May 9
The online world is evolving in ways that will eventually see the demise of corporate websites as communications mediums. Specialised sites are already the best way to get certain types of content seen. And entire platforms, like the Apple or Android apps ecosystem, or Facebook, are rising. These work in a fundamentally different way, favouring social recommendation and interaction over the primacy of content.
Nick Scott has written quite a lot about digital disruption and what it means for think tanks. I was sent this very interesting info-graphic produced by Online Graduate Programs by Tony Shin (@ohtinytony) last week that I thin is worth sharing with you. Notice how quickly we lose patience and stop searching for information or switch to other sources if the sites we are using are too slow (‘too’ meaning fractions of a second).
This is very important. It means that think tanks need to ensure that their sites are quick, easy to use and find information, and, as Nick would argue, be where people already to to search.
It is also worrying though because it means that we may be losing our capacity to research difficult issues to research.
Created by: Online Graduate Programs
Sep 2
A discussion on the ebpdn online community reminded my of this blog (written back in 2008 for ODI): Watch YOUR space
(I have made a few edits and added new ideas.)
The world is not, as they say, getting smaller, and technology is not, as they say, necessarily making distances disappear. Rather, new communication technologies are creating a myriad new spaces in the real and virtual worlds where individuals can find and exchange information. Increasingly, they can also choose what they want to find there, and how. The BBC, and Google News for instance, allow users to decide what news they want through user-designed homepages. And as I have argued before, Twitter has become my new ‘Google it’.
Technology is allowing people to develop and join spaces where they can find all the information they need – both personal and professional. These spaces (networks:communities of practice, social networks, professional associations, knowledge networks, etc.) have developed their own languages, systems, norms and procedures, giving members ever more powerful tools to access and share the knowledge they need. Just think of the @s and #s and RTs and other codes and symbols that are used in Twitter. (What does FF mean, by the way?)
Many think tanks have traded successfully for decades on creating and sharing specialised knowledge by hot-housing groups of smart people. But they may not be able to do so for much longer.
First, new communication technology is decentralising the production of knowledge. Specialist knowledge is being created worldwide in informal spaces. As a result, individual think tanks can rarely claim to have the best in-house experts on everything they work on. There are almost certainly better ideas elsewhere – if we look hard enough. The difficulty lies in finding them.
A second challenge is that new technology is also changing the way that people communicate and access knowledge. Users don’t wait for knowledge any longer. There is an increasing reliance on syndication and mash-up technologies to aggregate knowledge from a multitude of sources without ever visiting them. Users no longer just ‘take it all in’; they are selective in what they want from each source. The location in which information is accessed is closely related to how it is accessed. Social and professional networks take time to develop – even online – and the time spent accessing information in these places is proportional to the value assigned to the knowledge obtained. So think tanks do not just compete with other specialist knowledge producers, they must also compete with the knowledge spaces their audiences are creating for themselves. This is the real challenge.
A third challenge is that the rules of these new spaces are rapidly being developed by ‘others’. Think tanks, often late adopters are having to play catch up. It is not surprising then, that many researchers feel apprehensive of joining these online spaces. But the longer they wait to join the longer and steeper will be the learning curve. And the opportunity to set the rules (or contribute to their development) will be long lost.
The concept of open innovation provides a possible solution. Open innovation is an innovation paradigm that argues that organisations can no longer rely on the intellectual property they develop internally. They must also be open to the idea of buying or licencing it from other organisations. Wikipedia provides a simple comparison of the principles of closed and open innovation systems:
|
Closed innovation Principles |
Open innovation Principles |
| The smart people in our field work for us. | Not all the smart people work for us. We need to work with smart people inside and outside our company. |
| To profit from research and development, (R&D) we must discover it, develop it and ship it ourselves. | External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D is needed to claim some portion of that value. |
| If we discover it ourselves, we will get it to market first. | We don’t have to originate the research to profit from it. |
| The company that gets an innovation to market first will win. | Building a better business model is better than getting to market first. |
| If we create the most and the best ideas in the industry, we will win. | If we make the best use of internal and external ideas, we will win. |
| We should control our innovation process, so that our competitors don’t profit from our ideas. | We should profit from others’ use of our innovation process, and we should buy others’ intellectual property (IP) whenever it advances our own business model. |
Source: Wikipedia/Open_innovation
Open innovation underpins two new approaches to research and communication: ‘think nets’ and, for lack of a better term, ‘being there communications’. (Being there comes from the brilliant Peter Sellers film of the same name, by the way.)
