Tim's Blog

Stephen Coleman's questions during Q&A sessions at the Young People, New Technology and Political Engagement conference have probably sparked more posts here than any other inputs.

This time, after a presentation on a web forum in Slovenia that achieved 100 contributions, "Why should a Member of Parliament care if 100 self-selecting people, quite possibly many of them friends of the person running the consultation - have posted on a message board?".

The simple answer seems to me to be: exactly the same reason they should care that 100 self-selecting people, quite possibly many of them friends of the person convening the meeting, turned up to the local town hall meeting and had their say.

But - this raises a more interesting question. Should (excepting the empirical aside that there are not many public meetings where 100 people get to speak - even if 100 may attend) the 100 online voices count for as much as the 100 in-person voices? After all - those who have turned out in person, we may argue, have put in more effort to participate - and so must have a stronger preference for the issue.

Just been in a fantastic keynote by Brian Loader on 'Cultural displacement or Disaffection? Reassessing Young Citizens, New Media and Civic Engagement' (which I believe is the topic of his chapter in his recent edited collection). I think for a sense of the presentation - it's probably best to point to the book - as I'd be hard pushed to capture everything in notes.

Three presentations at the Young People, New Technologies and Political Enagement conference looking at different ways of engaging citizens and young people online:

Google turns up over a billion online forums - and there has been a lot of rhetoric in the past about using online forums to support e-democracy deliberation - but Kerill Duanne's research seems to show online forums are not working to help political deliberation online. They're inactive or inneffective. So do we need better designed spaces?