“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw
With the speed of change in modern communication, this quote is now more relevant than ever.
Consultation projects are all about communicating with populations about the issues affecting them. To serve communities well, public organisations endeavour to hear from a representative cross-section of their population. This is difficult when traditional engagement processes can exclude some communities, leading to greater representation by some demographic groups over others.
To avoid this, public organisations can adapt to changing communication styles and embrace responses that come in a greater variety of forms. Deliberative democracy, such as the citizens’ assembly we are currently assisting Wellington City Council with, is one option which encourages high-quality participation. Another way to achieve greater representativeness in democratic decision-making is to allow feedback in more forms—social media being an obvious one.
The effectiveness of social media as an engagement tool was of interest to the City of Melbourne, who asked Global Research to evaluate the quality of comments which came via their engagement platform, Participate Melbourne, with those posted on Facebook via a dedicated project page. Results were conclusive—while social media made more people aware of the community engagement, the comments posted on it were inferior when assessed for quality in terms of informing the process, to those provided via the Participate Melbourne platform.
The key reason we found was that when people engage via social media, they are more likely to express their broad views to the world, leading it to being more extreme, provocative, and off-topic. Whereas, when providing feedback directly to an organisation, even if critical or negative, more frequently resembles a one-on-one conversation with better-reasoned and informed opinions expressed.
We found from the research that Facebook was perfect for increasing dissemination of information about the community engagement, and getting more people involved, but high-quality feedback was more frequently received from people speaking directly to the organisation via their official platform.
So while a social media platform may give the illusion that communication has taken place, the feedback collected by an organisational platform such as Participate Melbourne, is more likely to collect a reliable picture of the community’s views.