Digital users are volunteers as well as consumers
In his Digital Britain Final Report, Lord Carter sets out his plan to keep Britain “at the forefront of the digital revolution”. But a revolution needs revolutionaries, who are driven by passion and not just economic incentive. Has this report overlooked the importance of people as volunteers, and the impact on their social contributions of commercial ventures?
Whilst I appreciate that the report is framed as “an active industrial policy” (in the introduction by Lord Mandelson and Ben Bradshaw MP), I do think it has missed the importance of the voluntary aspect of digital engagement.
Creating for love not money
Lord Carter’s report does acknowledge that people are using and sharing stuff differently now, and appears to acknowledge the blurring boundaries between creators and consumers of content and services. But, at the same time, it seems unable to comprehend the ‘marketplace’ as anything fuzzier than ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’. The report itself seeks new models for payment and rights, and the strategy document of the Technology Strategy Board (the body charged with implementing the government’s strategy) considers the challenge of “how to identify opportunities for content producers to generate revenue from consumption of their content”.
But, as Jon Bounds pointed out in a discussion group last week, a great many people are creating content, systems and services without requiring any sort of payment. They may do it because they enjoy it, or they see a need for it, or simply because they can.
For example (and I use ones from Birmingham simply because I know of them), Big City Talk is a translation of Birmingham’s development plan into plain English, by a group of friends who thought it needed doing; Matthew Somerville pushed the web accessibility agenda by autonomously producing an accessible version of the National Rail Enquiries website; Nicky Getgood put Digbeth on the social media map with Digbeth is Good because she just liked writing about it.
As a result, people (generally understood by the Report as ‘consumers’) often become as useful to the commercial ‘producers’ as the producers are to them: except they do it for no financial reward. They are benefiting the economy and society, often in spite of the market.
Physical infrastructure needs support, but so does social infrastructure
This is all possible because people can now share easily, widely and instantaneously. Social interactions can be much faster, more productive, more democratic, less financially constrained and less reliant on the market than before.
The tools that enable these interactions become (and indeed are known as) our ‘social networks’.
Twitter, for example, is to the digital infrastructure as train companies are to railway tracks. Although the former relies on the latter, it is the former that makes or breaks the social advantage offered by the latter. Commercial decisions by train companies can have profound effects on society: for example, if they close a rural line because it isn’t financially viable, the community it served is suddenly cut off from the rail network. The companies are providing a service that uses a physical infrastructure, but the service itself is surely part of our social infrastructure. In the same way, Twitter is as important a part of the social infrastructure as the servers that it relies on are part of the physical.
Team DB (as the Digital Britain team were known) has put a lot of energy into thinking about infrastructure, but – as far as I can tell – this is understood simply in terms of pipes and access: what about the systems that provide our new social infrastructures?
When Twitter goes down it can have a profound effect. For example, when the Iranian authorities tried to black out media coverage of its recent election, Twitter was used by the public as a key tool for communicating news to the rest of the world. However, Twitter had planned an hour of downtime right at the point when Iran needed it most, and so took the commercially dangerous decision to postpone it until the next day. A laudable move, but the downtime still happened while the situation in Iran was unstable.
In the Iran example the downtime was due to planned maintenance, but Twitter buckles under the strain quite frequently: it’s not as reliable as we expect it to be. For example, I now rely on Twitter for managing my social life – in much the same way as many people now rely on mobile companies – so when the service fails I am suddenly cut off from my supportive community.
Certainly the digital infrastructure is crucial, and Lord Carter is right to investigate ways of encouraging innovation and investment in order to ensure it reaches everyone. But government also needs to appreciate the importance of supporting the new social infrastructures (such as Twitter) that are enabled by the digital ones, and to ensure that they’re not undermined by commercial imperatives: as we saw to a degree in the example of Twitter and the Iran election.
People are volunteers, not simply consumers
Yes we need to be commercially competitive if we are to survive and thrive in a digital world; but why? For the sake of it? Or, ultimately, for the sake of people? Surely the economy needs to be healthy in order to benefit people, not the other way round?
