Question - Neighbors Online v. Online Government Participators

Aaron, time for a little new analysis. (For those who know SPSS, I
encourage you to go on some data mining expeditions and report back.
:-))

I am interested in better understanding the civic attractiveness of
online neighborhood opportunities compared to more expressly political
exchange online.

From our experience, the more local we have gone, the more women who
participate (we've definitely noted more women who post in our city
and neighborhood forums compared to our more ideological state
politics forum for example) and the easier it is to push inclusion
with immigrant and lower income communities based on forum relevancy.
Your neighborhood e-mail list numbers seem to confirm the trend with
women. My sense with lower income communities, Latinos, and other
diverse communities based on experience is that the lack of actual
online spaces serving those areas is more to blame for the disparity
than actual interest in those communities. If you create those spaces
and provide real outreach, you can buck the trend suggested by your
national statistics.

So the next question:

2. How do the demographics of the "27% of Internet users who used
digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about
community issues" compare with 20% you've classified as "online
government participators" in your April Government Online report.

I'd love to see a page 8 style (on nhood e-mail lists) list of
demographics with age ranges and parental status added for the full
27% of NOs compared to OGPs.

Also, what can you tell us about the percent who fall into both
categories. I am interested in understanding if the neighborhood level
gets us beyond the "usual suspects" who often raise their voice on
political matters or what kind of people who are OGPs aren't NOs and
versa?

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072

Having taken a stab at the second of Steven's questions, I'm now going to take
on the first one--i.e. what is the overlap between people who use digital tools
to learn about local issues ("neighbors online" for short) and those who use
digital tools to interact around more general government issues ("government
participators").

When we look at the online population, we can break them out into four groups
based on those two categories, along with the percentage of the online
population they make up:

1) Government participators: 11%
2) Neighbors online: 15%
3) Both government participators and neighbors online: 12%
4) Do not do either: 62%

There are actually not an enormous number of demographic differences when we
stack up the first three groups and compare them side-by-side. All three are
fairly gender-balanced; are most heavily represented by the $75k+ income
category but contain a good mix of incomes; have similar makeups in terms of
age; and tend to have a large number of the college-educated (although the
"neighbors online only" group does have the largest number of people who have
not attended college).

The main differences pertain to race/ethnicity and parental status. The groups
that contain the neighbors online (groups 2 and 3 above) have a larger number
of parents than the group that contains only government participators; and the
proportion of African-Americans is highest in groups two and three as well (we
saw relatively few African-Americans in the government participator category,
although they are very active in learning about government activities using
social media).

Thanks Aaron,

I wonder what others think of this analysis?

My take - Our city-wide Issues Forums (e.g.
http://e-democracy.org/mpls http://e-democracy.org/stpaul ) attract
the OGP crowd with their big "P" politics, while our Neighbors Issues
Forums attract a far broader constituency with some cross-over. As our
Neighbors Forums grow, I guesstimate that less than 10% of the members
are interested in joining the city-wide more political forum. Bill
Kahn in another topic asked about whether we were splitting up the
city of Minneapolis with the explosion in new neighbors forums -
http://e-democracy.org/nf - I think this data help answer the question
that we are actually have the potential to reach far more people as a
whole and expose more people to online civic engagement by embracing
"who can recommend a good plumber" one day and a serious local public
issue discussion the next.

Others?

Steven Clift

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Aaron Smith <<email obscured>> wrote:
> Having taken a stab at the second of Steven's questions, I'm now going to
take on the first one--i.e. what is the overlap between people who use digital
tools to learn about local issues ("neighbors online" for short) and those who
use digital tools to interact around more general government issues
("government participators").
>
> When we look at the online population, we can break them out into four groups
based on those two categories, along with the percentage of the online
population they make up:
>
> 1) Government participators: 11%
> 2) Neighbors online: 15%
> 3) Both government participators and neighbors online: 12%
> 4) Do not do either: 62%
>
> There are actually not an enormous number of demographic differences when we
stack up the first three groups and compare them side-by-side. All three are
fairly gender-balanced; are most heavily represented by the $75k+ income
category but contain a good mix of incomes; have similar makeups in terms of
age; and tend to have a large number of the college-educated (although the
"neighbors online only" group does have the largest number of people who have
not attended college).
>
> The main differences pertain to race/ethnicity and parental status. The
groups that contain the neighbors online (groups 2 and 3 above) have a larger
number of parents than the group that contains only government participators;
and the proportion of African-Americans is highest in groups two and three as
well (we saw relatively few African-Americans in the government participator
category, although they are very active in learning about government activities
using social media).
> Aaron Smith
>
> Info about Aaron Smith:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/6BFzZslzkUB7flnos3BJDO
>
> View all messages on this topic at:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/1No2PoOOgCtdxEm5P3EFwG
> -----------------------------------------
> To post, e-mail: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
> Use "Reply-to-All" via e-mail to post publicly.
> To leave or for daily digest, type "unsubscribe" or "digest on"
> in subject, then send to: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
>
> More information about Locals Online - For hosts of neighborhood e-lists,
placeblogs, and community social nets:

