Head in the Cloud? How can we harness the wisdom of the crowd?

Is there any value to the idea of 'the cloud'? Problem-solving by posting a question 'out there' and seeing if a response comes? It could be the scariest experience to anyone who feels they need to gain advise from 'real' experts, or doubt there is any sense in what is sometimes known as the wisdom of the crowd. But don't we often do this anyway? If you rely on ratings on review sites when buying books, CDs, DVDs, choosing hotels, restaurants, bars (even wedding venues), then you are relying on collective intelligence. Reviews of cars, computers, B2B services, are said to be frequently used when seeking advise; how do we know any review is any more credible than another; furthermore can we really trust the 'expert' (paid reviewer) any more than the unpaid reviewer or is the latter inherently either more trustworthy or less of an expert? More interesting, how can the idea cloud be used. Are there bright ideas out there being untapped? Can they help organisations do things better? Or are we just inviting chaos into every aspect of life? Governments talk of organising groups that they can consult on issues, somewhere in the Big Society is an idea of collective action and wisdom - are there better ideas out there or would this just invite partisan commentary and negativity? Are focus groups ways of harnessing random ideas or only for testing existing ideas - having run them you often find that you cannot just ask what they think of 'X' but they insist on saying 'Y' would work better. Should more be done or less? Really interested in any thoughts on this!

The online election battle

Some interesting stats based on election search trends among on line users. Firstly the post debate interest in Nick Clegg seems to be continuing and he may well now be far better known then he was a matter of days ago. While there seems to be interest in Samantha Cameron, there is less so in David himself as he lags behind Gordon Brown, though this may not reflect actual traffic to sites of course, only searches!

1. nick clegg +500%

2. david cameron wife +180%

3. gordon brown +120%

4. samantha cameron +110%

5. labour +110%

6. david cameron wiki +90%

7. david cameron twitter +80%

8. conservatives +50%

9. conservative party +50%

10. david cameron poster +40%

The LibDems can also find great comfort in the numbers of fans they have on Facebook, though they lag behind the Conservatives.

* http://www.facebook.com/conservatives - 51,000 fans

* http://www.facebook.com/labourparty 26,000 fans

* http://www.facebook.com/libdems - 46,500 fans

Equally this appears to be a doubling of fans across all parties indicating heightened interest in all things election related. Does this indicate that the Internet is becoming a significant source of information for voters, and so also a significant battle ground that for the first time will be ignored at the parties' peril?

New style of government or new style of gimmick

As the ever-interesting (and I do mean that) Dizzy informs readers last week, the Conservatives are clear winners in engagement online. Whether this is old versus new, so there is more interest in the Conservatives because Labour have been around, and in government, for a long time, is a question? It could be that the engagement tools are the right ones, or that people want to engage more with the Conservatives, perhaps as they are seen as the next government, this is not an analysis of the audience unfortunately beyond simple indicators of engagement.

But the party seems to have a new strategy, one that will allow greater public participation in government. They want someone to design a platform, and will offer £1 million, that will create an online public sphere. If you are wondering about the idea of the public sphere, this should be autonomous (possibly in this case), inclusive (definitely), political (as before - and clearly) and rational. A space where people are able to find solutions to common social problems. Such ideas are surrounded by much hype and are attached to many ideals of democracy. There are two ways of looking at the notion of creating public spheres, it can be hailed as a means for getting people empowered and in touch with government, as in the case of this article by Tim Bonnemann, but there are dangers.

It is easy to source a crowd online, after all this was achieved to create the UK's Christmas number one single, or at least to block Simon Cowell. But what sort of crowd will be sourced? You can find a crowd that will decide that hanging is the best deterrent for serious crime, would that be good policy though? Would this allow minority opinions to be voiced? Or just those of extremists? Would it break the spiral of silence or create a new silence, of the majority perhaps? Most worrying would it abrogate the responsibility of a government over decision making, or indeed would a government be tied to the crowd by the terms and conditions of participation. Of course these negative outcomes can be avoided, to an extent, but they need to be considered. Initiatives that bring the governed and government closer together are all worthy of support and encouragement, the danger is though that these initiatives can be ill-considered gimmicks rather than real proposals for public participation in the democratic process. It may take more than £1 million to not only build the interface but also to ensure all the checks and balances are in place; that or we may find a place for consultation and participation that becomes unusable as anything but to embarrass the government that thought it up and paid for it.