People are not just producers or consumers, but individuals who operate on far more complex social levels, driven by love, need, interest, recognition (the list goes on): they are, in the broadest sense, volunteers. As such (and as mentioned earlier) they use the new tools not just to consume, but to create, share, and affect change.
For us all to do so effectively, for us to get the most out of the new tools and infrastructures, requires high levels of digital literacy. Simply knowing how to use the tools is not enough; we need a profound understanding of how to maximise the benefit of those tools and how to adapt them for new circumstances.
The role of the formal education sector in developing skills and aptitudes is acknowledged in Lord Carter’s report, but what about the voluntary* sector? That is, the sector which is – by virtue of being relatively out of reach of government control – often best placed to understand people as people and volunteers, rather than as workers and consumers.
Many charities and community groups are already supporting people in using and understanding digital technologies: how they can be harnessed for personal development, personal wellbeing, civic engagement and social change; all the stuff that people do voluntarily, without expecting any sort of payment.
Add to those voluntary bodies all the loose groupings of individuals who give their time simply because they care (for example Birmingham’s Social Media Surgeries, the recent LocalGovCamp, Rhubarb Radio, numerous bloggers such as Nicky Getgood and Charlie Pinder), and it becomes apparent that a whole swathe of useful talent has been overlooked by Lord Carter’s report.
That talent doesn’t just use tools that are made available by commercial outfits (such as Twitter), it relies on them; more than that: although Twitter (for example) is a commercial venture, it is the users who are shaping its social significance.
For Digital Britain to be a success, there needs – I feel – to be an acknowledgement of the hold that commercial bodies have over our social infrastructures, and a mechanism for managing and regulating that.
In case I’m talking rubbish…
I’m neither an academic nor a researcher, so these thoughts are based alone on my experience and limited reading. Therefore read everything here with critical objectivity (which, to be honest, you should do with everything you read). I had intended to blog this elsewhere, but I’m posting it here first in order to test its credibility.
* In this instance the word ‘voluntary’ is used specifically as part of the label ‘voluntary sector’, which is an umbrella term for charities, community groups and other not-for-profit organisations.
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The value of volunteers can never be underestimated. In every social inclusion projects you can see swathes of people giving up their time and energies simply because they believe in what they are doing needs to be done and don’t get and more importantly don’t expect any financial recompense.
You have raised a very important question with regards to the Digital Britain report. Is it about people’s needs or is it about creating revenue for certain businesses?
Leonardo Morgado
The key thing with Carter’s report is identify the opportunities it presents and do our best to shape them into solutions that make a difference. I think it’s a really well crafted report. Read through last year’s Creative Britain and you’ll see what I mean.
There are two areas where Digital Britain sees a role for the community you refer to. Firstly, in ‘Getting Britain Online’ Carter talks about the consortium that will deliver Digital Participation – the switchover bit. The thinking’s a tad clunky as it seems to make a comparison to Digital TV switchover but it does focus on how to do ‘targeted outreach’ – that surely is a call to arms to the volunteer community.
Secondly, in discussing new models for regional news he makes explicit reference to the role of community blogging as a new form of newsgathering. Now there’s an opportunity if ever there was one!
The stuff about content producers is talking solely to the business community. The digital test-bed idea from the Technology Strategy Board is an acknowledgement that we still don’t know what works and what doesn’t in terms of making money – therefore let’s set up a space to do some testing. That’s fine but the real action is amongst the social media community using the stuff they know works. Motivating digital participation with tried and tested methods developed through active engagement.
So for me the areas you can write yourself into are Digital Participation and Regional News. In fact that’s what I like about this report – it’s full of spaces that people should be writing their futures into. It’s a call to arms.
Dave Harte
Dave, I do agree that it’s a good report. But I don’t see a ‘call to arms to the voluntary sector’: although membership of the consortium you refer to does currently include a charity (NIACE), it is up to Ofcom to widen it; the sector itself is not guaranteed resources or support even if it did decide to take up arms.
