In a post earlier this summer, I wrote about the barriers to adopting new democratic technologies: the powers that be are reluctant to cede control, and the trial and error process of testing social technology takes time.  In order to overcome these and build a more participatory, web-based public sphere, innovators must delicately balance the risks and rewards that accompany new, more democratic forms of user engagement.

The different approaches can be grouped into the categories of venting, crowdsourcing, and crowd empowerment.

Venting. An organization that wants to engage stakeholders can get surprisingly far simply by providing a forum for its users to express themselves and interact with each other – in essence, to vent.

Even without committing to incorporate, respond to, or give prominence to what users have to say, an organization can enhance its image and build a relationship with stakeholders simply by giving them an outlet.  Since only a small segment of very passionate users will bother to read the ventings of others, the organization can engage users in this way without giving up real control of their message and without assuming much risk from stakeholders who criticize their host.

Most comment systems and discussion forums fall into this category.  Comments allow users to react and converse with one another beneath a blog post or news article.  But comments are given far less prominence than the original content they address, as they often are only accessible by a “view comments” link [link to view comments], they are located further down the page, and they are often visually distinct from the main content.  Thus, comments provide an outlet for social venting but do not provide users with significant control.

Crowdsourcing. A more substantive way of enabling users to have significant real-world impact is to draft them in the processes of writing, research and analysis that are part of an organization’s core work.

Talking Points Memo asks readers to search through thousands of documents to find useful information relevant to current political issues.  Assignment Zero invited the public to participate in writing a long-form news article, for example, by conducting interviews and providing transcripts and quotes to the professional journalists.  A pilot program run by the USPTO solicits citizens’ help in evaluating patent applications.

These initiatives allow content submitted by citizens to move out of the commenting and feedback backwaters.  Unlike with pure venting, here the crowd’s collective effort can actually help to shape institutional policies and public debates.

But the crowd’s control is still limited – these initiatives still leave decision-making power in the hands of the organizer or host.  For example, when Mitt Romney’s campaign asked supporters to produce a TV ad and John Kerry’s campaign asked his email list to submit radio ads, the campaigns collected content from users and narrowed the options down internally.  Only then did they let their supporters choose the winning entry from among a small number of options they had determined were “safe.”

Empowerment. While the previous categories ultimately leave the designation of content as significant or impactful to the organizer, a few bold initiatives actually let the community make that decision itself and pledge to stick with the results, even if counterproductive to their institutional interests.

Most of these, including Digg and Wikipedia, were structured democratically from the start and have grown specifically because they are participatory.  But there have also been a few large organizations to introduce democratic policies despite the risks.

MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s IdeaStorm, which let users submit and vote on ideas to determine which are popular, are excellent examples of this, as Vanessa wrote recently.  The prominence of an idea is determined solely by users’ votes, and users have their own interests, rather than the company’s interests, at heart.  So, plenty of criticism of each company and its products has risen to the top of the idea list.  For example, one of the most popular ideas was from a user named “MsTexas”:

Instead of spending mucho $$ on advertising, just lower the prices a little. Old customers will return, new customers who are frightened by everyone who talks about “$5.00 for a cup of coffee!?!” will be lured in, and existing customers will feel ’special’.

Though Starbucks is responding to other ideas above and below this one, it’s unlikely the company will act on this suggestion – and they would obviously rather not have attention brought to how high their prices are.  Yet by allowing in the criticism, Starbucks assures users that it’s the users who are in control.  That breeds trust, which in turn drives greater involvement with the site.  The exchange builds the company’s brand and reinforces customer loyalty among those who participate, and even among those who don’t.  It also allows Starbucks to see which of the many obvious changes are customer priorities (like free wifi), as well as giving the company great ideas they might not have thought of themselves.  My personal favorite:

For the iced coffee drinks. Make them with ice cubes made from coffee. This way the coffee does not become diluted and tastes so much better all the way to the bottom of the cup!

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These three models offer a ladder of participatory engagement and risk.  As our tool is flexible, MixedInk can be applied within each paradigm – and we expect it will be.  But over time, we will encourage organizations to pursue the most democratic approach possible, moving from the venting model that gives users a largely symbolic outlet, to the empowerment model that places real control in their hands.  While it will take time for our collective norms to shift toward a much more participatory economy, politics and media, the rewards clearly outweigh the risks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.