The term think net came to my attention in an analysis of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) by Stephen Yeo and Richard Portes. A think net, unlike a think tank, does not invest in a large cadre of in-house experts to guarantee quality research outputs. Instead, it invests in developing a network of experts working in different research and policy spaces and with access to different sources and types of knowledge. The think net maintains its flexibility and relevance by using the networks of its members as an open innovation structure. Through these networks, the think net can benefit from intellectual property developed elsewhere.
Think nets are critical knowledge brokers: filters and amplifiers of knowledge, as well as conveners of diverse experts and ideas. They are also smaller and more manageable than traditional think tanks. Not surprisingly, the idea has caught on and there is an increasing interest to explore how they may help think tanks manage the challenges that the web and the proliferation of ‘free’ knowledge has brought.
‘Being there communications’ refers to a new paradigm of communications that, rather than trying to bring audiences into a think tank’s own space, takes its messages to the audience. While I take the credit for giving it a terrible name, Nick Scott, ODI’s Online Communications Manager, came up with the idea. [Back in 2008 I wrote: Increasingly, think tanks are using RSS tools to facilitate this. Readers no longer have to visit websites but can browse through their previously selected RSS feeds. I cannot remember when was the last time I read an RSS feed. Back then of course there was no Twitter, Facebook was fairly new (for my generation at least), and the idea of an online strategy was not just bizarre but probably considered a waste of time.] In the very near future, it will be possible for users to further specify the type of knowledge they need (we can do this already) and when (we can, in a way, by the choice of spaces we join). ‘Being there’ requires think tanks to develop Facebook, Google desktop-like widgets, a twitter strategy, and other applications to ensure that their knowledge is just one mouse click away in the spaces in which their audiences ‘work and play’. An organisation’s page on Facebook is one of the ways it can attempt to establish its presence in these important ‘knowledge spaces’.
Both paradigms are compatible. Think nets allow knowledge producers to learn from each other. Knowledge spaces allow knowledge users to assimilate new knowledge in their own context.
The emergence of think nets and knowledge spaces present a real challenge to traditional think tanks. They can no longer rely on hot-housing smart people to generate and disseminate new ideas. They must embrace open innovation. But what are the implications?
Back when I first wrote this I had to add a paragraph about how ODI was moving in the right direction. No need to do it now, but it is fair to recognise that it has done so in terms of its presence of several knowledge spaces.
I know a bit more about the implications for think tanks in developing countries, now. The most significant implication is that to properly benefit from the knowledge that others have think tanks need to open up to let others benefit from their own knowledge. This is not that easy. It means letting go of people and ideas.
There are some interesting examples. The Center for Global Development has a few visiting fellows who are also fellows or researchers in other organisations. Nick Scott recently convinced ODI to let him work from CIPPEC in Argentina. North-North cooperation is easier. The CIPPEC case reflects the level of development of CIPPEC itself. But the challenge still remains with other organisations.
Embracing this idea properly also means being willing to give up the technocratic high-chair. Think tanks, specially international development think tanks or those supported almost entirely by international cooperation often hide behind technocratic arguments to avoid getting embroiled in more ideologically inspired debates. This is unavoidable. Politics, the process by which groups of people make collective decisions (the affairs of the city), cannot be divorced from the affairs of individuals; and individuals need ideology: a set of ideas that constitutes one’s goals, expectations, and actions, in other words, their values.
In these other spaces the conversation is no longer just technical -think tanks are not just followed by researchers. Inevitably, think tanks would have to open their arguments to new appeals: of ethics, political interests, even religious considerations.
Can they? Should they?
Aug 30
If I read a good paper or listen to a good argument and take it away with me I could say that I’ve been influenced. But how does the author of the paper or source of the argument knows? Now, if I take their paper and share it with someone else, or if I pass on their arguments to my peers, that may be seen as clear indication of influence. I would not share something I think is poorly articulate -or simply plain wrong.
While it might be hard to find out if everyone who reads this blog is influenced by it, I think I can safely say that most of those who chose to share its content with others were. At least they thought that the post or blog was worth passing along. They were willing to put their name to it.
