Resource:
The Civic Commons
- Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook
- People: Dan Moulthrop
- Tags: Citizen Sources, Civic Engagement, Civic Journalism, Online Conversations
The Civic Commons is a new way to bring communities together with conversation and emerging technology. We provide the place and tools for citizens to connect with and inform one another and to take action. It’s a bit like a virtual pub or coffee house, where citizens and officials can gather to talk about community issues, brainstorm solutions, coordinate plans — and maybe even have fun and meet new people along the way.
We take some of our inspiration from Clay Shirky’s book, Cognitive Surplus, which explores how communities of people can pool small amounts of their spare time, say 10 minutes a week, to accomplish great things. With this in mind, we’ve constructed our website to enable our community members to leverage their efforts into collective greatness. Wiki-greatness, if you like.
We want to make civic involvement easy and fun, something you can do after you put the kids to bed or get home from the gym. Something you want to do as much as checking Facebook or — checking Facebook again.” Source: The Civic Commons
We’ll be experimenting with ways journalism can be participatory, where those who were traditionally informed readers and writers of letters to the editor can be involved in reporting, writing and analyzing the news. That means readers can decide what stories get covered–because with the right tools and training, they can report them. Our region has some incredible citizen-led journalistic efforts going on already. The Civic Commons doesn’t want to compete with any of them. We want to collaborate with all of them, bring their work to an audience across Northeast Ohio, and make the hyper-local regionally significant.” Source: The Civic Commons
The Journalism Accelerator is not responsible for the content we post here, as excerpts from the source, or links on those sites. The JA does not endorse these sites or their products outright but we sure are intrigued with what they’re up to.
Topics: Community Distribution Education Resources
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Dan, this has been great fun! One last thing I wanted to ask is about how people rate comments on the Civic Commons. I mentioned this last week in the thread. You don’t use “like” – rather you ask people to decide if something is “persuasive,” “informative” or “inspiring.” Why?
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
This is actually a feature of the Commons about which I’m most pleased. firstly, rating contributions gives people a way to engage when they don’t want to add a contribution. And it’s a great way to find out what ideas resonate with people. The problem with most rating systems is that very few people like the “Like” button. Thumbs up or down don’t really express the nuance that civil, deliberative civic dialogue requires. Now, we want people to behave in ways that are persuasive, informative and inspiring, so we figured the best way to do that is to subtly encourage people to judge one another with those criteria in mind. When you’re contributing to a conversation at the Commons, it’s hard to do that without feeling like you should try to be either persuasive, inspiring or informative. We feel like those ratings do a ton to help make conversation productive. And I’ll tell you where we stole the idea: At TED.com, you can sort content according to the tags that people ascribe to talks–jaw-dropping, inspiring, etc. It was that sort of feeling we were going for.
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
Interesting Dan, the thought with which your team has designed your platform for affecting change is very impressive, (and inspiring to me personally, if I might add). It’s really important that other communities learn about your efforts so I’d be happy to help in any way I can to get the word out to more people.
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
thanks, Jim! I might be in touch!
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Emily–thank you for this opportunity. I really enjoyed it. It’s a privilege to be able to share what we’re learning with you and the JA community. I’m looking forward to our joint session at the 2012 Poynter Media Ethics summit at Kent State next week!
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Me too! Thank you, Dan, and everyone who participated today. Anyone can still chime in with questions or comments, and you can subscribe to this thread to see any new posts.
We’ll be doing more of these conversations throughout the fall. We welcome your thoughts on other resources listed on the JA you’d like to chat about in depth!
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
We’re coming up on the last ten minutes of our time with Dan today. So if you’re here and want to share some experience or ask a question, jump on in!
Remember the comment thread will stay open after this – subscribe to comments and you’ll get a note when there’s something new so you can reply at your leisure.
Director of Partnerships at the Civic Commons
Thank you so much to the JA team for hosting this conversation. I’ve worked with the Civic Commons first as a project manager for the EfficientGovNetwork (http://theciviccommons.com/egn) and now as Director of Partnerships, but another hat I wear is as a city council person in a small suburb in NE Ohio and it is with that public servant hat on that I most often appreciate the potential of civil discourse: it can lead to better knowing what voters aka taxpayers aka residents want. If elected officials aren’t in touch with and engaging with them, what’s the point, right? So for me, the Civic Commons is no mere exercise to see if we can do *it* i.e., debate with civility. It’s a pragmatic tool for policy making and governing – I hope!
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Jill, thank you for joining in! Let me ask you this….how would you compare this type of engagement to traditional journalism? As far as communicating with the public goes.
