Using Technology to Create a New Kind of Public Commons

Editor's note: This excerpt, taken from a recently released study entitled Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement, written by Dr. Cynthia Gibson and commissioned by the Case Foundation, looks at technology and how it relates to civic engagement. Based on Gibson's interviews with researchers and experts in service and civic engagement — including CompuMentor's founder and executive director Daniel Ben-Horin — the study offers specific recommendations for providing the tools citizens need to identify problems and develop solutions.

Technology is seen by many as one of the most promising venues for encouraging, facilitating, and increasing citizen-centered dialogue, deliberation, organizing, and action around a wide variety of issues, but it has been relegated to the sidelines in many of the public discussions about service and civic engagement. At the same time, millions of Americans have hungrily grabbed at what technology has to offer to develop social networks and connect with others not only in their geographic communities, but across the country and internationally.

A smaller but growing segment of the population has been working to use this connective power for civic purposes because it is one of the few, if not the only, mediums in the world that allows 200 million people to "take action and be active, rather than reactive, like television and media," said Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for the Howard Dean presidential campaign. He compares the advent of the Internet to the invention of the printing press as one of the most significant events in American history, especially as a tool for increasing civic participation and engagement.

Trippi and others point to the Dean campaign's ability to raise significant amounts of money for his presidential run and also connect strangers with similar interests to work collectively toward common goals as evidence of the power of technology to provide a new venue for connecting people and giving them opportunities to take action. He noted, "If you tried to put up your picture on telephone polls in your neighborhood with the words 'Come to my house and work for Howard Dean tonight at this address,' people would think you were crazy. But that's exactly what the Internet allowed people to do — and 175,000 people showed up in the houses of, in many cases, virtual strangers. 

The miracle wasn't that this happened with so many people, but that we had strangers having serious conversations, which would lead them to engage others the next time. Trippi believes that this trust, which data underscores, is essential for public deliberative processes, stems directly from the Internet, which allows people to "say and do things they might not normally say or do initially in public."

Indeed, the Internet has begun to help change everything from journalism (through blogging that challenges the media to go beyond headlines) to education (through open-source sites such as Wikipedia and others) and may now have the potential to change our democracy, especially institutions that have increasingly provided little incentive or opportunities for citizens to participate. Recently, for example, hundreds of philanthropists, nonprofits, charities, technology companies, and others gathered to discuss the civic potential of using Web 2.0 technology — a collection of user-oriented technologies such as self-publishing. 

Organized by Daniel Ben-Horin, executive director of CompuMentor, a nonprofit intermediary, the conference included groups from the Kiwanis Club and the American Cancer Society to Amnesty International and Blogher. Ben-Horin's organization, in fact, developed a set of Web-based tools that organizations and communities can use to self-organize, hoping that these could harness the "same kind of energy that has been mobilized for Wikipedia ... to fight AIDS or hunger or homelessness."

These events have occurred almost parallel to the service and civic engagement field, which rarely intersects with the technology sphere. Among the reasons for this are unawareness or "illiteracy" about technology and its capacities and a tendency to view civic work under a more traditional organizational or institutional rubric-one that many in the technology sphere see as increasingly becoming outdated.

In traditional organizations, decisions are made hierarchically and then distributed "out" into the world where they are received by people. With technology, people now have the opportunity to weigh in through a more reciprocal process and choose from literally millions of options for information and services to which they previously had not had access.

"When you're open to a citizen-centered framework, your organization becomes much smarter," Trippi asserts. Allison Fine, author of "Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age," believes that technology helps to "break down the walls of institutions" in ways that promote more collaboration and reciprocity among diverse groups of individuals and groups. It also provides the "grease" for more rapid and efficient social problem-solving. 

"When you have the ability, even as a single individual, to see a problem like an oil spill on a lake and can tell thousands of people about it instantly, you can mobilize more people faster and more effectively." As a result, the role of organizations shifts from agenda-setting leaders to supporters or diffusers of information and resources across wider networks.

The thousands of people who left their offices and schools in early 2006 to participate in immigration marches, Fine points out, were fueled less by formal organizations and more by the buzz created among peers using cell phones, text messaging, and blogs.

Trippi, Fine, and others believe that the next challenge for those interested in civic engagement is developing ways to use these tools in ways that help people engage for the common good, rather than for polarizing purposes or issues, which has turned off many Americans from traditional politics and political institutions. Starting from the larger notion of the "common good" will lead to more participation at the onset and will build trust among diverse groups of people, which, in turn, can lay a foundation for more productive discussions when disagreements about issues do arise. Ultimately, technology holds the promise of turning the entire power structure on its head, empowering grassroots citizens who previously felt voiceless.

It is important, however, to underscore that technology should not be seen as the silver bullet for civic engagement but rather an important tool in it. "Technology gets in the way sometimes of really moving toward our larger goal of participation," said Howard Rheingold, author of "Smart Mobs," "so you can't start there. You have to start by asking people, 'What interests you? What do you care about? What issues get you interested?' and then help them explore ways to use technology to turn those ideas or desires into action."

Rheingold is currently working on developing curricula that helps educators use the technology with which young people are comfortable — such as digital media, blogs, wikis, and podcasts — and their interest in peer social interaction toward activities focused more on civic engagement, including helping young people develop a "public voice" on issues that are important to them.

It is still too early to tell whether this rapidly changing medium will be a net benefit for civic engagement, especially whether people can address entrenched social problems by associating online. In particular, there is a relative lack of online work that focuses on local, geographical communities — even though many real-world problems are local. It also remains to be seen whether people can develop civic identities online, rather than become active citizens through their families, churches, schools, and neighborhoods and then use computers as tools.

As Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the "Center for Community Change," noted, "Technology has been enormously useful in improving the transparency of many of our public institutions and can be an effective tool in distributing information and making connections among people, but it shouldn't ever take the place of face-to-face contact, which is equally important in strengthening the civic and political life of communities."