The document discusses how the internet is changing politics and civic participation. It argues that the rise of social media and online networking allows for more open, collaborative and participatory forms of civic engagement. However, this has also disrupted traditional political structures and media. Moving forward, it suggests politics needs to embrace more networked and digital approaches, engaging citizens as collaborators rather than just communicating to the public. Elected representatives will need to adopt the behaviors and norms of online culture to be effective in this new networked society.

1. How is the Internet Changing
Politics?
Catherine Howe, Public-i

2. Democratic participation is dropping.
Participation online is growing.

3. Are these effects related?
If so, how are the related?
If not, how can we connect
them?

4. What has the Internet ever
done for us?

5. Technology or Social Change?
The Internet is the most significant technological development of the
last 100 years. At least.
 Self Publication: Disintermediation of the Media
 Virtual Community and Social Networking: Wide scale use of Networked
Power
 Collaborative Culture: Creating a sharing economy
 Radical Openness: Disruption of the democratic relationship
 Networked Technology: Smart Cities and new streams of information
 Customisation, Making and Self-Service: Disruption of manufacturing and
the industrial economy

6. Social Change

7. Participatory Culture
Jenkins, Rheingold
 With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
 With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
 With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most
experienced is passed along to novices
 Where Members believe that their contributions matter
 Where Members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at
the least they care what other people think about what they have created)

8. We Will Gather
http://www.wewillgather.co.uk
 Grew out of a spontaneous response
to the riots in 2011 and #RiotCleanup
 Based around the simple premise of
helping people organise for specific
community tasks
 It worked once – can you work
again?

9. Networked Power
Networked power operates differently to hierarchical power
 It depends on connections and sharing rather than on roles or structures
 It is highly responsive to need and opportunity
 When online it can be highly agile as the environment is designed to support this
 There are different forms of ties within networks – strong and weak – and these
operate differently
 You need to understand your own contribution to understand your relevance and
potential influence

10. Occupy
http://occupylondon.org.uk
 No-one is in charge
 Decisions are negotiated
 Objectives are contested
 They are highly networked and agile
 Is this intelligence or community
policing?

11. Co-production
Co-production means involving all stakeholders in not only designing
but delivering outcomes
 Community engagement theory and practice has moved away from top down
models, and best practice examines how you can pass power to communities
 It takes an asset based approach to communities rather than the traditional
deficit model
 It is a strong ‘fit’ with the participatory culture of the online world
 It is an important tool in a time when we have to find ‘more for less’

12. Community Payback
http://www.swmprobation.gov.uk/?page_id=31
 A scheme to enable local communities to
nominate projects for Community Payback
 The scheme will be organised online and
results will be shared there
 The project owner presented at CityCamp
Coventry and is thinking of this as a social
enterprise from the start

13. Social Innovation
The Social Innovation movement brings many of these ideas together
 Social Innovation is a term referring to groups, organisations and individuals
who use this new environment to create new ways of doing things
 Usually these projects are civic and ‘pro-social’
 They work in highly networked and agile ways and can be both highly
effective and highly fragile
 At their heart is the concept of an unconference – an unscripted gathering of
like minded people

14. BlueLightCamp
http://bluelightcamp.wordpress.com
 A Social Innovation event based on
an unconference format: No agenda,
only 1 or 2 formal speakers
 Hundreds of professionals attending
and sharing information
 Self-directed learning and best
practice
 A way to find early adopters in your
organisations

15. Is Politics about
more than just the
media?

16. We limit ourselves by simply considering
changes to the way we communicate

17. There are new rules of engagement
Networked Digital
Open Agile

18. How does this change the relationship
between citizen and state?

19. Disintermediation and new forms of power
Political Parties have less Local Media is struggling to
relevance survive
There is no space for Your thinking will be done
discretion in public

20. Will we just communicate with the
public or collaborate with them?

21. We live in an increasingly networked society
Our working assumption, explored in recent research work, is that:
a more networked society will need a more Networked Councillor
- able to represent and respond to people acclimatized to a collaborative and
networked way of making decisions and taking action.

22. The qualities of the Networked Councillor
 Open by default: this is open not just in terms of information but also in terms of
thinking and decision making
 Digitally native: not in terms of age but in terms of the individual adopting the
behaviours and social norms of the digital culture
 Co-productive: an expectation that everyone in the conversation has power to act and
the potential to be active in the outcome as well as the decision-making process
 And as the name says, networked: able to be effective via networked as well as
hierarchical power as a leader

23. We need to support our
Elected Representatives
in a way which makes them effective in this
Networked and Digital World

24. We do not need to show them
how to use Twitter

25. What do you think?

26. Thank you for your time
Catherine Howe
catherine.howe@public-i.info