Key Concepts
Technical jargon isn’t the only thing you need to get your head around: there’s a whole new world of concepts and approaches which are important to understand as you engage with this new world. You should also take a look at what we think are the most important concepts to remember in your travels, in the Social by Social Propositions.
Adoption is the process by which individuals and groups discovery how technology may bring them benefits, learn how to use it, and then make it part of their normal work practices. The speed at which people do this may depend on their individual preparedness to experiment, their confidence and skills - and also on support available. A compelling reason is usually important for most people: ‘why bother’ is a reasonable question, if frustrating for technology enthusiasts. (Understanding the difficulty and unpredictability of securing adoption is a key reason not to jump for the tool).
Advocacy is one of the areas where new technologies can help individuals or groups gain more influence. Marginalised groups can use these tools to find a voice, or in the case of the users of Savvy Chavvy, to form their own communities.
Authenticity is the sense that something or someone is ‘real’. Blogs enable people to publish content, and engage in conversations, that show their interests and values, and so help them develop an authentic voice online.
Blending is the process of mixing of online and offline activity, for example around an event. There may be networking and blogging online beforehand; photos, videos and reports captured on the day; discussion afterwards online around these items; informal meetups made possible by the online networking.
Champions In order to get conversations started in an online community, you need a group of enthusiasts willing and confident to get things moving by posting messages, responding, and helping others.
Collaboration is one of the higher goals of social technologies - being able to discuss and work with people across boundaries of organisation, time and space. The tools to achieve this extend from e-mail through to web-based workspaces, file storage, calendars and other tools. With the right equipment and connections you can talk to and see each other, text, sketch and transfer files almost instantly. You can set up a workspace in a virtual world, and collaborate with other avatars. However, the conditions for successful collaboration are more human and cultural than technical, with the bottom line being trust. Social activities like commenting, social bookmarking, chatting and blogging help develop the trust necessary for collaboration. The conversational and authentic tone of social media helps create conditions for collaboration by helping people explore who they would feel comfortable working with.
Collective intelligence has been defined by George Pór as the capacity of a human community to evolve toward higher order complexity thought, problem-solving and integration through collaboration and innovation. For a network to develop this ‘mind of its own’ there needs to be a willingness among members to share and collaborate. Collective intelligence is not the same as the Wisdom of Crowds, where individual preferences and decisions may aggregate to produce better results without people consciously collaborating. The latter is more market-oriented, the former more cooperative.
Commitment the ‘social’ aspect of social media means that tools are most useful when other people commit to using them too. Commitment will depend on people’s degree of interest in a subject, capability online, preparedness to share with others, degree of comfort in a new place, as well as the usability of the site or tool. If people are passionate about a subject and desperate to share and research, they will usually clamber over technical problems. But making things technically easier - while desirable - won’t usually gain people’s commitment on its own.
Commons Ownership is important when working to empower communities and individuals, and web 2.0 folks in particular get touchy about who owns the content created by users. The idea of the commons, which actually comes from pre-capitalist land ownership traditions, refers to spaces which are held in trust for the people and are owned by everyone. The term has become particularly popular due to its use in the Creative Commons license.
Community building is the process of recruiting potential community or network participants, helping them to find shared interests and goals, use the technology, and develop useful conversations. A number of different roles may be involved.
Control social networking is difficult to control because if people can’t say something in one place they can blog or comment elsewhere. That can be challenging for hierarchical organisations used to centrally-managed websites.
Conversation through blogging, commenting or contributing to forums is the currency of social networking. A popular perception of bloggers and social media contributors is of people ranting on a virtual soapbox or talking about their curtains, with no-one really listening. While that may be true for some, the real rewards of social media come from exchanges with others. Create your own content, but also leave comments for others. Sometimes other people will pick up your items, add a link and a little interpretation, publish on their site, and put a link or trackback to you. You can also set up searches to alert you when someone mentions your name or company online. That way you know you have someone with whom to start a conversation. Read more on the importance of conversation in the Introduction.
Copyright Traditional copyright licensing and laws are difficult to apply to online media, with issues such as physical/geographical boundaries (what is legal in one state or country vs. another) and intellectual property rights. Creative Commons is the most prominent alternative licensing that covers online content, and is very popular as it allows sharing and remixing of content for wider dissemination online. Sharing through social technology is enhanced and enabled by placing materials into the commons where they can be reused by others.
Crowdsourcing refers to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organisation who are prepared to volunteer their time contributing content and solving problems.
