Practices of community representatives in exploiting information channels for citizen engagement

PRACTICES OF COMMUNITY
REPRESENTATIVES
IN EXPLOITING INFORMATION CHANNELS
FOR CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
PETER CRUICKSHANK
@SPARTAKAN
HAZEL HALL
@HAZELH
BRUCE RYAN
@BRUCE_RESEARCH
CENTRE FOR
SOCIAL INFORMATICS

THE PROJECT
This presentation is based on some of the outcomes
of the IL-DEM project that ran at end of 2016
◦ http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/2017/03/project-report-on-
information-literacy-for-democratic-engagement-il-dem/
◦ https://community-knect.net/category/projects/il-dem/
It was funded by the Information Literacy Group of
CILIP
◦ https://www.cilip.org.uk/about/special-interest-groups/information-
literacy-group
It was carried out by the Centre for Social
Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University’s
School of Computing
29/06/2017 I3 - CRUICKSHANK (@SPARTAKAN), HALL & RYAN 2

WHAT ARE COMMUNITY COUNCILS?
There are 32 Local Authorities in Scotland
◦ Average population c100k – much bigger than anywhere
else in Europe
◦ Community Councils represent small areas within these LAs
in an attempt to make up the democratic deficit
◦ Legal duty:
◦ “Ascertain, co-ordinate and express to the local authorities for its area, …the
views of the community which it represents”
◦ In practice, this is also understood to be about
communication of key facts to & from citizens
Powers are limited
◦ Mostly, the right to be consulted
◦ Some more direct input into planning processes
I3 - CRUICKSHANK (@SPARTAKAN), HALL & RYAN29/06/2017 3

WHO ARE COMMUNITY COUNCILLORS?
Community Council members are
unpaid volunteers
◦ Around 1200 community councils in total
◦ Around 11,000 community councillors
◦ No solid demographic information exists
They have access to small
to non-existent budgets
◦ Average annual income is
around £1000
◦ Enough to hire a monthly
meeting room, pay for some
stationery…

YEAH, AND?
https://pixabay.com/en/bored-female-girl-people-school-16811/

WHY COMMUNITY COUNCILS ARE INTERESTING
(REALLY)
Pure representation role
Entirely oriented to
information finding and
sharing
May give an insight into
approaches to “facts” by
representatives
Small scale, community
based nature:
Analogies with hyperlocal
media?
“Context collapse”

RESEARCH MOTIVATION
Previous work used models of
knowledge sharing and CoPs
(Cruickshank & Ryan, 2015)
◦ Had indicated that information science
could provide useful insights
◦ Raised questions about how community
councillors went about acquiring skills
and information
Research gap: Information literacy in
representatives
◦ not citizens - well covered, eg by Smith (2016)
Research Questions addressed representatives
finding and sharing info:
1. about their role
2. about their community, and with their community
3. what resources are available to help
There’s the bigger picture: What are we trying to prove?

INFORMATION LITERACY
‘those who possess the techniques and skills for using
information tools in moulding solutions to problems’
Responding to the new information intense world
Although it started in workplace context in the 1970s, it was soon
applied to politics, and then personal lives…
…it is now linked to libraries, librarians and (higher) education
(Berhens, 1994).
IL is always seen as a good thing… it is value laden.
Focusses on the individual
Current definitions and models reflect this background.
◦ eg The Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_New_York_Times_newsroom_1942.jpg

RESEARCH APPROACH 1
Identified themes …
◦ Information literacy
◦ Behaviour and practices
◦ Lifelong learning/everyday life
◦ Libraries
◦ Communities, social capital and citizenship
◦ Becoming information literate
•From
themes
•From
literature
Questions
developed
•Information
Literacy
•Activity systems
Validated
against
models

RESEARCH APPROACH 2: INFORMATION LITERACY
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present
The SCONUL 7-pillar model (SCONUL, 2011) was chosen
for its recentness and extensibility
Not used to directly create questions
…Instead, used to validate them
•From themes
•From literature
Questions
developed
•Information
Literacy
•Activity
systems
Validated
against
models