When designing websites think tanks should make sure that they can trace shares for their studies and outputs. Platforms like WordPress make it easy and add the ‘sharing’ buttons. Twitter has a function to see if your tweets have been retweeted.
None of these (and I am sure there are others) cost anything and can be a very useful tool.
This blog has 220 subscribers and 305 Twitter followers. I usually forward each post to a few online communities. About 150 people per day visit the site (sometimes more, sometimes less). But the following posts have been ‘shared’ from the site. Next time I’ll have a look at the top shares in Twitter and Facebook
These posts on your site got the most shares
Aug 1
Liz Carlile, Director of Communications for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), has published a briefing on making the most of social media for international development purposes.
She addresses some of the opportunities that the world of the web has to offer. I have discussed some of these in this blog in previous posts.
In it she also addresses some key challenges: I particularly like her discussion on the challenge that organisations face in relation to letting (or not) their employees and associates use the web and their brand. This is a key issue not often formally addressed by think tanks but dealt with in practice. You only have to read the Twitter accounts descriptions of many think tank staffers -most have to say that their views are their own. Even organisations like ODI and other think tanks tend to add disclaimers to their official publications: the opinions of the authors (even if full time employees) are not those of the employer.
And the same goes for the increasing number of personal blogs that researchers keep, the online communities they join and engage in as individuals, etc.
But the briefing, I think, is flawed in its excessive optimism for the importance of social media -and the internet. The same unfounded optimism that is present in discussions about mobile phones in Africa.
The facts provided to argue for the importance of the web are not specific to a) the development industry or b) the developing world. A third of the world may be online, but only 5.7% of those online come from Africa (which is only 11% of the African population). And although the rate of growth in access has been dramatic (2000%) this does not imply that poor (or “most”) Africans are benefiting. Furthermore, we know that access often just means that someone has a computer near by. Being online cannot be equated to participating online.
So the billions of emails and the millions of twits do not come from the development industry nor from the developing world (certainly not from the poorest parts of the developing world). In fact, in 2009:
[N]early two-thirds of unique users (62.1%) were located in the U.S., while the U.K. and Canada were a distant second and third.
In the list of top 20 countries for Twitter use there are no African countries. The last country on the list is New Zealand with 0.47% of the world share. So even if an African country came up as 21st this would be negligible. Irrelevant.
What I mean to say is that there is a great potential, but we are not there yet. Investing on the web may be a relevant strategy for a northern based and northern focused organisation like IIED, but for a think tank in Africa (and many other parts of the developing world) the web is not yet the promised land it is made up to be.
My advice is to start planning and developing incremental strategies to use the web -and all it offers. But social (and non-social) tools need to be adopted slowly, carefully, and not at the expense of other more direct approaches to research and communication.
As a final note, I must say that it is commendable that Liz (as well as other directors of communications -but not all) does not just focus on running IIED’s communications but is also interested in promoting an open debate about these issues.
An excellent source of very useful information and resources for think tanks on online communications and knowledge management. CGIAR’s ICT-KM program has put together a very good page:
Particularly interesting are the “How can I…?” tutorials, including:
Jan 20
I found this interesting article by Scott Walter on Pew’s Non-Neutrality that challenges the independence of Pew in the pursuit of an open internet. Anyway, what I thought I’d share with you is a report called Net Neutrality for the Win that has very useful advice on how to develop an influencing strategy with a particular focus on framing the debate and targeting key audiences with very clear and convincing arguments.
It introduces the Harmony Institute Method for Entertainment Communication:
Four Steps to Integrating Behavioral Science into Entertainment
Our entertainment projects follow a four-step methodology for the application of behavioral science into entertainment.
Step One begins with a thorough review of the specific social issue to be addressed. It is essential that communicators develop a comprehensive understanding of their topic of choice, examining perspectives from existing research and sourcing the opinions of experts, academics and policy-makers. Communicators should look to contact leading organizations within the sector that can offer policy goals and incentives for behavior change for the public. This process also assists in revealing audiences that may be receptive to messaging, and the media platforms they frequent.
Step Two is concerned with locating and understanding target audiences. Most campaigns are effective with a combination of core and persuadable audiences who can be identified through polling, focus groups, and the demographics of supporting organizations. Information gleaned from this step narrows the behavioral science models that should be employed. It also clarifies the media platforms (mobile, web, television, film, ect.) that will successfully transmit compelling information.
