Image: Jon Hickman. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonhickman/sets/72157623837016447/

MA Social Media students from Birmingham City University Media Suite delivered an extremely high quality event on 28th April, based around how officers from West Midlands Police do, and can communicate and engage via social networks with citizens in the digital age.

With presentations and debates hosted by students, the event also highlighted how social networks and digital communications from Western and Eastern cultures are used to both good and bad effect, giving the students a prime opportunity to showcase their research, experience and professional practice to a broad audience, including senior police officers, photographers, council representatives, local government officials and members of the public.

The event itself saw audiences engage with presentations from students Paul Hadley and Jennifer Yang, with Jigar Patel chairing the “Terrorist or Photographer” panel debate, the main feature. With the assistance of BCU technical team and Aquila TV, a live video link to student Leland Strott in Baltimore was executed faultlessly, enabling the audience to ask questions and receive answers immediately following Strott’s pre-recorded video presentation.

Using digital multimedia technology to increase audience participation, the 46 invited guests attending were joined by 386 visitors via a live video stream and immediate commentary, where Twitter and ‘live blog’ information was spreading the messages from the conference across the globe.

The visitor statistics collected by students show that the online audience reached digital participants not only in the West Midlands and UK, but also in Japan, Australia, USA, all parts of Europe, Asia and pockets of the Middle East.

Featured guest presentations were also delivered by Nick Booth, a local social media specialist and founder of Podnosh Ltd; Will Perrin, former Cabinet Office advisor and leader of Talk About Local; and Jon Hale, regional director of Gov Delivery, digital communications specialists for local governments.

The “Terrorist or Photographer” debate featured open questions and discussions from the audience and internet social networking sites, with representatives from West Midlands Police and the photography and media industries. Panel guests for the debate were Chief Inspector Mark Payne, Detective Chief Inspector Ian Grundy (Terrorist Intelligence Unit), Karen Strunks (professional photographer) and Christian Payne (social technologist and mobile media creator).

Some of the comments after the event from the physical and digital audience include “awesome”, “fantastic content and intelligent debate”, “totally engaging” and “fascinating’.

MA Social Media course leader Dave Harte and lecturer Jon Hickman described the event as “a really excellent event” and “superb”.

More information, video recordings, presentations and photographs are all available at http://eventwith.me/authority2

Following a couple of initial meetings and discussion sessions, the team have now split in many directions, drawing comparisons from all parts of the globe, with the aim of feeding these back into a proposal, which will be presented after May 7th.

In preparation for this, we will be hosting an event at the university on Wednesday April 28th. More information about the event can be found at http://eventwith.me/authority2 .

Perhaps drawing reference to Franklin D. Roosevelt when he said “Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are” as he announced the implementation of Social Security and a route out of the depression for the USA in 1945, programme Paragon has been described as a “major overhaul” (Payne, 2010) of the West Midlands Police operating system.

From within the West Midlands Police media team, the phrase “a cumbersome and complex beast” has been used by DCI Markham when highlighting the recent operational changes and referring to past rules. Hopeful of allowing local policing units to “concentrate on delivering LOCAL policing like never before” perhaps the integration of alternative media into the mainstream practice, including social media communications, will increase the uptake of engagement with the citizens of our geographical study area.

Certainly, from the outcomes of our neighbourhood community group meetings research, the average senior age, understanding of internet technology, skills and knowledge base, financial affordability, connectivity and expressed need to use such opportunities by citizens will be significant barriers that need removing or traversing before any level of success can be achieved, if indeed this is one chosen route.

Historically familiar with more traditional routes of communication and engagement, it is suspected that not only will Programme Paragon present challenges for the police and citizens, the most demanding element could perhaps prove to be the cultural changes and affects that such digital opportunities present for both interested parties. There will be positive and negative outcomes over time following the implementation of new communication strategies, and it is this key word that will perhaps have one major affect.

One of life’s most precious commodities, careful consideration for sensible and structured use of time will, without doubt, be required to suggest, propose, plan, negotiate, build partnerships, train, implement, develop, evaluate and change the communication culture of this study group.