RESEARCH APPROACH 3: ACTIVITY THEORY (AT)
‘A language for making sense of complex, real-world
activities in cultural and historical contexts’
Enables examination of collective/ organizational
activities.
◦ AT has been used in IL research (eg in Wilson, 2008) but not in the
context of democratic representation
◦ Inspired partly by the use of AT in
Detlor, Hupfer & Smith (2016)
to organise their data
•From themes
•From literature
Questions
developed
•Information
Literacy
•Activity
systems
Validated
against
models
Subject
Tools
Object Outcome
Division of
labour
CommunityRules and
norms
Motivation

RESEARCH PROCESS
METHOD
Interviews
Triangulation through
◦ Online survey
◦ Direct contact with LA support staff
◦ Desktop research
PARTICIPANTS
19 in total from all over Scotland
Most many years out of school
Almost all degree or PG education
That is: likely untypically high self efficacy in
information seeking and use. Results are going
to be close to best practice
◦ Lack of info on general demographics of
community councillors makes it difficult to
generalise

PALE, STALE AND MALE?

PALE, STALE AND FEMALE?
http://mountpleasantgranary.net/blog/images/Rachel-concentrating.jpg

FINDINGS:
FINDING AND SHARING INFORMATION
ABOUT ROLES
Defined in terms of information
“Voice of the community”
“represent community views”
Sharing information from citizens to
authorities
But also, explaining the decisions to citizens
ABOUT THE COMMUNITY
Sources of information: mix of digital and non-
digital
Facebook is a key online channel
◦ Some make use of demographic data provided
by Facebook
Information assessed for quality on basis of
source

FINDINGS:
FINDING AND SHARING INFORMATION
“We don’t transact actions, we don’t
have any financial power. Our
currency is information”

IL ANALYSES USING SCONUL MODEL
1. Identify information needs
◦ The majority (16/19) used relevant sources to understand their roles
◦ It was clear that very few stepped far from the information and training provided by their local
authorities
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present

2. Scoping work
◦ Conspicuously absent (only 1/19).
◦ There is awareness of the tasks required by their community council roles, which implies they have
some idea of the scope of the related information gaps
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present

3. Planning to fill information gaps
◦ Lack rigour
◦ It is almost totally absent from information-gathering related to understanding roles
◦ Planning is more present in information-sharing between citizens and authorities
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present
if there’s information-seeking to be done, I generally do
it myself… I’m highly skeptical of others’ information-
gathering skills. ‘we’ve realized that having a reliance on just using the
web to research information has its limitations’

4. Information gathering
◦ Variable practices
◦ Variation in the sources and channels used in these activities, and the reasons for such variation, may
well be worth investigating further.
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present

[we are] ‘balancing needs of those immediately affected
by issues against those of whole community’
5. Evaluation of information
◦ Lacks rigour: generally assessed by its provenance, implying that interviewees generally trust ‘official’
sources such as local authorities and central government
◦ Even though other responses criticised local authorities for not providing, or even obstructing access to,
information desired by community councils
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present
‘you have to be able to know that what you’re telling people is
correct, therefore if you don’t understand or you haven’t researched
the information, they’re not going to get the right answer.’

6. Information management
◦ Means: Honesty when handling and disseminating information, choice of appropriate methods for
handling and storing information
◦ Calls for use of suitable software to create and manage information
◦ Not mentioned – but information is routinely stored in the form of minutes and committee papers
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present

7. Information presentation
◦ Covers a wide range of activities
◦ Highly variable, especially in the channels used to disseminate information to citizens
1.
Identify
2.
Scope
3.
Plan
4.
Gather
5.
Evaluate
6.
Manage
7.
Present
‘sharing information about local meetings builds social
capital in terms of meetings being well attended and
hence building social networks’

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlickr_-_%E2%80%A6trialsanderrors_-_Temple_of_Jupiter%2C_Baalbek%2C_Holy_Land%2C_ca._1895.jpg29/06/2017
HOW TO EXPLAIN THE BROKEN PILLARS?
I3 - CRUICKSHANK (@SPARTAKAN), HALL & RYAN 25