The report on net neutrality goes to great lengths identifying the key audiences of the campaign (step 2), including ‘core supporters’ and ‘persuadables’. It describes them as:
CORE SUPPORTERS
• Ages 18-39
• Male, Caucasian, and registered Democrat
• Over $100k yearly household income
• High level of media and Internet literacy
• See the Internet as a public service just like neighborhood utilities or the nations highways
• Familiar with “net neutrality” as a principle and a term
• Spend more than 20 hours a week online for personal use
PERSUADABLES
• Ages 18-39 or over 60
• Predominantly African American or female
• Self-assign as liberal
• Unmarried
• Live in the U.S. South or rural areas
• Annual household incomes of between $30k- $50k
• Unfamiliar with “net neutrality” as a principle and term until exposed to a measured debate
Step Three focuses on developing recommendations for messaging. Theoretical models from the behavioral sciences are applied with regard to the issue and the known perspectives of target audiences. By working with media professionals who have the artist vision and expertise to create projects that compete on a national level, organizations can employ these recommendations in mass media productions.
The document puts forward 7 recommendations for narrative communication that I summarise (and generalise below):
Step Four is comprised of impact assessment. Drawing up case studies illuminates the vital lessons learned during a campaign to transform public perception and behavior.
And to finish, some interesting resources from the ref section:
Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: Science and practice (5th Ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Schiappa, E., Gregg, P. B., & Hewes, D. E. (2006). Can one TV show make a difference? Will & Grace and the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. Journal of Homosexuality, 51(4), 15-37. doi:l0.1300/ J082v51n04_02.
Barker, K. & Sabido, M (Eds.). (2005, January 6). Soap Operas for Social Change to Prevent HIV/AIDS: A Training Guide for Journalists and Media Personnel. Population Media Center. Retrieved from
Appel, M. & Richter, T. (2007). Persuasive effects of fictional narratives increase over time. Media Psychology, 10(1), 113-134.
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. (2009). The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public. New York.
I should be going bed now but could not wait until tomorrow morning to post this fantastic article by Bora Zivkovic about the history of science and journalism told through the lens of the development of new media -Observations: The line between science and journalism is getting blurry….again.:
It is 2010. The Internet has been around for 30 years, the World Wide Web for 20. It took some time for the tools to develop and spread, but we are obviously undergoing a revolution in communication. I use the word “revolution” because it is so almost by definition – when the means of production change hands, this is a revolution.
The means of production, in this case the technology for easy, cheap and fast dissemination of information, are now potentially in the hands of everyone. When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, we call that ‘citizen journalism.’ And some of those citizens possess much greater expertise on the topics they cover than the journalists that cover that same beat. This applies to science as well.
In other words, after the deviation that was the 20th century, we are going back to the way we have evolved as a species to communicate – one-to-one and few-to-few instead of one-to-many. Apart from technology (software instead of talking/handwriting/printing), speed (microseconds instead of days and weeks by stagecoach, railroad or Pony Express, see image above) and the number of people reached (potentially – but rarely – millions simultaneously instead of one person or small group at a time), blogging, social networking and other forms of online writing are nothing new – this is how people have always communicated. Like Montaigne. And the Republic of Letters in the 18th century. And Charles Darwin in the 19th century.
His account of this history touches on a number of important issues for think tanks today; in particular the shared history of research and journalism, and the new potential capacity to communicate with our audiences directly -with no intermediaries or filters. The same technologies provide our audiences with the tools to design their own filters and become intelligent (critical) consumers of information (I found this following some links on twitter, by the way: you can follow onthinktanks too).
In Zivkovic’s account, scientists are re-learning how to communicate with non-scientists and taking advantage of the simplicity of blogs, twitter, wikipedia, etc. In the social sciences the same thing is happening. VoxEU (I’ll blog about this some other day) is a perfect example of a direct communication channel between economists and their audiences -good content, an editor and the web platform are all that is needed: no communication managers, complex communication strategies, media strategies, media contacts, etc.
After all, free from the pressure of the traditional media and the need to reach as large an audience as possible, these new media channels allow researchers/scientists to target niche groups of genuinely interested people. And this provides an excellent opportunity to develop more meaningful relationships -stronger ties- and engage in proper conversations that facilitate the communication of complex ideas.
Anyway, it is a long article -but worth reading.
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