This brief presentation explores ways in which policymakers can use social media to engage and consult various publics about their programmes and research outcomes.

1. The use of social media to
consult and engage with the
public about development
policy
Department for International Development
24th June 2015
David Girling
@socialmedia4D

2. - Defining publics
- Open policy making toolkit
-Whiteboard Animations – Oxfam vs DEV
- Seeding
Brief outline

3. Social Media Audit

4. Defining publics
Civil society
Opinion formers
Media
Media gatekeepers
Academics
Policymakers
Funders

5. Open policy making toolkit: social
media listening and analyis
“More than 50% of people in the UK use social media every week, so it is an
important source of information for policy makers. It can feed our policy
understanding by building our knowledge and helping us to make informed
decisions. It is often also used for communication campaigns.”
UK Cabinet Office
March 2015

6. Issues to be aware of:
• social media is not representative so the views you are hearing are
only of a certain section of the population at a certain time
• rumours and false information can spread easily over social media:
be a cynic and check it against what you know; don’t rely on facts
from a single unknown source
• most tools only sample a small section of the whole conversation
onTwitter: this isn’t a problem if you’re looking at trends in large
quantities ofTwitter data but it is worth remembering that you’re
not seeing every tweet
• tools that claim to do accurate sentiment analysis (assessing social
media messages as positive or negative) are rarely accurate as
computers are not good at recognising humour or sarcasm; check
the results and if possible correct what the tool finds

7. How to do social media analysis
• Set your objectives
• Work out who to monitor
• Identify and understand your influencers
• Check and adjust
• Consider how to use the information you are
gathering

8. NATO Summit 2014:
engaging through digital
What they did:Twitter to identify key influencers (councillors, business owners,
community groups) #myWales
How it worked: Storify, NATO sausage, Mount Pleasant Primary
Why it worked: engagement, FCO networks
What were the benefits:
“This approach enabled us to overcome geography. Building a strong and responsive local
network that was willing to publicise our messages locally….relationships that began via
social media gave way to real life opportnuties”.
http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/digitaldiplomacy/case-study/nato-summit-wales-2014-engaging-through-digital/

9. Connecting Social Media to the
Policy Cycle
- Online forums
- Facebook
- Google Hangouts
- Ensure that social media tools are embedded in
government processes
- Building capacity in digital engagement
- Make draft strategies and policies available for
comment and discussion
http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/connecting-social-media-policy-cycle

10. How to communicate research for
policy influence
“The practice of data visualization is becoming
increasingly important; moreover it is changing the
way people receive and consume data….Data
visualisation allows simplifying, measuring,
comparing, exploring, and discovering data; it
transforms data into information and information into
knowledge.”
http://www.vippal.cippec.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Guia-05-serie-3-ingles.pdf

11. DFID Infographics

15. - Upload video to DEVYouTube on Friday 25th April
- Promote via @socialmedia4D @martinscott2010
@developmentuea @uniofeastanglia
- Schedule tweets over the weekend
- Promote on DEV LinkedIn and Facebook Page
- Send email round to DEV staff (John's round up?)
- Send email to Media Students and Media Alumni?
- Press Release?
- Blog Post?
- Contact various media people onTwitter e.g. BBCTrending, BBC Media Action, Media Matters,
Media Trust, One World Media, Global Media Forum, Beth Kanter, Guardian, Guardian
Professionals, Melinda Gates, Al Jazeera Stream,
- Co-ordinate tweets with Jason Toal and Sarah Menard in Canada and Diana
- Post to JISC Mail and any other LinkedIn Groups you know of

19. What is the purpose of your multi-author blog?
Use an open source blogging platform e.g. Wordpress
Gauge people’s buy-in
Get support from the top
How do you seed your blog?
How do you measure success?

21. Summary
- Define your audiences early on
- Make research findings relevant to different
audiences
- Summarise effectively
- Humanise the story
- Need to embed behavioural change about social
media

22. Barriers
- Need a critical mass
- Limitations of access
- Internet cost - availability
- Literacy

23. Further Reading
- Alliance for Useful Evidence (2014) Social Media and
Public Policy: What is the evidence?
- Duncan Green (2014) What do What House Policy
Makers want from Researchers?
- Beth Kanter (2104) International Organizations and Social
Media: News, Engagement, and Social Data for Policy
Change
- Ella McPherson (2014) Four things policy-makers need to
know about social media data and real time analytics.
- IBT (2015) Social Media – making your voice heard

24. THANK YOU
David Girling
@socialmedia4D
http://social-media-for-development.org
d.girling@uea.ac.uk