ACTIVITY THEORY AS A FRAMEWORK
Nice to use
◦ Ensured robustness of questions
◦ Good at identifying and integrating
social context
Would be easy to go on and
explore…
◦ The different potential
activity systems involved
◦ Contradictions between
and within them
Subject
community
councils
Tools
Facebook, social media,
face-to-face, paper
Object
Information shared
with citizens
Outcome
somewhat
informed
citizens
Division of labour
conflicts, roles,
resources
Community
peers and
local authority
councillors,
local communities
Rules and norms
community council
structures are defined
by
local authority Schemes
Motivation
understanding
of roles
We’re presenting more on this at ECIL 2017
Activity System: Sharing of information with citizens

INFORMATION LITERACY AS A FRAMEWORK
A good measurement tool, less good on
explanation
◦ Eg: Not enough on social context
Educational biases in IL show through
◦ Workplace and lifelong learning seem to be
afterthoughts
Main issue for us is the weakness of sharing
as a single pillar
◦ It’s a complex of behaviours, even more than
the other pillars, including:
◦ Skills for media creation
◦ Identifying audience needs (imagining the audience)
◦ Extracting meaning/significance
https://www.flickr.com/photos/national_archives_of_estonia/12810067093

POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Gaps in skills & practices point to obvious training needs
◦ Limited by general lack of resources
◦ Back to communities of practice to understand best models for knowledge & skill sharing
Library support opportunities being missed
◦ Such as basic IL skills appropriate to community councillors
Remember that the data comes from people
with good skills and high self-efficacy
“…all done on an ad hoc informal basis and not specifically for
community councils per se”

CONCLUSION
IL for static analysis, AT for context
◦ Lifelong learning provides another context (Irving, Brettle & Hall, 2015)
Gives an idea of the issues that politicians face in their role as
community representative
◦ Raises questions about how this relates to existing workplace research
Relation to other research approaches?
◦ Communities of practice (understood as activity systems?)
◦ Information communication? Eg hyperlocal media and context collapse

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to …
◦ The Information Literacy Group of CILIP for funding the work
◦ The community councillors who participated in the research
◦ The community council liaison officers and Improvement Service staff for providing information, helping
to pilot interview questions and to recruit participants, to the local authority librarians who provided
information
© To the best of my knowledge, all images are public domain or Creative Commons. Follow the links for individual terms and conditions

SELECTED REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Behrens, S. J. (1994). A Conceptual Analysis and Historical Overview of Information Literacy. College & Research Libraries,
55(4), 309–322. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl_55_04_309
Cruickshank, P., & Ryan, B. M. (2015). The Communities of Practice model for understanding digital engagement by
hyperlocal elected representatives. In E. Tambouris, H. J. Scholl, M. Janssen, M. A. Wimmer, K. Tarabanis, M. Gascó, … Ø.
Sæbø (Eds.), Electronic Government and Electronic Participation (pp. 11–18). IOS Press. http://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-
61499-570-8-11
Detlor, B., Hupfer, M. E., & Smith, D. H. (2016). Digital storytelling and memory institutions: a case study using activity
theory. In ASIST 2016. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Irving, C., Brettle, A., & Hall, H. (2015). How can information literacy be modelled from a lifelong learning perspective? In
Information: Interactions and Impact. Aberdeen, UK. Retrieved from www.rgu.ac.uk/file/i3-irving-et-al-pdf-800k
Ryan, B. M., & Cruickshank, P. (2014). Scottish Community Councils online: the 2014 survey. Edinburgh.
https://doi.org/10.14297/enr.2016.000002
Smith, L. (2016). School libraries, political information and information literacy provision: findings from a Scottish study.
Journal of Information Literacy, 20(2). https://doi.org/10.11645/10.2.2097
Wilson, T. (2008). Activity Theory and Information Seeking. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 42,
119–161. https://doi.org/10.1002/aris.2008.1440420111

THANK YOU
PETER CRUICKSHANK
P.CRUICKSHANK@NAPIER.AC.UK
@SPARTAKAN
HAZEL HALL
H.HALL@NAPIER.AC.UK
@HAZELH
BRUCE RYAN
B.RYAN@NAPIER.AC.UK
@BRUCE_RESEARCH

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