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Leveraging On-line Forums for Community Engagement

Explore the impact of on-line forums on dialogue and public engagement, with insights from leading experts. Discover benefits, challenges, and the future potential of on-line engagement. Learn about e-dialogues, research salons, and public forums shaping sustainable community development.

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Leveraging On-line Forums for Community Engagement

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  1. on-line forums: a strategy for community engagement Nancy Averill, Director of Research Ann Dale, Trudeau Fellow CRC in Sustainable Community Development Professor, Royal Roads University

  2. Why is dialogue so important? • messy, wicked problems • no-one is an expert • beyond any one sector, jurisdiction to solve • interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary • lost capacity for ‘shared meaning’in communities

  3. 6-year RRU Research Program • Can the Internet be used for substantive dialogue? • Can the Internet be used to enhance literacy? • Can the Internet be used to inform public policy?

  4. Social Capital & Sustainable Development ResearchSalons PublicForums E-Dialogues • Non-timber Forest Products Electronic Library and Publishing • E-dialogue Research

  5. What is an e-Dialogue? • synchronous (real-time) conversations • bringing the best minds together on-line • interdisciplinary space • deliberative dialogue with e-audiences • actively moderated • living archive

  6. www.e-Dialogues.ca • research e-Dialogues • student-led e-Dialogues • professional e-Dialogues • Scientists for the Future • Post-Kyoto Public Forum variant, Post-Kyoto Forum

  7. Level of Engagement Total visits to e-Dialogues website 14000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

  8. Level of Engagement geographical outreach Canada, USA, Mexico, Australia, UK, USA Military, Holland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, South Africa

  9. Level of Interactivity

  10. What worked? • engaged, meaningful dialogue • critical reflection • capacity for more lateral thinking • data collection method for students • living archive • continuing visits to the site • evidence of ongoing dialogue and new connections

  11. What didn’t work? • age barrier (typing, reading on-line) • public conversation • engagement of public policy community • new dominance patterns

  12. Questions? • level of diversity captured • e-format and frankness • privacy legislation impacts • real-time versus any-time • dominance and conflict • tyranny of expertise

  13. Benefits of On-Line Engagement • independent of place • cost-effective interdisciplinary dialogue • scale-free networks • inclusivity and diversity • enlargement of the public sphere • potential to re-engage youth

  14. The Future • e-research collaboratives • potential e-peer review • new e-communities of practice • deliberative polling and deliberative democracy

  15. Three e-spaces exist, e-dialogues. research salons and public forums. All three are designed to work in different ways but all contribute to the research agenda of knowledge diffusion; literacy around critical public policy issues, in particular sustainable development; and e-life-long learning. All three spaces work synergistically together towards public engagement (or mobilization) and are designed to work iteratively back and forth, in possible combination with multi-media events, such as round tables, multistakeholder processes, television and radio. All are complimentary and in concert contribute to creating a new kind of civic research and literacy using leading-edge internet communications technologies (ICTs).

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