We saw an intriguing article last month over at the PewResearch Internet Project that we thought might interest some of our social media- and tech-oriented members. Pew has compiled some very impressive amounts of data on the patterns that we can find in political conversation on Twitter that may hold insights for us as practitioners. The results are fascinating.

It’s not news to us at NCDD that social media has become an important part of our public life:

Social media is increasingly home to civil society, the place where knowledge sharing, public discussions, debates, and disputes are carried out. As the new public square, social media conversations are as important to document as any other large public gathering. Network maps of public social media discussions in services like Twitter can provide insights into the role social media plays in our society.

Especially for those of us who aren’t so tech-savvy, it is quite a challenge to make sense of what all of the conversation in the Twittersphere means. But as the Pew analysis shows, there are a few distinctive patterns that develop regularly: 

Conversations on Twitter create networks with identifiable contours as people reply to and mention one another in their tweets. These conversational structures differ, depending on the subject and the people driving the conversation. Six structures are regularly observed: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and inward and outward hub and spoke structures. These are created as individuals choose whom to reply to or mention in their Twitter messages and the structures tell a story about the nature of the conversation.

If a topic is political, it is common to see two separate, polarized crowds take shape. They form two distinct discussion groups that mostly do not interact with each other. Frequently these are recognizably liberal or conservative groups. The participants within each separate group commonly mention very different collections of website URLs and use distinct hashtags and words.

The split is clearly evident in many highly controversial discussions: people in clusters that we identified as liberal used URLs for mainstream news websites, while groups we identified as conservative used links to conservative news websites and commentary sources. At the center of each group are discussion leaders, the prominent people who are widely replied to or mentioned in the discussion. In polarized discussions, each group links to a different set of influential people or organizations that can be found at the center of each conversation cluster.

Unfortunately, the initial analysis seems to confirm that the polarization dynamic that dialogue practitioners see all too often applies to online conversation, as well. Whether in person or digitally, political conversation can have the effect of splitting people into groups that communicate only sparingly with each other.

But for what it’s worth, these aren’t necessarily average people that we’re talking about:

While these polarized crowds are common in political conversations on Twitter, it is important to remember that the people who take the time to post and talk about political issues on Twitter are a special group. Unlike many other Twitter members, they pay attention to issues, politicians, and political news, so their conversations are not representative of the views of the full Twitterverse. Moreover, Twitter users are only 18% of internet users and 14% of the overall adult population. Their demographic profile is not reflective of the full population. Additionally, other work by the Pew Research Center has shown that tweeters’ reactions to events are often at odds with overall public opinion— sometimes being more liberal, but not always. Finally, forthcoming survey findings from Pew Research will explore the relatively modest size of the social networking population who exchange political content in their network.

Thankfully, there is a lot more that to be gained from social media mapping than confirmation of what we already knew. The development of these analysis tools can shed a new light on the ways that our social networks work:

…the structure of these Twitter conversations says something meaningful about political discourse these days and the tendency of politically active citizens to sort themselves into distinct partisan camps. Social networking maps of these conversations provide new insights because they combine analysis of the opinions people express on Twitter, the information sources they cite in their tweets, analysis of who is in the networks of the tweeters, and how big those networks are. And to the extent that these online conversations are followed by a broader audience, their impact may reach well beyond the participants themselves…

Social network maps of Twitter crowds and other collections of social media can be created with innovative data analysis tools that provide new insight into the landscape of social media. These maps highlight the people and topics that drive conversations and group behavior – insights that add to what can be learned from surveys or focus groups or even sentiment analysis of tweets. Maps of previously hidden landscapes of social media highlight the key people, groups, and topics being discussed.

There is much more to learn from this research project than we can cover here. But if you want to learn more, you can find both the summary and the full-length analysis of Pew’s research at www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/20/mapping-twitter-topic-networks-from-polarized-crowds-to-community-clusters. You will find fascinating data, visualizations, and much more. Happy reading!

