CeDEM Lightning Talks, Part 2

Krems.
And here’s the second part of the five-minute lightning talks which conclude this CeDEM 2011 conference, which starts with Mark Thamm. He presents a case study of online debate about nuclear power which was facilitated and tracked by the WeGov group through established social networking platforms; this involves kicking off new discussion topics as well as tracking contributions to existing topics. WeGov staff also respond to existing posts from the general public to create further discussion. This process enables policymakers to engage with such debate through an intermediary service.

Next up is Andras Szabo, whose interest is in social news and bookmarking Websites like Reddit, Digg, and Newsvine. These sites generate compilations of news reports from professional media and other sources, levelling the playing field between mainstream and alternative news organisations; they create strong public places, and enable meaningful participation.

Being a journalist or professional communicator is a difficult thing to do, so social news sites rely on mainstream media for the hard work of information gathering; they then curate this information. That, too, requires a significant level of involvement, so such social news sites are not for everyone, either. But such sites have proved attractive for large user communities, and participation in them is meaningful for their users as they engage in collaborative news filtering. The process that takes place here is more dedicated and focussed than the more random news filtering which takes place on general social media platforms, which means that those sites are still relevant.

Finally, we move to Cyril Velikanov, who notes that current e-participation initiatives suffer from low public interest. He suggests that e-participation through social media spaces constitute a form of lazy participation for lazy citizens; they have made participation easier and low-stakes, but that is not what is actually required.

Instead, what we need is a more high-stakes form of involvement which requires more focussed participation. At present, we are trying to take democracy to the shopping mall; what we need is to pull citizens away from the shopping mall back to the agora. We are dumbing down e-participation by allowing it to take place in social media spaces, making it fun and cool; instead, we need a more austere, serious, and purposeful form of e-participation. (His views, not mine.)

And that, I believe, is it – congratulations to the CeDEM organisers for another stimulating conference. Nice weather, too!