#budget: the twitter-tariat

While the budget itself was pretty much leaked and spun to death for the week prior to it being delivered to the house and so most of the supposition aired, what I thought would be interesting is to see how new media facilitated greater input. The current fad (or revolution) depending on your take is Twitter. The use of the hashtag allows for anyone to join a debate and express their views in 140 characters. You can argue that allows for little that is profound, quite true, but it does allow short statements and the sharing of links so not entirely a waste of time and something unable to facilitate expression.

So what did the contributors to #budget contribute. Firstly, much are links to media or party comments, and this is not surprising given the paucity of space, or the amount of comment appearing on the day. Many are asking questions, so linking into and starting person-to-person conversations - 'anyone gain' was a favourite. In terms of tone, while there seems no party political bias from the majority of users, most who comment on specifics comment on the negative parts - either it does not help the poor enough, or that a tax on 'fun' has been introduced etc. This suggests that few are willing to explicitly make positive comments, or perhaps see positives in the government's handling of the economy - in other words it may reflect a human condition of the glass being half full or a global negative attitude towards Labour. The final point is those that use Twitter for party political purposes act, expectedly, as cheerleaders for their parties and leaders. So attacks on Clegg and Cameron particularly as being ineffectual or lacking substance (the two major remarks) were often rebutted.

So what does all of this suggest? Well there is an independent voice emerging on Twitter, however much is lead by mainstream media and the party line; so there is a lot of publicising other's arguments (usually established commentators) or defending or promoting your own party. Some within that are linking to their own blogs but these are in a minority outside of the main media commentators. For a range of unknown reasons, the temperature of the debate was anti-Labour in terms of presenting a predominantly negative take. However a small minority did ask questions and sought engagement with others via Twitter.

There was also a sense of ennui and not expecting anything good to come of it in both the comments prior to and reflecting on the budget. There was a lot of powerlessness in the tone suggesting, as one Twitterer put it, "I've been shat on, I knew it was coming but couldn't dodge it". My favourite by the way: "digitaltoast: Spoilt for choice if I want to watch pompous twats failing at playing with money tonight: #Apprentice or #budget news?" Perhaps this summed up a general mood of anti-politicians as some did comment that they all said little of substance to the wider audience but were instead locked into point scoring.

An interesting insight into the politically engaged online 'activist', active in terms of sharing comments and giving voice to a range of social groups. One wonders how important such tools will become as a barometer of opinion in the future, sidelining the media as a reflection of public opinion.

What is hot in the twitter-sphere

Who is most talked about on Twitter - Labour but only just!

Guido Fawkes just beats Derek Draper

But Gordon beats David 3-1.

Does it matter, it depends what everyone is saying, how much is positive or negative, how influential the authors are and often the things that each would like to get read widely are re-tweeted. Go here if you want your own Tweetometer, its fun to play with!

The Online Environment - Transforming Politics

Robert Colvile has produced a very interesting report for the Centre for Policy Studies entitled Politics, Policy and the Internet it makes a number of interesting claims:

• Just as television and radio transformed the way politics operated in the twentieth century so in the future will the Internet have a profound effect on the language and conduct of politics and policy. This will be a gradual and inexorable phenomenon.
• The Internet has already had an impact on politics. But in the UK, it is underdeveloped compared to many other countries, in particular the US.
• In particular, British political parties have failed to embrace this new opportunity. The British National Party website has the same market share as all of the other major political parties combined.
• The parties could reverse this by altering their mindset from “send” to “receive”, by learning the lessons of unofficial organisations such as bloggers, activists and campaign groups which have exploited the potential of the Internet.
• The Internet will bring a far greater openness to politics. The power of search will enforce consistency and depth in both policy and communication of policy. And the tone of debate will, at least in many cases, remain lively, anti-establishment and original.
• For the activist and the citizen, the Internet will increasingly be used to hold politicians to account and to enable like minded groups (such as the those opposed to road pricing) to develop potent single-issue campaigns.
• The web could also re-empower MPs, by linking them far more directly to the concerns of their constituents. Most have, so far, failed to grasp this opportunity.
• For policy development, the Internet will bring greater scrutiny; and greater access to official government data could revolutionise the way policy-making works.
• Should the vision of leading thinkers on both the Labour and Conservative sides be translated into reality, then the Internet should become the key forum for proposing and organising support for new policies.
• The most subtle, but perhaps most powerful, change, will be to the public’s mindset. As we grow used to the instant availability of information online, we will no longer tolerate delay and obfuscation in getting similar information from government. The individual, and not the state, will be the master in the digital age.

