Skip to content
openDemocracy
Subscribe

Networking Democracy - How do online and offline interact?

By openDemocracy Supporters
Published:
| Share

Opening Statements

Discussion threads

---------------------------------

How do online and offline interact?

This is the archive of the thread "How do online and offline interact?"

------------------------------------------------

There has already been a great deal of comment pointing to the fact
that the online and offline elements of a process such as this should
be designed simultaneously, and must co-operate with each other. This
thread is for considering in a bit more detail how this could be
achieved. This might include consideration of:

o How can large volumes of online submissions be made readable /
brought into the offline process (as David Wilcox has just brought up)
o Parts of the process that would be better suited to online /
offline / mixed environments

Any other general thoughts on problems arising and lessons learned
from previous dual online / offline engagement processes would also be
very welcome.

From: "Suw Charman-Anderson"
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 22:37:29 +0000
Local: Tues, Mar 4 2008 10:37 pm
Subject: Re: [Networking Democracy] How do online and offline interact?

> o How can large volumes of online submissions be made readable /
> brought into the offline process (as David Wilcox has just brought up)

The key thing here is to have people - possibly even the community,
done right - pulling out the key themes, and then have people
translating that into offline media. Events are good ways to do this,
and allow for people from the community with interesting voices to
stand up and be heard.

> o Parts of the process that would be better suited to online /
> offline / mixed environments

Well, until we get into the nitty gritty of the project, this is a
question that's difficult to answer.

> Any other general thoughts on problems arising and lessons learned
> from previous dual online / offline engagement processes would also be
> very welcome.

I think this is getting into specific project design, something that
really isn't suited to a wide-ranging discussion on an email list with
no real knowledge of what exactly is going to happen.

Suw

--



From: "David R. Newman"
Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:18:42 +0000
Local: Wed, Mar 5 2008 6:18 pm
Subject: Re: [Networking Democracy] How do online and offline interact?

There are a number of ways of doing this. Here are some examples.

1. America Speaks 21st Century and other facilitated meetings.

In these, the smallest groups are 10 people, talking face-to-face, with
a trained facilitator/mediator. These each have a computer, in which
they type questions and conclusions to pass on to the other groups.
Theme teams then take these words, and digest them into reports, and
questions to pose to all the groups. People not at the meeting use
synchronous chat, and use the same computer channels to propagate
questions and conclusions.

On a smaller scale, a group of people discussing an issue in one room,
use group support systems like WebIQ or Zing to brainstorm an issue,
then develop these ideas. It would be possible to take the conclusions
of several such electronically facilitated offline meetings, to an
online repository, for further editing work.

2. AdviceNI e-consultations.

This is an example of a community and voluntary sector association. It
is made up of most of the independent advice centres (not Citizens
Advice Bureaux) in Northern Ireland. First they train the advice workers
how to use the discussion forum. Then for each topic they start the
discussion among advice workers. They report, e.g., problems with
housing they have dealt with. Then in the second week they bring in some
of their clients, to type in their stories of their problems. In the
third week, people with responsibility for solving the problems join in,
to discuss with the advice workers what to do next (but the Inland
Revenue refused to join when discussing tax credit repayments).

3. Discussion seminars

Some years ago I did some research into critical thinking within the
discussions my students held in seminars: both in computer conferences
and face-to-face. It turned out there was more critical thinking on-line
- except for coming up with new ideas, that was best done face-to-face
(or at least synchronously) (see JASIS June 1997). But supplying
evidence, justifying positions, linking ideas together and synthesising
reports were all better done through asynchronous on-line conversations.

So now I do an initial on-line phase, where students find and review
relevant information, then a face-to-face seminar where they argue (and
discover there is not one right answer), followed by an on-line phase
where they write up their findings in wikiwiki pages.

4. Issues forums

In these, the on-line discussion comes first, covering many topics. From
time to time a councillor or official will pick up a topic and take it
to the council chamber.

--
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Management
School, Belfast 





From: "Alice Casey"
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 06:14:30 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Fri, Mar 14 2008 1:14 pm
Subject: Re: How do online and offline interact?

An additional low-tech option is to use self-facilitated meeting
packs. These are very effective for the following reasons -

1) Outreach to people within specific, specialist community settings-
2) Engaging beyond groups of already 'active citizens'
2) They engage those who need face to face support or encouragement to
participate
3) They engage those who cannot go online for whatever reason
4) They can be used in conjunction with accessing online info to help
bridge that online/offline gap

The bad point is that feedback quality varies.

In terms of creating useful outputs - the deliberation exercises can
feed into a number of key indicator decisions which will ensure easier
collation rather than asking for lots of qualitative feedback or
writeups.

--------------------------------------

Comment and discussion on Networking Democracy is taking place on OurKingdom - click here to join in.

---------------------------------

Opening Statements

Discussion threads

---------------------------------

openDemocracy Author

openDemocracy Supporters

All articles
Tags:

More from openDemocracy Supporters

See all