E-Government Bulletin Live

By Tristan Parker.

“It’s no longer just the geeks that use social media. Everyone’s using it now.”

So said Liz Azyan, a doctoral researcher studying local government and online citizen engagement ( http://www.lgeoresearch.com/ ), in her workshop at this year’s building Perfect Council Websites conference co-hosted by the Society of IT Management (Socitm) and E-Government Bulletin publisher Headstar (
http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/ ).

But while some councils are embracing social media tools, others remain highly sceptical on whether Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other similar sites have any place within a formal local authority framework.

In her session, Azyan was clear and outspoken in tackling the doubters: “if you’re not on social networking sites, you’re not on the internet.”

To prove the point, she asked the assembled group if anybody present did not use any social networking sites: of 25 delegates, only one person claimed not to be using any, claiming he had “better things to do”.

It is clear that this viewpoint is now in the minority, and councils are taking note: there are currently 123 local authorities using Twitter in some form; 55 posting videos on YouTube; and 44 with Facebook pages – numbers which are growing steadily.

When it is considered that the average Briton spends 164 minutes online every day, some of which will be spent on social media sites, it seems odd for councils not to take advantage of an easy and cost-effective method of engaging with citizens, as the citizens themselves have already begun engaging with each other. “People have developed an online engagement – they want to tell each other what’s happening. This is not only affecting businesses, it’s affecting councils as well. You don’t want to just rely on the Daily Mail to find out what citizens are thinking – you want to develop a clear, undistorted picture of what people are talking about”, said Azyan.

Azyan acknowledged the validity of a common worry of many councils, that fake accounts or profiles purporting to represent them may be set up by others on social networking sites, but said there was a solution.

“This is where I see central government playing a role. On Directgov there are links to local government websites on the A-Z directory – soon enough I think central government will have social media links to make sure that people go to the right sites, which have been validated by councils.”

Indeed, the fact that fake council profiles are already being set up is yet another indicator of why local authorities should be engaging with social media themselves, to ensure that the information put into online public spaces is correct, Azyan said. “If you’re not willing to [use social media], it’s going to happen anyway, so it’s better to come from the council directly. Why wait until it gets out of control?”

Numerous other benefits can flow from councils’ engagement with social networking, she said. One of the most obvious is being able to promote campaigns for specific issues to a wider audience than other methods would allow, with the possibility of triggering a ‘network effect’: as one person agrees to ‘attend’ an event through a site like Facebook, for example, others are able to see the event and discuss it and register to attend themselves, potentially creating a snowball effect, and producing what is effectively a free marketing campaign.

“Facebook is really great for campaigns. It’s about letting people know what’s going on”, said Azyan. “It’s about the power of the people telling each other and notifying each other about what matters to them, and that’s when issues become personal, and when they become personal, people become engaged.”

For all the inherent benefits that social media tools hold for councils, there will of course be setbacks with what is a still a relatively new form of communication. But this is a natural and inevitable part of the process, from which good can be taken, she said. “You have to let governments fail, and not attack them every time they do. This is the only way we learn. Social media is about engaging with people, and people are humans – not robots – and humans get things wrong. You have to learn from your mistakes.”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Council websites, New media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.