Share of voice online is an interesting statistic, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale have 45% of the market share in terms of readership and so presence and perhaps influence: though there is no direct correlation between readers and influence some can be assumed. Sites such as LabourHome are far behind as are MPs blogs, but the total hits for party sites is minuscule: "Hitwise calculated that there was an online market share of 0.00012% for the Green Party website, 0.00018% for Labour, 0.00043% for the Lib Dems and 0.00051% for Labour. The Conservatives had double the visits, with 0.001% per cent – but the BNP was double their level again, on 0.0022%" (p. 13). While this is as a percentage of web users there is a suggestion in this that the parties are not offering the sort of content visitors find attractive.

But Colvile calls for the potential of the Internet to be harnessed in a way suggested by David Cameron in a paper entitled “Power to the People”, he argued that:

“I would like to see a system whereby, if enough people sign an online petition in favour of a particular motion, then a debate is held in Parliament, followed by a vote – so that the public know what their elected representatives actually think about the issues that matter to them.”

This in essence is something that the web community has been arguing for and criticising politician's use of the Internet for. Given that the Internet is increasingly constructed around virtual communities of participation, who can debate anything from the highly philosophical to the mundane, there is clearly potential for politicians to build an online political public sphere. The problem is getting a wider public to join in. A review in PR Week talks of Boris Johnson using the Internet for borough-based campaigning, but will this translate into trust and support for him as a Mayoral candidate. Does the share of voice and hits identified mean anything in terms of share of vote or actual support?

While there is potential, politicians cannot just create a blog, build a website or join Facebook and expect to reap rewards. Perhaps Johnson's bottom-up approach is best for creating engagement but putting existing bloggers on party staff is not an answer, neither is appearing 'palpably human' online unless the image is consistent offline and via the media. There is potential but engagement with Internet user must be entered into wholeheartedly or perhaps it is not worth considering even as "repositories of press releases and propaganda".

A new commons?

Following a session on the potential and pitfalls of an online political communication strategy, and in particular encouraging participatory interaction, on of my group forwarded an interesting Facebook message from Mike Rouse. The whole thing is reproduced below, but the idea is a WebCommons, a virtual space where citizens and politicians can interact from which feeds will be transmitted around the subscribing online community. The question is whether this is about connecting politics and the public or about promoting the Conservatives given Mike Rouse's allegiances (which he is quite open about): I note reference to Donorgate and Discgate (but think that can be excused). 18 Doughty Street, a project Rouse has worked on, has a definite air of partiallity at times, will the WebCommons? A question that's all. But it looks interesting, not quite sure why CVs are needed but see the email and sign up if interested. Clearly there is an attempt to get a momentum behing it (see the Youtube vid).

Early Slurge

From WebCommons

Hello WebCommoners!

I thought you might appreciate a little more information about what we are going to do. If you're too busy right now - either poking people or playing Scrabulus - please do come back when you're feeling fighting fit and ready to digest the below...You're going to be a part of something very special - a revolution in how people access information about their elected members throughout the UK.

But, more than just information we're about establishing a two-way process between the elected and the electors, but we're not going to call it "a conversation". Part of the problem with other sites is that they tap into useful information and news, but then have to add their own twist to it, spoon feed it to you, or make you jump through party poltiical hoops to get at it. Then, they wrap it all up in a "conversation" and pretend that they're sewing democracy a new suit.

But, do elected members really have time to sit down and have a two-way "conversation" with somebody over the internet that probably isn't in their constituency? No, they've got better things to be doing with their time, and rightly so. So, what we're going to do is give them a platform that they'll like because it's going to increase their profiles without them having to trawl through masses of comments and data.