Creative Commons In the spirit of openness and sharing generally prevalent among social networkers, you will often find content labelled with this copyright license that allows you to re-use the material provided you provide an attribution. The Creative Commons site offers different licenses. One frequently used is Attribution-ShareAlike, whereby content may be altered and re-used with attribution, provided that a similar license is then attached by the new author. This may not appeal to people or organisations who like substantial control, but this is usually a cultural or commercial issue rather than a technical one. This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License.
Digital divide refers to the gap between those using digital technology and those who aren’t, whether for economic, geographic, lifestyle or other reasons. UK Online and other organisations are working to understand and bridge this divide and help all those who want to be online get access.
Empowerment in the context of this handbook refers to the encouragement of individuals and groups outside of an organization to adopt any tools or approaches necessary to interact and communicate with the organization online.
Events, properly organised, super-charge the energy flows in a network by firing people’s enthusiasms and sparking communications. While some people may like structure and facilitation, others may be more comfortable with informal, social opportunities to meet. Either way, it is important to give people the chance to form their own interest groups.
Exclusion see inclusion.
Face-to-face is used to describe people meeting offline. While social media may reduce the need to meet, direct contact gives far more clues, quickly, about a person than you can get online. Online interaction is likely to be richer after f2f meetings.
Facilitation may involve hosting events well so everyone is welcome and can participate, managing discussion face-to-face or online, brokering introductions and creating the environments in which people feel comfortable. If you want to encourage conversation and new relationships, facilitate with a light touch and encourage people to self-organise where possible.
Hosting Some people dive into events (whether face to face or online) and make their own introductions – but many others are not disposed to do so. Hosts help break the ice and facilitate networking. You can often spot whether a network is run by a clique (clustering together) or a good core group (hosting and involving others) by watching what happens at events.)
Inclusion and exclusion within networks usually refer to the relationships between individuals and existing groups within a community, such as a closed group on a social network, or a closed cultural group in society. It also encompasses ‘digital inclusion’ which usually means making digital technologies more accessible to people who don’t or can’t use them (or bridging the digital divide).
Innovation as we mean it here refers to new ways of communicating, building community, providing services, or creating options for citizen engagement via technology. It has a broader meaning though, which usually refers to doing things in new ways but can also mean applying existing models to new sectors, and reviving old methods in a modern setting.
Joining up is a big opportunity - and challenge - in the world of social media and networking. On the one hand links, tags and feeds - together with the spirit of openness - means content in different places can be brought together (aggregated). On the other hand, the move from groups to networks, and forums to blogs, means that content is spread around and there is seldom a one-stop-shop.
Leadership is changing in the new context of cheap digital and social technologies. It is easier than ever to ask people what they need, so leadership may have to evolve too, to become more consultative and less representative.
Listening in the blogosphere is the art of skimming feeds to see what topics are bubbling up, and also setting up searches that monitor when you or your organisation is mentioned.
Location. The nature of location and presence is changed by the internet and new technologies, because you can be active online in many different places, including in virtual worlds. However, many websites still use geographic location to provide services to enrich the experience of local life, such as School of Everything and Talk About Local.
Mapping networks enables you to identify the main connecting people. To do that you may need to ask people questions like who they communicate with most frequently, who they most respect in their networks and so on. It can also be achieved electronically by mapping the communications sent electronically between members, if you have access to that information. If you want to grow an online community or network from an existing ‘real world’ network, it will be important that the key people in the offline network overlap with the champions for online networking.
Meetings are important in social networking in at least two ways. First, they accelerate the process of people getting to know each other. See face-to-face. Second, the open and fluid style of social media is making those using it impatient with committee-style meetings and conferences dominated by platform speakers. With a little commitment it is possible to agree some meeting topics beforehand, circulate material, capture discussion at the time, carry on discussions afterwards ... or maybe not have the meeting at all. Use Voice over IP, chat, instant messaging ... or even a get-together in a virtual world.
Membership involves belonging to a group, but also often having a say in it. Social networks and other looser structures can offer some of the benefits of group membership, without the need for as much central co-ordination. The growth of free, simple networking tools may present challenges for organisations who depend on membership for funds or to demonstrate their credibility. (Read more later about the implications of new technologies for membership organisations.)
Mindset means the general understanding or view of an individual, group, or population of people, especially as it applies to technology adoption. It is the way we see the world, and the way we approach problems - and solutions.
Narrative see stories.
Networks are structures defined by entities (called ‘nodes’) and the connections between them. In social networks the nodes are people, and the connections are the relationships that they have. In computing a node might be a computer and a connection a network cable. In all cases, networking is the process by which you develop and strengthen those relationships.
