Social media in Peterborough

Locally, we want to use social media as part of the Citizen Power project to:

• Ensure transparency for this project
• Create local networks at neighbourhood level
• Getting people more fully involved in their neighbourhoods
• Provide a service to other Citizen Power strands

The bigger picture is that if we can make this work, we can help with movement of people who are trying to put the "social" into social media. See www.socialbysocial.com socialreporter.com etc.

We need also to accept from the start that Peterborough isn't actively looking for a socially-driven community website - at least not at the moment.

In fact community websites here tend to have fairly low participation. Though there have been some great efforts, like Positively Peterborough, they've foundered because of a lack of uptake. Freecycle Peterborough is great but it has relatively low activity given the size of the city. [Freegle Peterborough does have a healthy and active membership.] And though there are a couple of local neighbourhood sites, they're generally evidence that those particular neighbourhoods are functioning pretty well.

The fact is, when people use search terms online including the word "Peterborough", they're generally looking for something specific; an event or some expertise.

Most of the online transactions that you can witness about Peterborough are pretty much along those lines.

Ideally, we want to see people doing more of the orange bits on the chart above - telling more stories about their lives, exchanging information about taking part in their city, and using social media as a way of deliberating about the future they want. But we're not going to get there by building cool websites.

That's going to emerge as part of a longer process - and only if we manage to attract the attention of the best social media communicators Peterborough may have to offer.

So first we need to co-build a decent social media community here.

Some of this is about getting stuck in ourselves. Social media depends on people turning opinion and information into virtual goods - pieces of information that can be passed around the network. This film at the Showcase cinema is great. The Cresset Theatre is closing down. There's a guerilla gardening meetup on May 1st. The museum's running a short story competition. And so on.

We're working on ways to increase the flow of those simple virtual goods around Peterborough. The Connect Locally and What's On? tabs at the top of this page are a very modest start, as is our @citpower Twitter stream.

But, actually, one of the great things about Peterborough is it's full of potential information to be passed around. Though the online "commons" is still small, there are dozens and dozens of siloed websites in that Connect Locally list - sports clubs, social clubs, car clubs, gardening clubs - all of which have an online presence, and we've only just started adding them. There are inevitably even more we haven't yet heard of.

So some of this is also about showing those people how they can join the conversation. Leaning on the expertise of our RSA Fellowship, we're planning social media surgeries in Peterborough. We want to invite the key players in these organisations, clubs and societies to take part in those surgeries so they can learn the ropes and increase the flow of information. When we've found some funding for a local network manager, we're going to start reaching out to these organisations to start building a decent shared calendar, and creating decent bundles of info about what's going on in Peterborough - from sports events to cinema listings.

And into that information stream, we'll also be pouring news of all the events and activities allied to things like Citizen Power Peterborough, Peterborough CVS, PECT, Peterborough Community Radio, Peterborough Advice Integration Project, the user-centred drugs project, etc etc etc.

It's important to note this isn't a single website solution. Although this Ning will hopefully play a part, it's as much about what goes on on Twitter, Facebook and on people's phones. It's about increasing the value of the traffic going around Peterborough.

And only when and if we reach a critical mass can we can start to do the really exciting stuff, like piloting Pledgebank networks, building an accessible social participation map, experimenting with forms of mapping in which residents define their own communities, work on co-creating online democracy projects and so on...

Anyway, your thoughts please on this small start...