Charlie Beckett has yet another good post up – this time, over at OpenDemocracy.
The point of Networked Journalism is that the citizen as an individual and as part of these organisations is now part of the production of news communications. The relationships offered by networked journalism offer the potential for increasing trust in that news communications. By extension it could go some way to restore greater faith in political communications, too, and thus even in politics itself.
If people can participate in something at all parts of the process, then they are more likely to take a responsible and considered stake. If networked communications can offer greater openness, transparency, relevance and control for the citizen then they will be more likely to engage with the substance of the content. They will also be more prepared to support and even invest in that process.
It reminds me of that Norwegian construct on e-democracy that I saw last year (the link has moved so this one will have to do: Public sector information provided by ordinary citizens and the original document is linked to here).
Certainly, the idea of breaking the monopoly that bureaucracies have over the provision of public sector information. The reason that the Slugger O’Toole website is so interesting is that it fosters a mostly well-mannered and constructive conversation about public life in Nothern Ireland. Generally, if you need to elicit any facts about Northern Ireland, you can ask for them in a comments-thread and get them more quickly than any FoI request.
A step in the right direction by local government information providers.
The idea of spinning that off into a wiki called ‘About Northern Ireland’s government’ is an interesting one – I suspect that it would be a better use of public money than actually building the websites themselves and paying civil servants to generate the content. Moving from where we are now to a situation where that could happen is, however, no small feat – but I think that the way that the Birmingham News Room is encouraging and resourcing citizen journalists to write about local issues is a major leap in the right direction.
Hi Paul,
Have I missed something with the Birmingham site? Certainly using social media tools does encourage a conversation, but is the council actively encouraging citizens journalism? We find it very ambivalent about the citizens journalism that happens at Help me Investigate.
I know what you mean Nick – all of these things are relative though. Birmingham are pretty bad at engaging with citizen journalists – but not as bad as all of the others.
Simply by holding a lot of their material on social media channels, they’re encouraging others to re-use in a way that cedes some control.
I think we’re a long way off any council really encouraging projects like yours.