Rest of post

Just a clarification that illuminates a point, perhaps valid or
perhaps not. What I asked about was verification of a decline in forum
membership of the two Twin Cities, Minnesota issues forums of Steven's
E-Democracy.org, not "splitting up the city of Minneapolis," that I
thought might be a result of promotion and initiation of the
neighborhood forums. It is of concern to me since the Minneapolis
forum and to a lessor extent the St. Paul forum were responsible for
the early successes of the organization as a whole, I think, and given
my impression of lower membership and lower traffic. The overall
effect of the shift is that the sort of topics that energized the
forum and created much of the traffic outside the political seasons
stopped as participants shifted to neighborhood forums. The shift
points to a decline of these two flagship forums IMHO.

The two cities don't exactly add up to a sprawling metropolis, so I
think once Steven's push for a forum for every neighborhood is
through, the citywide forums may be pretty much done, although I hope
I'm wrong; if there's a clear demarcation in topics from the
neighborhood to city level, both in forum management and mission,
maybe there will continue to be topics to discuss on the city forums.

Perhaps Aaron, and Steven, can speak to what might be the critical
mass for similar issues forums elsewhere. Are there similar citywide
forums that feature both political or neighborhood related posts, or
are these Minnesota examples unique?

Bill Kahn

Rest of post

Bill good question.

I know of no big city outside our network with city-wide political
discussion forums. There are certainly city-wide local news blogs. Nhood
forums have a "natural" self-organizing nature where people just start them,
where forums designed to couple with a large areas city council or county
board isn't. There is a DC-wide moderated political e-mail digest thing I
just remembered and Knoxville used to have a K2K yahoogroup.

The Minneapolis city-wide forum is the largest it has ever been, but it will
be interesting to see what happens when we break-out of S. Mpls with larger
Nhood forums. Traffic there seems still quite high and it is dominate in our
web views. We want nhood issues to rise up city-wide, but don't want a lot
of cross-posting.

St. Paul is a mixed bag, there posting traffic has seemed down since the
political class consolidated power left of center (no more conservative
mayors to oppose). That was five+ years ago. Interesting in the two
neighborhoods with forums people treat them like mini-political forums and
haven't strongly embraced the big "C" community aspect of the neighbor
forums in Minneapolis. And unlike Minneapolis city council members, elected
officials have not posted either. That will probably change.

I would be interested in learning about big city political blogs that
convene all sides? Any pointers out there?

On Jun 16, 2010 11:03 PM, "Bill Kahn" <<email obscured>> wrote:

Just a clarification that illuminates a point, perhaps valid or
perhaps not. What I asked about was verification of a decline in forum
membership of the two Twin Cities, Minnesota issues forums of Steven's
E-Democracy.org, not "splitting up the city of Minneapolis," that I
thought might be a result of promotion and initiation of the
neighborhood forums. It is of concern to me since the Minneapolis
forum and to a lessor extent the St. Paul forum were responsible for
the early successes of the organization as a whole, I think, and given
my impression of lower membership and lower traffic. The overall
effect of the shift is that the sort of topics that energized the
forum and created much of the traffic outside the political seasons
stopped as participants shifted to neighborhood forums. The shift
points to a decline of these two flagship forums IMHO.

The two cities don't exactly add up to a sprawling metropolis, so I
think once Steven's push for a forum for every neighborhood is
through, the citywide forums may be pretty much done, although I hope
I'm wrong; if there's a clear demarcation in topics from the
neighborhood to city level, both in forum management and mission,
maybe there will continue to be topics to discuss on the city forums.

