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Place and Online Participation - Researching “real” neighborhoods online - E-Democracy.Org provides partnership opportunity
At the last minute I found myself unable to attend in person, so thank you for the online option.
E-Democracy.Org is very interested in working with groups of academic researchers looking to create actionable knowledge. By that, I mean knowledge that helps those seeking to improve democracy and strengthen local communities do better work and be more effective.
In summary, E-Democracy.Org:
1. Hosts “online town halls” and “neighborhood forums” in ten communities across three countries. Our “Issues Forums” (current forums) are led by a volunteer Forum Manager and supported by a local Steering Committee - we combine the service club model on a century ago with advancing “anywhere, any time” technology of today. The St. Paul chapter extends their mission off-line with digital inclusion outreach as well.
2. With grant support we are launching an initiative in rural Minnesota starting with five regional citizen media outreach events. We will end up with three new Issues Forum in rural communities.
3. With another grant we are in the early stages of launching online neighborhood efforts in high immigrant/communities of color/low income areas of Minneapolis (Cedar Riverside) and St. Paul (Frogtown).
4. We have additional neighborhood forums starting - Seward (open) and Standish-Ericsson recently signed 120 people using good old paper forms.
There are dynamic research and evaluation questions related to all of these projects. What ideas do you have?
In addition to the projects above, some additional opportunities include:
1. Comparison of the deliberativeness, etc. of our model with other types of similarly geographic bounded political exchange online.
2. Collaboration leading to technology enhancements for open source GroupServer platform (combines e-mail, web forms, blog feeds, social networking/Web 2.0) we use to test new ideas. We are about to receive another grant which will allow us to dramatically improve our usability/look and feel for our forums site (which is highly utilitarian, loved by existing users, but needs to “look” more “Web 2.0″ to attract new users and volunteers willing to start new forums.)
3. Qualitative interviews of elected officials, journalists, citizens that gets to heart of the real impact of local online political participation. At the local level, our most active forums put a community years ahead of those just starting to develop a local blogosphere.
4. Comparative analysis on the generation of social capital online in local places using different technologies and models - no one has attempted to answer the “what works best assuming limited resources” question.
If you are interested in connecting or learning more, drop us a line:
team@e-democracy.org
Also, I run the Democracies Online site (and have spoken on this topic across 27 countries) which include an international online community for e-democracy researchers. Join us.
Sincerely,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
