Hard-working e-democracy

Stephen Coleman, Visiting Professor in e-Democracy at the Oxford Internet Institute has released a paper on his study of parliamentary consultations: Connecting Parliament to the Public via the Internet: Two Case Studies of Online Consultations. Coleman looked at two UK parliamentary online consultations in order to "test a number of assumptions about the nature and value of online deliberation."

I am most interested in the Womenspeak consultation, which was designed to enable women survivors of domestic violence to submit experiential testimony to a group of parliamentarians interested in developing policy. Identifying and recruiting women survivors of domestic abuse for this consultation required extensive outreach, and the use of the internet as a medium for this sensitive consultation topic was the source of two problems: accessibility and security.

Many women who were enthusiastic about participating had no access to or familiarity with the Internet. Fifty-two percent of participants had no knowledge of using the Internet before they took part. Most of the participants were able to go online using computers in refuges. This had several advantages: the personal and often distressing stories they had to tell could be recounted in friendly and familiar surroundings; there were trained workers to help them if they needed personal support during or after posting their messages; IT help was close at hand - 60 per cent of the women reported needing help in getting to the consultation website, and most of the time that was provided by refuge workers.

A second problem concerned security. Had the participants been invited to attend parliament to tell their stories and express their views, few would have gone. Parliament is an intimidating place, and most women would not want their names recorded as witnesses. Many of the women participating in this consultation expressed concerns about the confidentiality of the online medium. This was particularly the case when they were sharing homes and/or computers with their abusers. In the consultation, participants were given pseudonyms, assured that their real names (which were registered for the purposes of authentication) would remain private and that the content of the online discussion would only be made available to other participants and the Hansard Society. According to the post-consultation survey, 85 per cent of the participants felt that the website was a safe and secure place.

Other findings of the post-consultation survey were that:

A range of marginalised voices were brought into the survey (58% of Womenspeak participants had never been in contact with an MP and 94% had no organisational affiliation related to the subject of the consultation).

As the consultation went on, participants began to use the forum to create a community of mutual support, as well as engaging in a parliamentary consultation.

Despite the fact that 68% of the participants believed that the MPs that took part weren't interested in what they had to say, 94% still considered the consultation worthwhile.

See also: The Fawcett Society's report on the same consultation, and another article by Margaret Moran MP, Womenspeak: E Democracy or He Democracy?

What is most interesting about the delivery of this consultation is the way some of the initial hurdles (difficulties of recruitment, lack of ICT access) actually contributed to a more sociable solution. It was difficult to find women survivors of domestic abuse, so a relationship with women's groups and refuges was established. Women survivors lacked access to ICT, so they participated from within women's refuges, where support was on hand. To my mind, this fits with Clay Shirky's recent musings about situated social software. It will be interesting to see if elements of the e-government toolset come to be designed for specific social groups, too, rather than a generic set of "users" ('the electorate').

Also of great interest is the confidentiality requirement of participants who were sharing homes and/or computers with their abusers. This connects with some of the research I've been doing around child safety online. How can support be delivered online to children who are harmed at home, given the prevalence of easy-to-install monitoring software (which is often developed and promoted in response to concerns about - the much less common - risk from strangers in chat rooms)?

Posted at 02:29 PM | Permalink

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