Perhaps Aaron, and Steven, can speak to what might be the critical
mass for similar issues forums elsewhere. Are there similar citywide
forums that feature both political or neighborhood related posts, or
are these Minnesota examples unique?

Bill Kahn

Rest of post

Thanks Steven. Too bad you don't measure the ratio of posters to
lurkers.

Over my two post per month quota, but waiting to read more,

Bill Kahn

Rest of post

On Jun 17, 2010, at 6:08 AM, Steven Clift wrote:

> Bill good question.
>
> I know of no big city outside our network with city-wide political
> discussion forums. There are certainly city-wide local news blogs.
> Nhood
> forums have a "natural" self-organizing nature where people just
> start them,
> where forums designed to couple with a large areas city council or
> county
> board isn't. There is a DC-wide moderated political e-mail digest
> thing I
> just remembered and Knoxville used to have a K2K yahoogroup.
>
> The Minneapolis city-wide forum is the largest it has ever been, but
> it will
> be interesting to see what happens when we break-out of S. Mpls with
> larger
> Nhood forums. Traffic there seems still quite high and it is
> dominate in our
> web views. We want nhood issues to rise up city-wide, but don't want
> a lot
> of cross-posting.
>
> St. Paul is a mixed bag, there posting traffic has seemed down since
> the
> political class consolidated power left of center (no more
> conservative
> mayors to oppose). That was five+ years ago. Interesting in the two
> neighborhoods with forums people treat them like mini-political
> forums and
> haven't strongly embraced the big "C" community aspect of the neighbor
> forums in Minneapolis. And unlike Minneapolis city council members,
> elected
> officials have not posted either. That will probably change.
>
> I would be interested in learning about big city political blogs that
> convene all sides? Any pointers out there?
>
> On Jun 16, 2010 11:03 PM, "Bill Kahn" <<email obscured>> wrote:
>
> Just a clarification that illuminates a point, perhaps valid or
> perhaps not. What I asked about was verification of a decline in forum
> membership of the two Twin Cities, Minnesota issues forums of Steven's
> E-Democracy.org, not "splitting up the city of Minneapolis," that I
> thought might be a result of promotion and initiation of the
> neighborhood forums. It is of concern to me since the Minneapolis
> forum and to a lessor extent the St. Paul forum were responsible for
> the early successes of the organization as a whole, I think, and given
> my impression of lower membership and lower traffic. The overall
> effect of the shift is that the sort of topics that energized the
> forum and created much of the traffic outside the political seasons
> stopped as participants shifted to neighborhood forums. The shift
> points to a decline of these two flagship forums IMHO.
>
> The two cities don't exactly add up to a sprawling metropolis, so I
> think once Steven's push for a forum for every neighborhood is
> through, the citywide forums may be pretty much done, although I hope
> I'm wrong; if there's a clear demarcation in topics from the
> neighborhood to city level, both in forum management and mission,
> maybe there will continue to be topics to discuss on the city forums.
>
> Perhaps Aaron, and Steven, can speak to what might be the critical
> mass for similar issues forums elsewhere. Are there similar citywide
> forums that feature both political or neighborhood related posts, or
> are these Minnesota examples unique?
\

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Bill Kahn <<email obscured>> wrote:
> Thanks Steven. Too bad you don't measure the ratio of posters to
> lurkers.

We do:

http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/stats.html

http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/stpaul-issues/stats.html

Quite a comparison.

These are three of our more active neighborhood forums:

http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls-staneric/stats.html
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls-poho/stats.html
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/oxford-hm/stats.html

Why? These forums are larger and the Forum Managers often seed topics
of discussion. Topic seeding is a great way to grow a forum. (Just as
community blogs require someone to write up something, we do better
when someone forwards something of note and asks a question). Some
tips: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Information_seeking

It would be nice if we captured the number of members each month, but
on established forums growth is slow.

