sense is that today without millions, it would be almost impossible to build what we have from scratch where the non-profit or research efforts would have full control over their platform, features, etc. AND actually have participants willing to engage and be part of such a project. While we can certainly generate lessons on proprietary platforms, as long as we remain a strong island of open source community engagement online there is an opportunity for some creative research collaboration. Steven Clift - Executive Director, E-Democracy * Support E-Democracy. Pledge drive to raise $10,000 US: http://e-democracy.org/donate?ft - 85% to 2015 Goal ᐧ ----------------------------------------- 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/34ziBaUpF2HL3VWTxOPERc For digest version or to leave Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire, email [email protected] with "digest on" or "unsubscribe" in the *subject*. Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire is hosted by Democracies Online - http://dowire.org.