And I still think that ‘using the stuff we know works’ relies on that stuff to work, and that ought to be better supported.
(I hope that makes some sense, I’m probably too tired to be writing this now!)
Michael
You’re right to point out that “Digital volunteers” (if we may call them that) rely on social media tools – but more than that, they (we!) /make/ the tools – from open source software, to mashups, to filling Wikipedia with content.
That’s not to say that your point about “the hold that commercial bodies have over our social infrastructures” is wrong – just suppose if Twitter announced, tomorrow, that all their users had to pay a membership fee? Or decided to block all mention of, say, Google?
Andy Mabbett
Andy, I agree completely. My concern is that too much importance is placed on the relatively tangible issues of commercial interest and digital engagement, and not enough on worrying about how the ensuing changes in social interactions, norms and cultures are supported and not simply left at the mercy of the market.
Michael
P.S. I urge you to post a summery of your post, and a link to it, at http://digitalbritainforum.org.uk/report/ the commentable version of the report (even though the report is final, so we can’t change its content).
Andy Mabbett
Actually, I didn’t address your substantial point about the tools. 4iP represents an attempt to find sustainable business models for this kind of stuff but models that don’t lose sight of their value as public service engagement tools. I’d contend that our paternalistic approach to government and to media means that commercial bodies don’t quite hold the sway over our social infrastructures that they might in other countries. I concur with Andy, below. We’ll build the tools we need if the current ones become out of reach.
Oh and I’m maintaining that it is a call to arms. You’re in there. You’re in the words they haven’t written, the gaps they’ve left, the plans that aren’t fully formed yet. You’re all over this…
Dave Harte
My point about commercial organisations such as Twitter is that they don’t know – any more than the rest of us – how our use of the tools is going to affect subtle but profound changes in social interaction: they don’t know what will break so they can’t plan for it. So when things do break, it will tend to be commercial decisions that present a solution and not societal ones.
Michael
Great post Michael. I’m really interested in your point here and use of the word ‘volunteer’ in the broadest sense. I think you’ve touched on something critical.
I actually think that the advent of the mass adoption of social media has meant that people are volunteering their time to effect social change in all sorts of new ways without ever imagining what they’re doing is volunteering. Our way of looking at volunteering has not kept up with the changes brought about by social media. The still think of volunteering in the old fashioned sense of someone volunteering when they’re taking on a formal role with a formally constituted organisation.
Just as old media journos are finding they’re disintermediated by citizens on the scene with equipment necessary to document news as it happens, charities are finding the same. That is, people no longer need go through a big well-established, well-known charity to get involved in the promotion of a cause they believe in. They can now contribute by galvanising their own social networks online to back small groups and informal organisations that exist or even create their own.
Your point that the Digital Britain report fails to recognise social media’s contribution to changing our attitude and methods to bringing about social change, is symptomatic of how the tech debate is all too often focussed on the tool itself, rather than putting the tool in the background and putting the social impact enabled by the tool front and centre.
Patrick Daniels
Michael – I think you are a shining example of how social media works in an area of decent connectivity. I on the other hand know the other side of the story where connections are so poor (many around here can’t even get decent dial up and no mobile either) that social media hasn’t even raised its head on the horizon.
I agree that the digitalbritain report missed out us community volunteers, but I still think the main priority is getting ubiquitous access to everyone. Once the infrastructure is fit for purpose and doesn’t let people down so much they will embrace the tech and use it the way you are doing. Once it is more reliable even the non techie folk will learn how it works and come to trust it. Not putting all your eggs in one SM basket means that if twitter goes down we can turn to wave or msn or skype. Building up a good contact list using all the tools available. Studying how they work and making the most of each. Great work is possible, but not when signals drop out, pages time out and folk are still very disillusioned with t’internet. I speak to many. I am not making this up… truly.
chris
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