myspace – Tim's Blog

Safe and effective social network site applications

[Summary: Inviting feedback on first public draft of working paper about developing social network site applications for young people that can be effective and engaging, whilst also promoting safety and limiting risk to young people (PDF)]

Update 18th May 2009: Version 1.0 of the paper posted here.

For the Plings project – concerned with promoting positive activities to young people – Social Network Sites (SNS) offer amazing opportunities. One of the main ways people find out about positive activities (the football club, dance group or arts society for example) is through word of mouth. So if you can feed information about positive activities into SNS, and increase the flows of information about positive activities through the networks of young people already active there, you could potentially have a big impact on young people’s awareness of activities they could take part in.

Take a look at the slidecast below to get an idea of how a Social Network Site application could work:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: sns)

Of course, local authorities and professionals working with young people have a duty not only to make sure young people are aware of the positive activities available to them, but also a duty to keep young people safe from harm – and Social Network Sites can be places of risk as well as of opportunity. Which is why public and third-sector organisations engaging with SNS shouldn’t just copy the ‘viral marketting’ and often aggressive tactics of commercial SNS application builders – but need to develop a clear ethical and risk assessment framework for engaging with Social Network Sites.

I hope that this working paper which I’ve put together for the ISP/Plings project can go some way to starting off that development.

‘Safe and effective SNS applications for young people: considerations in building social networking
applications for under 19s’ aims to build a coherent foundation to support public and third-sector engagement with SNS through application building by:

Unpacking the reasons why we need to treat young people differently;
Exploring the features of Social Network Sites which lead to both amazing opportunities, and potential risks;
Clearly identifying the risks to young people within the Social Network Site space;
Proposing three levels of response that should lead to safe and effective application building;

The document also includes an outline risk assessment framework.

The three responses proposed are:

Abiding by ethical principles – and designing applications on the basis of principles derived from law, a respect for young people’s rights, and existing principles from professional practice;
Having a clear risk assessment in place for all projects – to make sure potential risks are identified and design decisions or resources put in place to limit potential harm to young people;
Building safety in – and creating applications which empower young people and encourage general safe online behavior.

So, if you’re exploring the use of Social Network Sites to engage young people, whether in positive activities or participation opportunities – or if you’ve got experience of e-safety or Social Network Site applications please do take a look at the ‘Safe and Effective SNS for young people’ working paper and share your reflections, questions and feedback.

Exploring further
This first public draft of the paper is hopefully just a starting point of a deeper exploration on building positive SNS applications. In particular:

The ISP/Plings project will be seeking to operationalise some of the learning in this paper, so it’s proposals, and the feedback and comments on it should have an opportunitity to be explored in practice over the first half of next year…
I’ll be leading an exploration of using applications for youth participation as part of the Local Government Information Unit Action Learning Set on SNS and Youth Participation. (N.B. Application deadline extended until 9th Jan 2009 in case you wanted to come along… but have not yet had chance to register…)
If there is enough interest – then I’d love to host a seminar on SNS applications and youth engagement early in 2009 – exploring both this paper, and emerging practice from the field. If you would be interested in taking part do drop me a line (tim at practicalparticipation dot org dot uk) or leave a comment on this blog post.
All comments and feedback on the paper are most welcome. Again, e-mail or comment below…

Over on the Youth Work and Social Networking blog

I've tried to keep the plethora of reflections and shared bits and pieces from the Youth Work and Social Networking project over on their own blog – but I'm aware some people have been expecting me to post them here also. So, here is a quick run-down of some of the posts, documents and resources you will find over on the Youth Work and Social Networking project blog.

We've created two mini-guides to introduce MySpace and Bebo. Like the one page guides series, these are free for you to use and adapt. The Bebo guide in particular is designed to help introduce Social Network Sites to a beginner audience of youth workers who may never have explored social network sites before.
We've been exploring how youth workers can turn to Social Network Sites and search engines to support them in community profiling.
We've looked at how Youth Workers can point young people to positive online social networking spaces, and can use the opportunity to introduce important safety messages.
I've been reflecting on what Clay Shirky has to say about 'talking in private – in public' and what it means for youth workers and anyone seeking to support young people's safe online behaviour.
Back in June we were learning some key practical lessons about how to remove the filters that block access to Facebook and MySpace so that training sessions in the use of these sites can take place. If you're planning to ask your IT department to remove the filters so that you can offer a training sessions for youth workers or young people – then do take a look at some of the practical barriers we encountered.
And we've just published a report from our consultation with young people in Devon about participation and decision making opportunities that could be made available through Social Network Sites

There are also a number of others posts pointing to recent research and online resources.
The final report of the Youth Work and Social Networking project will be launched on th 26th September in London – so if you would like to be at that (or at the UK Youth Online un-conference the following day) then please do get in touch.Â

Should local authorities be on MySpace or Facebook?

Over on the BarCampUKGovWeb discussion list Ian Dunmore shared a question posted today on the Public Sector Forums:

“I've been asked by a couple of people in my council if they can use the
likes of Bebo and Facebook to add a group to, to encourage young people to engage with the council. Firstly, it's Libraries and secondly our youth
people who want to promote a youth portal that is being developed.”