Director of Partnerships at the Civic Commons
This kind of engagement is direct, immediate and, frankly, forces you to think before you write – so the upside is that you can be articulate but the downside is that someone who wants to be vague, may also be vague. But on the third hand? People in an online engagement like this won’t let that vagueness stand! So it takes a bit of courage but ultimately, I believe that you get a much meatier exchange than is currently possible with most traditional journalism outlets and how they handle “interaction” with their readers/consumers/public.
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Thanks for that – good to remember three hands.
Would you mind going into a bit more depth on why you put “interaction” of traditional journalism outlets in quotes?
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
I can answer this for Jill. She and I have talked about this a lot. Most media orgs see interaction as simply allowing a space for comments below the content they’ve produced, and they also publish letters to the editor. But the journalists who actually engage in conversation with their readership are few. That’s the case because interaction takes time and because it’s a different way of working. The journalistic tradition with which we’re most familiar is presentational, not conversational. But that’s changing, albeit slowly.
Director of Partnerships at the Civic Commons
Thanks, Dan. Yes, Emily, that was what was in my mind when I used the quotation marks. Very valid question of course. And as Dan wrote, it is changing but not in the dynamic way in which initiatives like the Civic Commons seeks to, ahem, accelerate that change.
Experienced innovator and business consultant in interactive media.
Dan, Do you see interest from traditional journalism organizations like newspapers and TV in collaborating on these projects?
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Let me piggyback on Joe’s question, Dan. I know you’ve done some partnerships with publishers. In those relationships, who does what?
And why would a news organization turn to something like the Civic Commons, instead of using their own site for a moderated discussion? (And keeping traffic there?)
Experienced innovator and business consultant in interactive media.
Thanks, Emily. That’s a much better way of putting it!
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Well, I’m not sure about that, but at least it’s quadruple-barreled now…always good, right? (Just kidding.)
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Emily and Joe–that’s a really important question. I’ll start with the obstacle. Most news orgs are reluctant to do anything that might not keep people on their sites. That’s something we’re working on. eventually, we hope to have something that can compete with LiveFyre and Disqus that can be more productive and useful and change the purpose of commenting on content.
One of the pain points for which we provide much needed relief is at the level of civility and transparency in our online environment. Most commenting environments for local legacy media organizations and even larger ones are characterized by incivility and bullying, in which the loudest, most persistent voice usually “wins.” In our environment, everyone agrees to be civil (interested in understanding one another’s opinions and points of view) and transparent (I am who I say I am; we don’t do anonymity). That changes the tenor of conversation considerably. Suddenly, you remove the fear of being called an idiot, and an amazing exchange of ideas becomes the expectation, rather than the exception. I think that’s the major value we add.
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Your website also says you “want to make civic involvement easy and fun…something you want to do as much as checking Facebook or — checking Facebook again.” Why not stay where people are – with Facebook as the place for civic conversation to happen?
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
I love FB for a lot of things, but for conversations that last more than two hours, it’s terrible. Ideas disappear, conversations are ethereal, and here in the US, it’s hard for us to convert that space into meaningful civic space. They’ve done that in the Mid-East, but in the US, we prefer it for sharing pictures of family and friends and the occasional piece of political journalism.
It’s really the way ideas disappear in FB and Twitter that we’re trying to correct with the Civic Commons. But you make a really good point. I sometimes wonder if we made a mistake by trying to create yet another place for people to come to. It’s like putting up a new restaurant next to the one run by an Iron Chef. Kind of a long shot.
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Or maybe really smart. You know, if you’re going to open a coffee shop, the best place supposedly is right across from (or next door to) the place people already go for coffee. Hmm, how can you be right across the street from Facebook?
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Ooooh. Good thought…
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
Dan,
I’ve heard one common thread in listening to CommonWealth speakers such as Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz when asked about what we (the public) can do to take action in key public issues around the common good; Each stated to “organize” and “get involved”. What do you think are the key process or media hurdles (or other) from engaging the civic-minded among us to get involved in the conversation and take action?
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Great question, Jim. Thanks for asking. I’ll tell you frankly, when “big thinkers” like those guys say vague things like “organize” and “get involved,” I get a little frustrated, because the public processes in our system aren’t really set up for the civic minded among us. Below, I talked a bit about why school board meetings are so weird, and I think they’re actually a very useful local level illustration of the problem. At school board meetings, the moment for public input is relegated to a tiny portion of any agenda, and in actuality, it functions as a high stakes moment for anxious and upset people to attempt to articulate an important concern and find that their concern is usually ignored by board members, who, because of whatever perceived or real constraints, don’t feel they can respond directly. We’re trying to upend those systems. We imagine a world where citizens and their elected officials talk through issues together in online forums and face to face. Why not? We’re using tools that are centuries old when we could be using Civic Commons, Facebook or Twitter.
