Motivating+Scenario

A Social Participation Scenario: Promoting Energy Sustainability Harry Hochheiser, March 13, 2009 (DRAFT)

Barack Obama's presidential campaign brought a ray of light into perceived darkness of civil engagement. After years when many - particularly younger - citizens were thought to have "tuned-out" from electoral politics, Obama's technically-astute team developed web and messaging tools that engaged millions of people.

This success presents a civic opportunity and a research challenge. If well-used technology can help motivate unprecedented numbers of people to become part of cause or movement, can this approach be scaled and customized to address other pressing societal concerns? If so, the opportunity might be great.

The challenges are substantial. Although the technological pieces are there, they must be developed by technically-savvy groups with substantial resources. Can this model be expanded to support groups ranging from neighborhood associations to national movements? How can social participation tools support open discussion, democratic debate, and free expression without being swamped by spam, trolling, or other destructive behavior? What will it take to encourage participation - can Obama's success be replicated without a charismatic leader? How can we assess the success (or failure) of both these efforts and the tools that support them?

These questions form the basis for the proposed research agenda behind the National Initiative for Social Participation. This scenario presents the use of social participation tools in the development of a tool for community-based energy sustainability efforts: The Springfield Sustainability Portal.

The Springfield Sustainability Portal:

President Obama made a commitment to energy sustainability in his economic stimulus plan, including inspirational calls for green technologies, energy conservation programs, and reduced energy usage. However, an equally strong social stimulus plan is needed to change a deeply ingrained "addiction to oil" and other bad national habits.

A core group of concerned residents in the small city of Springfield took this cause to heart. The key team members of the Springfield Energy Activists (SEA) include Susan, a 45-year old mother of two teenagers who has long been a community activist, Jenny, a 20-year old college student majoring in environmental sustainability, Bob, a 67-year old retired executive who wants to play a leading role in the community he has lived in for 40+ years, and Sam, a 33-year old town council member with an computer programming background.

Their initial goal was to develop a web site that could be used to inform community residents about sustainability strategies, discuss strategies for increasing impact, and to support and encourage others to join the cause. Dubbed Springfield Sustainability Portal (SSP), this site would form the basis of a site that can serve both as a comprehensive community resource and a focal point for organizing and coordinating related efforts.

Although the group relied on Sam as their "computer expert", they sound found tools that were powerful enough to let any of them work on the technical aspects of building the Portal. They decided to use the popular Social Participation Web Components (SPWC) tools, with Bob and Jenny taking the lead on the technical development.

Bob and Jenny team used SPWCs drag-and-drop web development tools to construct a multi-faceted web application, integrating tools from several popular web sites. SPWC provided valuable advice on constructing a social participation site that will engage users and encourage increasingly higher levels of participation and commitment. Initial components included:

- Introductions to the SEA group's priorities and activities. - FAQs - A membership sign-in and management facility, including tools for including pictures, biographical information, and links. Pictures of the organizing committee members put a friendly and familiar face on SEA efforts. - An annotated greenmap of local resources including community groups, vendors, contractors, and schools. - Curated sections for advice and ideas. - Discussion and news areas. - Links to relevant state and federal legislation - Contact information for relevant legislators and government offices. - Cross-linking facilities allowing ties to popular social networking sites - Links to the National Sustainability network.

The SEA team knew that the site would evolve, but they were confident that the SPWC platform will help them expand the site as needed.

Having implemented a web presence, the SEA team started to build the community. With Susan acting as recruiting chair, The SEA team members used "community finder" tools to analyze their email archives, chat logs,and social networking connections to find colleagues and acquaintances who might be interested. These interactive tools examined individual social networks - both real (as in social networking sites) and inferred (chat and email) - looking for keywords or phrases, and identifying (where possible) both direct friends and indirect acquaintances who meet specified criteria, such as living locally, or having discussed sustainability issues.

Once each SEA team member identified a group of people to invite, the community builder tool helped them construct appropriate invitations. The tool suggested text indicating why people are being invited, and providing useful hints (based on accepted best practices) on constructing compelling messages for various venues, including email, blog posts, social networking status lines, and text messages. Before blasting these messages out, each team member followed the advice of the community builder and personalizes the content, making it more appealing to recipients. After the contacts were sent, the community builder monitored email, social networking, blogs, and other media, in order to track which invitations were accepted, and when.

Susan used the group coordination tools to track the success of these efforts. A variety of interactive, online graphs displayed the number of people joining on a daily basis, along with indications of the source. Although Jenny's invitations initially seemed to be the most successful, the group was particularly pleased when significant numbers of members seemed to be joining based on recommendations from members outside the core SEA group.

Using skills and contacts from his successful city council campaign, Sam took the lead in old-fashioned organizing and community-building. He spoke to like-minded groups, gave presentations at community meetings, and meeting with people at neighborhood farmer's markets, telling everyone who'd listen about the need for sustainable behavior, and what they'd learn by visiting the SSP.

These efforts began to show some results, as illustrated by reports generated by the SPWC platform, which showed steady increases in various metrics, including number of registered users, frequency of visits, volume of posted materials, and visits by unique guests.

More importantly, interesting postings of ideas for saving energy and living more sustainably generated discussion and engaged participants. Community members exchanged tips for saving energy and insulating homes. The commuting board was busy with listings for carpools and people looking for partners for walking or biking to work. Forums for discussing community issues led to energy-saving proposals based on modifications to street-light usage and garbage collection routes. "Top savers" listing of successful energy-saving proposals and "idea of the week" awards encouraged friendly competitions among active participants.