Today, West Midlands Police released this video, aimed at engaging with young children across the region; an open invitation from officers to “let us have your views” (Markham, 2010 via Twitter). By actively seeking to initially reach those of a younger age, perhaps the methodology behind the initial strategy deployment is one of engagement with those more familiar with social networking and alternative media platforms, with a cascading upwards by age, rather than downwards by seniority approach being used by officers. There is logic to this approach; one of family learning influenced by examples of the younger generation. However, without yet having the opportunity to view the alternative and social media policy (yet), my suspicion so far is that this video release is purely coincidental to evidence of a planned strategic, long-term approach.

Paul Hadley.

The following email came in overnight from my local Freecycle moderator:

We Recycle with Freegle
=============================

Hi everyone

You’ll notice that our group has changed our name, and this also means that our address has changed too.

It’s now:

Web: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BirminghamFreegle

Email: BirminghamFreegle@yahoogroups.com

What’s changed for you?
======================

Nothing much. The home page looks a bit different, and the email address is new (and you have seen it at the top of this page) but other than that – all the rules are the same, all your moderators are the same, and our group is still GRASS ROOTS and LOCAL.

We’re still dedicated to keeping things out of land fill, and the same moderation team are still here beavering away in the background helping to keep the group running smoothly.

The main reason for our move is simple. While Freecycle is a GREAT idea, all our UK groups were basically forced to work under a system devised in and for the United States. Leaders of Freecycle in the UK spent more than two years talking with the main Freecycle Network trying to get the freedom to run things in a way more suited to our own country and our own laws. Nothing changed.

In July four leading members of our National UK Freecycle team resigned. Moderators around the country then formed an Independent Association of Freecycle Moderators and again tried talks with The Freecycle Network. But again to no avail.

Since then an increasing number of Group Owners and Moderators have been SUMMARILY DISMISSED from Freecycle including the former UK Director of Freecycle UK.

So we have decided to go our own way.

It seems nothing has changed for me in the big scheme of things as a Freecycle Freegle user, but it hints at a problem of scale: sure Freecycle was great because it was a collective that self-organised over the web, but this affair suggests that flexibility is needed to sustain glocal organisations.

The other thing that I’ve been reflecting on is the name “Freegle”. It doesn’t work as a verb so I guess people who used the service for a while will continue to see they are “going to freecycle the sofa”. It also seems to privilege the act of receiving over the act of giving. Linked to “frugal”, with the added emphasis of “free” this sounds more like a site to grab the ultimate bargain, not a site aimed at reducing landfill. Without the allusion to “recycle” where’s the incentive for the donor in the new freegle future?

I happened to take a look at her website today, and was a little surprised by what I found. It’s a slick looking site, but it seems to lack some understanding of the digital world which Lane Fox is selling to the public. I find this a little worrying. There are two issues which I’d like to pick up on: technical problems and voice.

Technical Difficulties

We need to be clear that digital inclusion doesn’t equal getting people blogging. However, I think we all understand that blogging is part of the digital inclusion agenda. Blogging might be the tool that makes the digitally excluded want to join in with digital technology. It’s also a key activity in terms of shaping debates around digital participation, and indeed in shaping any other debates we might wish active citizens to take part in. I’d expect Lane Fox to be blogging a lot, yet marthalanefox.com is something of a demi-blog. Is it a diary of Lane Fox’s public appearances, a news page, or a blog? It’s not clear.

The site employs blogging language such as “read entire blogpost”, but comments are not available which diminishes the blog post to the status of a press release. My key disappointment with the website is the lack of RSS. I’d like to keep track of the Champion for Digital Inclusion’s thoughts, but I’m not likely to remember to come back regularly hoping for more: an option to subscribe to the site would seem to me to be an obviously desirable feature for this website.

Who’s Speaking Please?

Actually there is a feed for marthalanefox.com, if you know where to look (http://www.marthalanefox.com/rss). This brings me on to the second difficulty I have with the Champion’s web presence: the feed suggests that she’s not writing the blog posts herself. The feed shows that Martha has a team – Theo Park and Tim Van Damme – that are speaking on her behalf, authoring, or at least uploading, the blog entries for her. Park is Lane Fox’s “Executive Assistant” while Van Damme appears to be her web designer.

The message? You too can be a champion of the digital world, all you need is the budget to buy a web designer’s time. And an executive assistant.

Of course we know this isn’t true. You could just swing by a social media surgery and get free advice from an expert, who will get you blogging on wordpress in half hour (with RSS and comments enabled). Feel free to pop in to the next one, Martha.

Angel service for Drug Addicts in South Africa from Podnosh on Vimeo.