In my reading for the Youth Work and Social Networking research I'm currently involved in, and in trying to prepare a series of briefing papers on Social Networking Sites I've been struck by how complicated an issue this turns out to be.

The answer depends on (at the very least):

Which Social Networking Site you are talking about
What you want to do through the Social Networking Site
What position you take with regards to certain examples of offline engagement with young people – that is, what professional judgments have you already made that you need to be consistent with online. (This isn't just about questioning the way we should interact online – it's about questioning some of the ways we interact with young people in general).

And the answer to the straight question of 'Should our local authority be on my space of Facebook?' turns out to be a very qualified definitely maybe.

Some thought experiments and arguments by analogy may prove useful in exploring professional intuitions and sensible responses to Social Networking Sites. The following thought experiments are very provisional and under-developed at present – but I offer them in the hope they can in some way help further the discussions taking place…

Which social networking site?

What the community, norms and expectations in a particular Social Networking Site community are matter.

MySpace is visibly highly commercialized and seemingly chaotic. Think of it like a very commercial music festival. If your local authority were to set up a stall there to hand out leaflets, chances are you could be next to a stall selling occult looking statues and drug taking paraphernalia.

Would you be comfortable in this space?
If 20% of the young people you needed to reach with your message were there – should you get over any discomfort and be there?
What if 80% of the young people you need to reach will be there?
What if the festival has an area that is for over 18's only – but you know that all the young people you need to reach (who are under 18) are actually in that area? Would you go and set up your stall there? Should you? What are the issues in play?

(Caveat: Most festivals are temporary – so you might think 'we don't need to be there -we'll catch people at another time in the year'. The my space festival is year-round, 24-7. Does that change things?)

FaceBook gives (at least) the illusion of a more ordered environment where setting up a Facebook page or group for your organization may perhaps seem like setting up and inviting people to join a community forum, with the added benefit that when they join the forum – all their friends are told about it. But any community forum needs facilitation and resourcing, and there is an expectation of meaningful dialogue. And on Facebook you're competing with many other groups and communities.

Do you have the resources to facilitate the sort of dialogue you want?
Are your expectations of return on investment reasonable given the competition in this space? What is a viable return on investment?
Is it enough to offer people to chance to sign as members of a 'community panel' if they only get invited to input once or twice a year?
Can you afford not to offer people in this space the opportunity to get involved in dialogue with you?

Bebo… well, I've not had an in depth look at Bebo yet – and I realist the Facebook analogy above also needs more work… so I'll come back to these soon.

What do you want to do?

What you're planning to do, and how you do it matters.

You might want to use a Social Networking Site to:

Promote something that is going on.
Provide important information, advice and guidance to young people.
Engage in collective civic conversation and dialogue with young people.
Build a mailing list of people you can contact.

You might think of (1) as like putting up a virtual poster, or running an advert.

Q: If 60% of your target population for an activity or project are going to a particular space, and you can advertise there for free… would you do it? What would you have to think about in making that decision?

You might think of (2) as setting up a one-stop information and advice shop in the town centre. Only, in this town centre exists online globally.

Q: If someone is already providing good general information advice and guidance – what is the unique additional offer you can bring?

Social Networking Sites can often create an expectation of dialogue and can be an effective platform for dialogue and discussion (3).

Setting up a space where you ask questions, but are not actively joining the discussion and providing answers, asking further questions, or showing evidence of change would be like holding a meeting where you invite young people to offer their views on a topic, and then sitting there in silence until everyone eventually goes home.

Joining a group on a Social Networking Site is a very quick action. Groups can have a far better 'sign up' rate that an e-mail newsletter might (4). And the informal quick message to group members may be received better than the carefully edited and formatted eat-mailing. But a group is also usually a space for dialogue.

Q: If you've not got capacity to manage the dialogue – can you be honest about that? If you can host dialogues, but only in one place which isn't on this particular SNS, should you be setting up an 'outpost' on this particular SNS to periodically point people to your main discussion spaces?

From years of running consultations with young people – I'm also well aware of 'the suit question'. Meeting with young people – should you wear a suit? It shows respect – but it's not accessible. But then – should you try and dress 'cool'? Probably not. So how should you act? What image should you present? What image will your SNS space present?*

(*Hint: get young people involved in helping you create it.)

What are your pre-existing professional intuitions?

Question your hesitancy. Understand your reasons. Check against your aim and mission.

The thought experiments above may cause hesitancy about engaging with Social Networking Sites. My hope is that hesitancy helps in thinking through how to engage well, rather than blocks any engagement at all.

As Dave Briggs puts it:

There are masses of good reasons for engaging with these platforms, for
example the fact that they are already being used by the young people in question, and we aren't asking them to sign up for some new Council (or otherwise) sponsored affair that is bound to be considered gaff.

And so we definitely need to spend more time thinking about this…

Creative Commons Photos:

Finale by sama sama – massa

Marking by Ti.mo

Public meeting by lsgcp