Steve

> Over my two post per month quota, but waiting to read more,
>
> Bill Kahn
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2010, at 6:08 AM, Steven Clift wrote:
>
>> Bill good question.
>>
>> I know of no big city outside our network with city-wide political
>> discussion forums. There are certainly city-wide local news blogs.
>> Nhood
>> forums have a "natural" self-organizing nature where people just
>> start them,
>> where forums designed to couple with a large areas city council or
>> county
>> board isn't. There is a DC-wide moderated political e-mail digest
>> thing I
>> just remembered and Knoxville used to have a K2K yahoogroup.
>>
>> The Minneapolis city-wide forum is the largest it has ever been, but
>> it will
>> be interesting to see what happens when we break-out of S. Mpls with
>> larger
>> Nhood forums. Traffic there seems still quite high and it is
>> dominate in our
>> web views. We want nhood issues to rise up city-wide, but don't want
>> a lot
>> of cross-posting.
>>
>> St. Paul is a mixed bag, there posting traffic has seemed down since
>> the
>> political class consolidated power left of center (no more
>> conservative
>> mayors to oppose). That was five+ years ago. Interesting in the two
>> neighborhoods with forums people treat them like mini-political
>> forums and
>> haven't strongly embraced the big "C" community aspect of the neighbor
>> forums in Minneapolis. And unlike Minneapolis city council members,
>> elected
>> officials have not posted either. That will probably change.
>>
>> I would be interested in learning about big city political blogs that
>> convene all sides? Any pointers out there?
>>
>> On Jun 16, 2010 11:03 PM, "Bill Kahn" <<email obscured>> wrote:
>>
>> Just a clarification that illuminates a point, perhaps valid or
>> perhaps not. What I asked about was verification of a decline in forum
>> membership of the two Twin Cities, Minnesota issues forums of Steven's
>> E-Democracy.org, not "splitting up the city of Minneapolis," that I
>> thought might be a result of promotion and initiation of the
>> neighborhood forums. It is of concern to me since the Minneapolis
>> forum and to a lessor extent the St. Paul forum were responsible for
>> the early successes of the organization as a whole, I think, and given
>> my impression of lower membership and lower traffic. The overall
>> effect of the shift is that the sort of topics that energized the
>> forum and created much of the traffic outside the political seasons
>> stopped as participants shifted to neighborhood forums. The shift
>> points to a decline of these two flagship forums IMHO.
>>
>> The two cities don't exactly add up to a sprawling metropolis, so I
>> think once Steven's push for a forum for every neighborhood is
>> through, the citywide forums may be pretty much done, although I hope
>> I'm wrong; if there's a clear demarcation in topics from the
>> neighborhood to city level, both in forum management and mission,
>> maybe there will continue to be topics to discuss on the city forums.
>>
>> Perhaps Aaron, and Steven, can speak to what might be the critical
>> mass for similar issues forums elsewhere. Are there similar citywide
>> forums that feature both political or neighborhood related posts, or
>> are these Minnesota examples unique?
> \
>
> Bill Kahn
> Prospect Park East River Road, Minneapolis
> Info about Bill Kahn: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/billkahn
>
> View all messages on this topic at:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/4D7xDBVS99q8DKU41pP1qa
> -----------------------------------------
> To post, e-mail: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
> Use "Reply-to-All" via e-mail to post publicly.
> To leave or for daily digest, type "unsubscribe" or "digest on"
> in subject, then send to: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
>
> More information about Locals Online - For hosts of neighborhood e-lists,
placeblogs, and community social nets:

Rest of post

Steven et al, phillyneighborhoods.org with phillyblocks at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phillyblocks/ among the discussion
forums it supports provides an excellent example of a city-wide
and neighborhood-oriented forum with its eye on politics as
the key to community health and vitality.

Rest of post

And thanks again.