For the most part it'll gather the data automagically. For you, the dear old WebCommoner, it's going to provide you with more information and access to your elected member than you could shake a stick at. You'll be able to hear directly from them with our blogging platform and blog aggregator, which will update every five minutes of the day - Imagine the old teleprinter they use on the telly for the football results - It'll be like that. Short. Snappy and too the point. Like a newswire for politics, but open to everybody.

What's more, you'll be able to see all the rising political issues as they develop. Remember "Donorgate" and "Discgate"? For the first time, you will be able to track these issues from the first time they rear their ugly heads until their conclusion - whatever it may be. Well, we hope that none of them result in the collapse of British democracy as that would kinda make us all redundant.

And if that wasn't enough, and oh how we like to spoil you, we're going to develop a daily podcasting service that will be available on the site at an amazing 6am every morning. We'll call it WebCommons Today or something like that and it'll basically tell you what's been happening the day before and forecast the day ahead. It's a bit like the Shipping Forecast for politics. BBC Radio 4 hold on to your hat!

Finally, and this has to be the icing on the cake, we're going to provide an indepth performance tracker in the site, which is going to let you see how the public at large perceive the performance of an elected member. Bit like a stock price for politicians... How much is your MP worth?

The site is not going to work unless we make some pretty hefty relationships with commentators and elected members. We're not just restricting it to Commons Members either. If you're an elected member in any public body in the UK you can bet you'll be on WebCommons. We should have called it WebElectedMembers, but that hasn't really got the same ring to it, has it?

Thanks for tuning in to this rather looooooooong update. Hopefully, you're still concious enough to make the decision as to how involved you'd like to get. If you're really keen, just drop Mike Rouse your CV on mike.rouse@messagespace.co.uk and let him know what interests you about politics and what you're up for.

Thanks a gozillion!

WebCommons"Bringing order to chaos"

PS: Share the Page with a friend!

Shovelware seems de rigeur

Just as US parties and candidates are embracing all communications technological, and Labour leadership hopefuls are experimenting with social media, it seems the Liberal Democrats are in retreat away from the Internet. Dizzy bemoans the death of another blog and I agree, but also note the lack of enthusiasm within the party to keep it going. Rob Fenwick, who runs the Liberal Democrat Voice, says in his post that he no longer has time but no-one else has come forward, so the e-presence is simply their website and the Lib Dem blogs network. The loss of 'the voice' is that central place where many news and views were collected and disseminated, so in terms of creating an online supporters' community this is a backwards step.

Similar negatives can be levelled at the Ming Campbell blog, started with little fanfare on Feb 10th 2006, but which is only really a blog in style. The entries are impersonal, slightly more attractive than press releases (they include videos etc) but seems to attract very little in the way of comments and does not offer dialogue to visitors. 'LibDem blogs' still collects various postings together but it is simply a database that takes visitors to the host blog. So it seems, despite the potential the Internet can offer to parties with limited funds that the LibDems are missing the same tricks as their larger counterparts, more shovelware anyone?

The e-campaign comes of age?

Candidates in the primaries and the parties themselves are increasingly utilising the Internet in their bid to win the US presidency, with the Democrats leading the race in building up a community around their social networking activities according to an article published today. The activity on their open threads does not suggest a party talking to voters, but evidence that there may be strong public engagement and cross-contributor horizontal dialogue; is this the e-public sphere that many academics of public discourse suggest the Internet can facilitate? Two observations here are very important, both made by John Durham the Internet strategist behind the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. Firstly that a candidate going online "needs to cede a certain amount of control for a certain amount of visibility", and when "Every vote is going to be necessary... [the] undecided group of voters [must] be reached in non-mass ways". British counterparts need to take note of this, and the level of interactivity French presidential candidates engaged in; being online is not sufficient, but creating a real dialogue and so building relationships requires a degree of openness and interactivity. If positive and fresh perceptions of politicians is to be built online then it needs to adopt a different model of political communication than the simple repeat-remind, one-way push communication! While Howard Dean did not change the face of political communication in 2004; the forthcoming contest could see the candidate with the most interactive web presence win the primary and the election - it is possible!