As the community grew, Susan and Bob became the primary "administrators", as they worked to ensure smooth operations by following public discussions, monitoring posted items, and responding to messages from members concerned about inappropriate behavior. Bob and Jeny would help out when needed. Fortunately, the software tools provided substantial support for moderation and user management. The SEA team was particularly pleased with the reputation systems, which allow members to recommend each other, and related reward systems, which that gave users points for making suggestions, posting tips, or influencing other members.

In the hopes of minimizing perceived barriers to participation, the SEA team made an early commitment to allowing multiple forms of participation. Individuals were allowed to participate completely anonymously, pseudonymously, or fully identified using their own name.

Differing feedback structures encouraged active users to move towards full membership: although pseudonymous members can be recommended by others, only fully identified members can accrue points. Members who accrue sufficient levels of reward points could be invited to join the growing community of moderators and facilitators needed to help oversee discussions.

The incentives encouraging full membership served dual purposes. Fully-identified members made the community stronger, and they required less maintenance. As anonymous or pseudonymous members are more likely to make offensive or inappropriate comments or submissions, reducing their numbers minimized oversight overhead. Platform-provided tools that flag content for potentially offensive terms helped in this regard.

The original SEA team realized from the start that a successful effort would build a community that they could not control, as members would suggest new directions and request new features. Aware of the potential damage that might result from overly heavy-handed management, they augmented the Sustainability Portal to include tools for proposing new initiatives. Following advice that they received on the Social Participation Portal - a network for groups administering social participation efforts - they started this effort with a discussion on the site, and worked towards a consensus that support of 10% of active members (those who had participated in the last 60 days) was sufficient for starting a new effort.

Few were surprised when the first new initiatives that were proposed took a more aggressively political stance. A discussion on the relative merits of individual and community action as opposed to legislative and regulatory efforts led some active contributors to call for tools that would help members understand and participate in relevant political processes. Once support for this proposal passed the requisite 10% mark, the SEA team - who still controlled technical aspects of the site - used the web component toolkit to add required functionality. The "political action center" was soon flourishing, with lists of proposed legislative and regulatory initiative linking to action items for concerned community members, debates over political strategies, and background information from regional and national groups.

Although praising and promoting successful efforts had long been a successful component of the sustainability portal, controversy developed over a proposed space for "shaming" individuals, businesses, government agencies, or others who were seen as being noticeably wasteful in their energy practices. Mary, a long-term community activist familiar to many in Springfield, was the most vocal advocate of this approach. Mary argued that undesired recognition would help urge bad actors to change their ways, but others expressed concerns about privacy and rights of response. Others worried about the rights of individual "whistle blowers" who might want to point out concerns without fearing reprisals from employers or neighbors. A deliberative process, facilitated by site tools that provided coordinated views of arguments and responses, led to a proposal designed to allow constructive feedback while addressing the legitimate concerns.

The "worst waster" tools that arose from this discussion used a variety of strategies to satisfy these goals. All submissions were to be moderated by a group of members with sufficiently strong reputation ratings. A set of criteria for rejecting submissions would be posted publicly. Submissions involving individuals would not be allowed to use names or exact street addresses, but street names would be accessible. Businesses, government agencies, or other entities could be identified by name. All posters would be encouraged to identify themselves, but anonymized postings indicating the reputation points of the poster would allow well-regarded members to act as whistle-blowers without fearing backlash. Finally, violators identified as "worst wasters" would have an opportunity to respond. Those who changed their practices could qualify for a "best to worst" list.

Some local businesses and national corporations were very unhappy to be identified as "worst wasters". Complaints about the model were the focus of much debate in discussion groups on the sustainability portal.

This debate grew more heated when Jim, a vocal critic of the "worst waster" segment became a candidate for the SSP "oversight board" that had final say over portal policies. This board, which "met" monthly in a synchronous meeting via a public online forum, with complete transcripts of all decisions, adjudicated disputes and determined site policies. As the founding SEA members had long since moved on to other projects, the oversight board consisted of active members who were periodically elected by full members. Only full members were allowed to run for board positions, with statements, pictures, and dedicated discussion groups providing members with necessary information.

The campaign debate over the "worst waster" features erupted when Larry, a long-time member revealed that Jim, oppositional candidate was in fact an employee of a public relations firm hired by a corporation repeatedly listed as a "worst waster". Aware that this information might cause a ruckus, Larry showed the evidence to his friend George, who was also well-regarded on the site. Using site tools for affirming confidence in another member's statement, George supported Larry's claims, and Jim's campaign was soon discredited. Although Jim was not seen much on the portal after that, some members speculated that the pseudonymous user "PrGuy" was, in fact Jim.

As the Springfield Sustainability Portal continued to expand, information sharing and ties with other like-minded groups helped to increase its reach, while opening up larger scale information sources to members. Links to comparable sites provided members with information and suggestions from neighboring towns and counties, while aggregated statistics regarding impacts helped drive the development of regional coalitions that were able to play a forceful role in state politics.

The portal itself soon became seen as a model. Using the same web component software that was used to originally create the site, the site maintenance team bundled the collective functionality into a package that could be redistributed and easily redeployed by other groups.

The challenges of sustainability were by no means conquered, but each success empowered members to move further.

Requisite technology

1 - End user configurable tools for constructing complex web sites from common components.

2- Rich user models, allowing anonymous, pseudonymous, and identified users

3- Reputation and reward schemes for various actions.

4- User contribute content and moderation facilities.

5- Support for online deliberation and group decision making

6- Integration with existing social networking tools.

7- best practices for motivating messages to encourage participation

8- Tools for examining multiple personal social networks for understanding of shared interests and identifying contacts.