Bill Kahn
Prospect Park

On Jun 17, 2010, at 8:56 AM, Steven Clift wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Bill Kahn <<email obscured>> wrote:
>> Thanks Steven. Too bad you don't measure the ratio of posters to
>> lurkers.
>
> We do:
>
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/stats.html
>
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/stpaul-issues/stats.html
>
> Quite a comparison.
>
> These are three of our more active neighborhood forums:
>
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls-staneric/stats.html
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls-poho/stats.html
> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/oxford-hm/stats.html
>
> Why? These forums are larger and the Forum Managers often seed topics
> of discussion. Topic seeding is a great way to grow a forum. (Just as
> community blogs require someone to write up something, we do better
> when someone forwards something of note and asks a question). Some
> tips: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Information_seeking
>
> It would be nice if we captured the number of members each month, but
> on established forums growth is slow.
>
> Steve
>
>
>> Over my two post per month quota, but waiting to read more,
>>
>> Bill Kahn
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 17, 2010, at 6:08 AM, Steven Clift wrote:
>>
>>> Bill good question.
>>>
>>> I know of no big city outside our network with city-wide political
>>> discussion forums. There are certainly city-wide local news blogs.
>>> Nhood
>>> forums have a "natural" self-organizing nature where people just
>>> start them,
>>> where forums designed to couple with a large areas city council or
>>> county
>>> board isn't. There is a DC-wide moderated political e-mail digest
>>> thing I
>>> just remembered and Knoxville used to have a K2K yahoogroup.
>>>
>>> The Minneapolis city-wide forum is the largest it has ever been, but
>>> it will
>>> be interesting to see what happens when we break-out of S. Mpls with
>>> larger
>>> Nhood forums. Traffic there seems still quite high and it is
>>> dominate in our
>>> web views. We want nhood issues to rise up city-wide, but don't want
>>> a lot
>>> of cross-posting.
>>>
>>> St. Paul is a mixed bag, there posting traffic has seemed down since
>>> the
>>> political class consolidated power left of center (no more
>>> conservative
>>> mayors to oppose). That was five+ years ago. Interesting in the two
>>> neighborhoods with forums people treat them like mini-political
>>> forums and
>>> haven't strongly embraced the big "C" community aspect of the
>>> neighbor
>>> forums in Minneapolis. And unlike Minneapolis city council members,
>>> elected
>>> officials have not posted either. That will probably change.
>>>
>>> I would be interested in learning about big city political blogs
>>> that
>>> convene all sides? Any pointers out there?
>>>
>>> On Jun 16, 2010 11:03 PM, "Bill Kahn" <<email obscured>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Just a clarification that illuminates a point, perhaps valid or
>>> perhaps not. What I asked about was verification of a decline in
>>> forum
>>> membership of the two Twin Cities, Minnesota issues forums of
>>> Steven's
>>> E-Democracy.org, not "splitting up the city of Minneapolis," that I
>>> thought might be a result of promotion and initiation of the
>>> neighborhood forums. It is of concern to me since the Minneapolis
>>> forum and to a lessor extent the St. Paul forum were responsible for
>>> the early successes of the organization as a whole, I think, and
>>> given
>>> my impression of lower membership and lower traffic. The overall
>>> effect of the shift is that the sort of topics that energized the
>>> forum and created much of the traffic outside the political seasons
>>> stopped as participants shifted to neighborhood forums. The shift
>>> points to a decline of these two flagship forums IMHO.
>>>
>>> The two cities don't exactly add up to a sprawling metropolis, so I
>>> think once Steven's push for a forum for every neighborhood is
>>> through, the citywide forums may be pretty much done, although I
>>> hope
>>> I'm wrong; if there's a clear demarcation in topics from the
>>> neighborhood to city level, both in forum management and mission,
>>> maybe there will continue to be topics to discuss on the city
>>> forums.
>>>
>>> Perhaps Aaron, and Steven, can speak to what might be the critical
>>> mass for similar issues forums elsewhere. Are there similar citywide
>>> forums that feature both political or neighborhood related posts, or
>>> are these Minnesota examples unique?
>> \
>>
>> Bill Kahn
>> Prospect Park East River Road, Minneapolis
>> Info about Bill Kahn: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/billkahn
>>
>> View all messages on this topic at:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/4D7xDBVS99q8DKU41pP1qa
>> -----------------------------------------
>> To post, e-mail: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
>> Use "Reply-to-All" via e-mail to post publicly.
>> To leave or for daily digest, type "unsubscribe" or "digest on"
>> in subject, then send to: locals@forums.e-democracy.org
>>
>> More information about Locals Online - For hosts of neighborhood e-
>> lists, placeblogs, and community social nets:
>> http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/locals
>>
>> E-Democracy.Org rules: http://e-democracy.org/rules
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>>
>
> Steven Clift
> Ericsson, Minneapolis
> Info about Steven Clift: http://forums.e-democracy.org/p/stevenclift
>
> View all messages on this topic at:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/3QzzdLhCExSlx7OZbZau5t

Rest of post

Peter--it is not focused on politics per se, more community events,
volunteer opportunities, etc. but your location in Brookline prompts me
mention http://YourBrookline.org one of 8 local portals we help manage.
http://MyDorchester.org is another good example of what we're up to in
this space.

David Crowley
Social Capital Inc.
http://socialcapitalinc.org

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Question - Neighbors Online v. Online Government Participators

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