Public participation processes can often be boring, tedious things to participate in, and finding ways to make them more fun and engaging is a recurring issue. But that’s why a growing sector of our field and others have been turning to “gamification” as a model for making sure citizens get the most out of their participation and enjoy themselves, too.

Andrew Coulson wrote a great piece for commsgodigital about gamification and engagement that we encourage NCDD members to give a read. You can read the article below or find the original piece here.

Gamification in Community Engagement Part 1: Offline

One of the biggest franchises at the moment in both literature and film is the Hunger Games. The story of how a world, not to dissimilar to ours, pits its own young against each other as a way of sorting out an age old issue between communities.

OK, OK I’m adlibbing a bit and it has very tenuous ties to engaging the community… but I need an edge for the blog.

Many games use strategy (where to hide, what to take), team work (Katniss and Peeta) and problem management (How do we kill the others before they kill us?) to help the player achieve goals (survival in the Hunger Games), which, if used in Community Engagement opportunities, allows the right decision to be achieved through understanding barriers, working together, and setting joint achievable objects. We know gaming is not new, but Gamification in Community Engagement certainly seems to be on the rise and being used more and more in issue management and relationship building between communities and their councils.

From early use of established offline games to newly developed, all-whistles-blowing online options, games are now being used more and more in engaging the community or helping people understand and generally participate in having their say in the decision making process.

In true commsgodigital style, over 2 installments, we’re going list a number of on and offline Gamification offerings in the world of community engagement and communication in the hope you will like them and, in a spark of inspiration, look at them as options in the work you do during 2014.

(Warning: We are not advocating the use of the Hunger Games model as an option for community engagement… it just doesn’t cut the mustard with some stakeholders.)

Offline

When asking for examples using LinkedIn, a number of people shared their experiences with me on how they had used games, both traditional and newly developed, in engaging communities to do, it seems, 1 or all of 4 things.

• To engage
• To inform/build understanding
• To build relationships/teamwork
• Break the ice

Gwenda Johnson, a County Extension Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences, Kentucky, said, “I often use floor puzzles to demonstrate community and the role people play in building a strong community. Sometimes I reserve some pieces to start a conversation about people who don’t follow through with responsibility. The 48 piece floor puzzles works well in our small community. It’s a great inexpensive way to start conversation and build team work too.”

So a few of my favourite examples:

The Public Space Trading Cards by Learning from Barcelona

Do you remember as a kid those card games where some cards ranked higher than others and the object was to collect them all by outwitting your opponent with a card that scored higher than theirs? We called it “Top Trumps” in the UK.

Learning from Barcelona have developed a similar Trading Card game where neighbourhood kids are tasked with collecting sets of cards depicting places in their neighbourhood by answering questions on the back on how to improve the area. Once collected they can be played with and traded. Here’s a better description.
The game allows people to become a detective in the own residential area and look at the built environment in a different light as well as think how improvements can be made. This informs them on issues facing the area whilst the cards questions help the local authority/project management to collect useful insights for future development. The game also builds in a sense of ownership for the area.

Cards games are also popular with David Wilcox at socialreporter.com, London who, via LinkedIn, shared examples he had developed as well as others he had come across. Take a look at Useful Games and Ingredients and tool cards for examples.

I myself used the card option in a game format when supporting the engagement of a community around the renewal of a small reserve in Salisbury, South Australia. Using cards with potential options on for the renewal (trees, equipment, amenities, etc.) as well as a hypothetical budgetary value, we gave players a map, a budget, and a shopping list as well as a stack of cards. They then used the cards and map to plan what they would buy and then place in the reserve. Adding an element of role play encouraged discussions on the needs and wants of the community for this space. There was also a wild card that could be used if we had missed anything or they had a great idea they wanted added to the discussion.

