It comes down to design and culture. Fairly obvious conclusion to draw, but after my travels through the Neighbors for Neighbors network, the discussion in last weeks class on the relationship between the technical and social could not have been more relevant as I tried to determine how NfN could be more effective in reaching its goals.
Across the network, the key area needed for improvement is that of user participation. While NfN’s JP network does boast a user base of over 1500 and does feature constant blog and forum posts, the aspect of blog and forum responses is fairly low. Also, with the addition of sites for the other towns in Boston, NfN has an imperative to increase participation and boost membership for the new sites.
In my previous post I presented accounts and ideas around increasing participation in networks. One of the more theoretical ideas that was considered was that of social objects, where a social network is defined by an “object” of common interest. While I proposed that NfN’s social object was community organizing for Boston’s neighborhoods, Mushon prompted me to reify this further as he, and rightfully so, felt that community organizing was too abstract and would most likely not boost NfN’s gravitational pull.
Looking further into the idea of defining the social object for NfN, I explored Etienne Wegners concept of communities of practice. Wegner defines a community of practice as :
” groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”
he expands on this further by saying
“In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice.”
As I mentioned in my last post, it would seem that the social object for NfN is community organizing for the city of Boston. However, judging from the level of interaction presently taking place on the site, it is not quite at the level that I think Wegner would want when determining what qualifies as a Community of Practice. More importantly, the element of specificity that we see in a CP is also lacking. Again, Mushon’s point about community organizing being too abstract as a point for convergence rings true. What then is NfN’s focus? Since I feel as if I could run around in circles answering this question, I will instead propose a social object.
Returning to Pinkett’s dissertation, the one idea that stood out most as being the best candidate for NfN’s social object is that of Asset based community development (ABCD). Asset based community development is founded on the idea that all community development initiatives focus on the present assets of the community as principle resources for development. This is accomplished by engaging in asset mapping, where those involved in ABCD plot out all the resources that a community has and begin making strategic links between them. This activity of asset mapping could be one of the primary social object for NfN. I say primary because I believe that upon engaging in asset mapping, the natural steps that follow are that of community organizing.
However, I can already anticipate Mushon’s reaction here, even the social object of asset mapping is too abstract. Shouldn’t the mapping be in relation to a particular cause? This is where the argument shifts from the social to the technical. As I mentioned in my previous post, I felt that there was an issue with the organization of the site in that people were, for example, posting items to blogs that should be in forums. Here I believe we can find the crux of the issue on specifying NfN’s focus resting on the matter of design. If NfN were to reorganize its site so that it placed groups as the entry point, perhaps the asset based mapping and community organizing aspects would have a tighter focus. For example, if we look at change.org, a website focused on generating action around social justice issues, the entry points on the front page are organized by topics of interest. This helps change.org span a wide range of issues but provide a funneling of focus whereby the user enters by finding a topic of interest and then navigates their way to a specific action plan via forums and blogs. If NfN were to follow this design lead, I believe that the social object of community organizing would be strengthened by gaining relevancy through directed attention to important community issues.
Coming back to the social realm and the discussion of increasing participation, the aspect of incentivizing participation seems to be a major component for improving NfN’s participatory culture. If we take Yelp as an example, we see that users who are active participants are rewarded through the attainment of status that validate their contributions and, as I mentioned in my previous post, active contributors are rewarded through social events that celebrate their contributions. While I did not find any specific research on the psychology behind this, there are many examples of how meritocratic ranking systems in online communities act as ample incentive for contribution. In a New York Times article on why yelp works, the author points out that in the beginning, Yelp paid contributors to get the ball rolling. While I imagine that NfN does not presently have the capacity to do this (and it is certainly not a sustainable strategy), entertaining the possibility of taking on paid contributors in the future who would act as community bloggers and resource mappers on particular issues could help get the ball rolling.
As I reflect on my travels through the NfN network, the biggest issue that stood out was that of refining NfN’s focus. It is clear what the founder would like to accomplish, and there are examples of his goals manifesting. However, if NfN wishes to become the convener for the civic minded constituents of Boston, it must revisit both its social and technical design strategies.
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- Party Starter (4) | Gabriel Mugar
- Access is only the beginning (7) | Gabriel Mugar
- Do community based social networks improve visibility of resources and civic engagement? (1) | Gabriel Mugar
3 Comments
Good post. Asset Based Community Development almost seems like community development through a gift economy. The only problem that I see with this is that most likely, members with more community-serving assets will need to continuously contribute more than the other members. The incentive is that the community continues to improve, correct? Is this enough incentive to keep those with the most resources contributing? Could you possibly provide a simplistic example of asset mapping, incase I’m misinterpreting?
There is certainly the aspect of a bartering economy that could emerge from asset mapping. However the reference to ABCD that I was using had more to do with existing social service organizations. In the case of Boston, asset mapping would be a major benefit for those in need as Boston is full of amazing community service organizations that tend to go unnoticed by those who could use them. So in this case, asset mapping would be the step towards developing coordinated efforts amongst all major resource providers to reach a new level of efficiency in delivering their services. To learn more about ABCD check out http://www.abcdinstitute.org/
upon further investigation ABCD does also point out community members respective skills as assets. However I dont believe that it necessarily has to be a gift economy. What about the aspect of bartering that we both discussed in my previous post?