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
A great example here in Portland, where the city council just agreed privately to add floride to the water without public discussion. The “public comment period” was jammed with people, but they couldn’t influence the process.
I know this is perhaps an example that draws emotion from vastly divergent views, and mixes feelings and science. It certainly is an example of little public involvement in a public decision involving health and money. Here’s what I wonder though, would a thorough public discussion on a well-worn topic (over the years, and around the country) like this have changed the vote? And if not, would it be important?
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Wait, you didn’t have floride in the water? That’s like Dr. Strangelove or something.
Anyway, my impulse on all sorts of decisions like that is that public bodies and public reps engage their public before getting to the point of having to cast the vote. It just makes sense from every point of view. If I’m a citizen, I know I’ll have a chance to give my 2 cents. If I’m an elected, I’ll have cover and be able to say, we talked to a lot of people and here’s why we’re making this decision. One of the visions of our project is that there be a common place that everyone knows is the place to participate in these sorts of conversations (in addition to traditional public processes).
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
I’m really interested in this question Emily because the point of the debate and discourse is to have the possibility to alter the outcome. If the concerns are heard but no provision for action is part of the process, the participants will become resigned and withdraw no differently than today’s millenial voter
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
So possibility for change or influence has to be built in, do you think? Is there some value though, in “having your voice heard” (and is it measurable?)
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Jim–you’re absolutely correct. My comments above about electeds having cover are a bit cynical, but our hope is that even if they come to engagement looking for cover, they’ll actually find value eventually.
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
I think there is value in being heard (to me) but I believe the value to the common good might be in how many people I influenced after I was given the floor to be heard. So could there be a mechanism by which the influence I exert in having my voice heard shows up in some type of reputation score for me personally, and/or in voting, e.g. after being heard the vote is “re-cast”?
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Jill Zimon, with Civic Commons AND a city council member, what do you think?
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
Agreed Dan and Emily, just having an easy way to participate and be heard, and perhaps be known in the local community would be a fantastic start, and if there were a way for the person to connect to others to continue the dialogue afterwards even better. The tangible value then might be the number of new connections made (which JA does so well with the “follow” button on the participating members in these chat sessions) When I was at Yahoo, we used to measure the health and vitality of an online community by the density (number) of connections between its members.
Director of Partnerships at the Civic Commons
In one word? Leadership. But in a few more words, voters who care. Now, any and all eligible voters seem to be able to be drawn into comment on any one of a number of topics. But then if you ask them to take action beyond that input, you have fewer who step up. Then, when it has to do with becoming the one who might be in that local elected body of government so that you have believers in there who prioritize the public voice, you have an even smaller set of people. My belief is that the more comfortable we make the settings in which non-elected members of a community can engage with each other and organize around issues, virtually or in real-time, the more accustomed they then will become to wanting to go past the talk and desire to take action. Simultaneously with that will be an examination of whether they can trust the decision makers to hear what they (that public) has to say about any one issue. And if the decision makers are choosing to ignore? Then the folks in the public, in my opinion, need to realize that they are indeed the ones they’re looking for. We will only see a change in leadership if we actually…change our leaders. And we know that we can do that.
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
I’m not sure that totally answers your question, though. Please push me for more if I’ve misunderstood.
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
Dan your thoughts and comments are giving me extremely valuable insights. Thank you again. I think the school board is an excellent example of the hurdles and limitations of current civic systems. With that said, following Neal Postman’s thinking from Amusing Ourselves to Death, one of the limitations of new forms of media (including online media) appears to be the issues you raise about un-civilized conversations and the challenge of separating facts from the noise and chatter of uninformed opinion.
- How do you create a respectful environment for civic discourse where all ideas are heard, yet still provide a mechanism whereby those participants whose contributions are the most valuable naturally rise to the top (they “become” influential)?
- Besides providing visibility to their identity is there a method for building influence or local reputation?
Journalist, fan of facts, character and motivation. Former JA editorial director.
Jim, you might be interested in the unique way the Civic Commons ranks comments.
I'm Curator of Conversation for a Northeast Ohio start-up called The Civic Commons.
Also Jim, in addition to the link Emily provides, I’ll tell you that we’re in the process of putting a badge system in at the Commons, so people who are consistently rated as, say, “inspiring,” can be recognized. As the system evolves, I imagine there might be badges for electeds or public officials in a position to translate the conversation into impact.
CEO, Spotlikes, Inc, 16 yrs in local monetization, recently in light weight mobile-local-social publishing models to strengthen local communities.
Thanks Emily for pointing out, very helpful.