The Game of Urban Renewal by Toronto visual artist Flavio Trevisan

This game builds on the traditional board game structure and is kind of a cross between Monopoly, a puzzle, and children’s favourite, Lego, and who doesn’t like that combination!

As a board game, it allows players to take on the role of those involved in a councils planning office making decisions on what to build and knock down in their local area to make the community a better place to live. Players use cards that depict tasks on developing areas with specific functions such as public spaces, schools, commercial buildings, and housing using a real satellite imaged map of the area and 3D blocks to represent urban development.

The game aims to get players discussing and visioning possible solutions to urban development and renewal. Find out more about the Game of Urban Renewal.

Via LinkedIn Paul Tucker, a Partner a GRIN SW, Exeter mentioned Boom Town from 1990 which seems to have similar feel. Here’s the games description:

“Famous rare game from Ian Livingstone’s company, players construct a 1950s English new town by laying tiles to show housing, shops, factories, etc. As parts of the suburbs are completed, scoring goes to the majority holder, but there are spoiler tiles, like the rubbish dump, which will reduce your score. There’s a strong element of mutual caution until somebody steps over the brink and lays those bad tiles.”

Whose Shoes? Toolkit,  My Life, My Budget and the Last Straw!

These three board games/toolkits are personal favourites of mine and are used to help the player build an understanding/appreciation around a certain topic. Often these games don’t have outcomes (as in there is no individual winner at the end) but educate those playing through promoting discussion about the topic; building empathy and encouraging learning in a fun and supportive environment.

All three are based around the health and social care of people in the community and were born out the many changes happening around the world in social care due to ageing populations and the effect of the worldwide recession on social care resources.

Whose Shoes? is a tool that encourages debate and understanding around social care and personalisation (UK) and has been used extensively in challenging Dementia. Developed by Gill Phillips during the introduction of Personalisation in Adult Care, the toolkit has been developed now as an electronic version in partnership with TLAP and is used by many local authorities and a number of universities in the UK to help students and staff understand the service user journey as well as grasp the idea of co-production.

My Life, My budget was also developed around the same time as Whose Shoes? in response to the Personalisation of care in the UK. The board game helps service users understand the concept and how personalised budgets work and can affect their lives. The game is no longer available but if you’re lucky and in the UK, your local council may have a copy.

The Last Straw! is a fun and exciting teaching tool on the social determinants of health developed by University of Toronto’s Dr. Kate Rossiter and Dr. Kate Reeve as part of a health promotion class. The website says, “Feedback consistently demonstrates that players gain a better understanding of the social determinants of health and the interplay between forces at individual and community levels.” Shared by Catherine Laska, a Community Developer, Ottawa via LinkedIn.

Final thoughts

Finally, I wanted to share this YouTube video that highlights the benefits in playing games to both break the ice with community members as well as build trust and teamwork both of which are important when engaging the community.  The video come from Jackson Dionne a Program Manager at The Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of BC.

[Unfortunately, the link to the YouTube video was broken at the time of publication. Please check back at the original post later.]

I would like to thank all those who contributed to the discussion on games in Community Engagement on LinkedIn. I apologise for not being able to mention all the contributions, however, if you would like to follow the discussion and see some other examples, please visit http://linkd.in/1g1XKiD. There are also a number of other examples via my Innovative Community Engagement board on Pinterest, including the brilliant use of a ball pit by Soulpancake, Lego pieces by Intelligent Futures, and even some of my own concoctions, including the award winning Heyford Reserve community engagement project where we used a board game to help gather and develop ideas with local school kids for the renewal of a small reserve and playspace in the City of Salisbury, South Australia. See more on my innovative community engagement Pinterest board.

Any further examples or comments on Gamification in community engagement please leave in the box below… we love feedback but please, once again, do not use the Hunger Games as a model for community engagement.

Part Two: Online Community Engagement will be appearing on commsgodigital in February/March.

The original version of this post can be found at www.commsgodigital.com.au/2014/01/gamification-in-community-engagement-offline.