Network analysis refers to a set of techniques (including mapping) for analysing connections between people (or organisations, websites, servers etc.) and analysing the important links, influential members and potential strengths and weaknesses.
Openness is being prepared to share and collaborate – something aided by social media. Open source software - developed collaboratively with few constraints on its use - is a technical example. In order to be open online you may offer share-alike copyright licenses, and you may tag content and link generously to other people’s content. This demonstrates open source thinking.
Ownership The stake that people have in an idea, a project or an organisation is fundamental to their commitment. `Not invented here’ is a powerful block to gaining people’s involvement - whether they are councillors, officers, professionals, business people or residents. For that reason early brainstorming workshops, where everyone has a chance to contribute ideas, are important.
Participation,or ‘participatory culture’, is used to described a way of doing things in which people use social media to share and collaborate. Using social media certainly opens up more ways for people to do participate, and it allows greater openness and transparency which in turn encourages it. However, the tools do not on their own create a participatory culture, because people are unlikely to commit to using them unless they are inclined to participate in the first place.
Personality types Personality type can have a profound effect on people’s style of networking. Extroverts gain a lot of energy from interaction with others, so are likely to be confident face to face networkers. Introverts may like time to reflect and develop their ideas internally – and may view a sea of new faces with trepidation. Different personality types may also prefer to use different communication tools (phone, email). Good network facilitators cater for a range of preferences.
Public services traditionally meant services provided by the Government to the people, such as the National Health Service and other parts of the ‘welfare state’. But we use it here to mean any services which are delivered for the common good of the general public, either by Government or third sector bodies, or by groups of self-organising individuals.
Readiness is a check on whether you - or your organisation - are prepared to engage with social media. An obvious issue is whether you feel technically confident - but a further issue then is whether as an individual you are ready to ‘find your voice’ online, or whether as an organisation you will be comfortable with an open and non-hierarchical environment. Everyone will have different preferences on how to engage online, so it may be best to lurk, explore, and try small steps.
Relationships are the links that hold networks together: the links between members and the network organiser, and the links that members have with each other. The weak links may be as important as the strong. One good test of a network is whether you feel able to contact someone you don’t know too well with a suggestion or request. If relationships are strong between one group they may appear to be a clique and become excluding.
Service design applies product design and other design techniques to creating better services for people. Service designers model the needs of users and create processes and experiences that satisfy them practically and emotionally, such as a better healthcare process, or a well-drilled call centre.
Social innovation refers to new ways of collaborating or providing services for social or public good, sometimes with the aid of technology but also using new offline techniques and new ways of approaching problems. It is closely linked to both service design and social enterprise.
Social software refers to any tools which help people come together to socialise, collaborate or interact. It usually implies digital/computer technology, but can sometimes also mean offline tools, event technologies and systems of work and thought which help people collaborate and socialise more effectively.
Stories are a strong theme in and social media. Anecdotes, bits of gossip and longer narratives work particularly well on blogs if they have a personal angle. Stories help readers get to know the author - and help the author find and extend their voice. Narrative techniques can also deliver a range of benefits to an organisation, and stories are a particularly powerful tool in organisational change and knowledge management.
Transparency Enhancing searching, sharing, self-publish and commenting across networks makes it easier to find out what’s going on in any situation where there is online activity.
Trust Networks are about people and their relationships, and these bonds only develop if there is growing trust. Openness and sociability help. Doing things together – activities and projects – will rapidly help people decide who they trust. Since networks are communication systems, good and bad news about people travels fast.
Voice Technology enables you to extend your voice by increasing your reach across the net, in the way that suits you best. You can write, or if you are a visual person you can upload photos or other images and invite comments. However you choose to communicate, the personal style and content of what you communicate is usually called your ‘voice’ online. Your voice can be focussed on your own blog or website, but can also be heard on other sites through your commenting, linking and use of social media tools. Having a consistent voice for all your communications helps people to identify you across all these different channels and build a relationship with you online.
The wisdom of crowds is a term coined by James Surowiecki in his book of the same name, to refer to the situations where tapping the knowledge and judgement of many people can produce more accurate results than asking a small group of experts. Surowiecki argues that in some situations, the many can be smarter than the few - a position traditionally at odds with perceptions of crowd behaviour and fear of 'mob rule'. Many of these ideas are being tested in practice by large-scale collaboration projects such as Wikipedia, and they underpin much of the theory of web 2.0.
