In the old days, gadflies would show up at city council meetings and wait through excruciating discussions about arcane public policy issues, in exchange for two minutes at the podium during the pre-appointed time for public comments. These days, most gadflies can’t be bothered to leave the house for a two minute rant at the end of a long council meeting. They’re all too busy updating their blogs.
According to a recent LA Times article, more than a few city officials are finally waking up to the fact that large corporations have been aware of for a while now: When your customers/constituents have a problem with your organization they are increasingly inclined to tell the world about it on their blog.
The old rules of public communications are being turned upside down in the new era of conversation-based media. For city officials who haven’t bothered to keep current on the latest trends in the blogosphere, this news comes as a startling wake-up call.
The problem is that many government agencies have Web 1.0 tunnel vision, and are not ready for a Web 2.0 world. From the beginning, government agencies have used the web as a low-cost one-way publishing medium. In some cases they’ve developed eGovernment initiatives to streamline labor intensive processes and provide better constituent service.
Very few agencies have used the web as an opportunity to engage their constituency in an ongoing discussion about the issues of the day. Blogs make this engagement unavoidable. Citizen bloggers are having these conversation whether or not city officials choose to participate. Simply avoiding gadfly bloggers won’t make them go away.
Some advice for city officials who are finally realizing that blogging isn’t just a passing fad:
- Blogs are a communications challenge, not a technology challenge. It has been my first hand experience over the past 15 years that city officials are too quick to look for a technological solution to most problems — especially when the “problem” seems to be related to the Internet. The challenges presented by citizen bloggers can’t be solved by your IT department. In most organizations, blogger-relations is a responsibility that is most appropriately assigned to the Public Information Officer. Your PIO should be a new media savvy individual who is capable and competent to monitor a variety of media sources, and use a range of social media tools to interact with constituents.
- We’re living in an era of conversation-based media. It’s crucial to understand that you no longer have control over any public discussion taking place about your community. Your constituents are talking about issues outside of the regularly scheduled council and commission meetings. You might want to listen to what they’re saying.
- Be proactive about monitoring the blogosphere. You should already be monitoring traditional media sources for mentions of your agency. Blogs should be monitored as part of this ongoing effort. Use tools like Google News, Technorati, and a good RSS reader to setup pre-defined searches for a variety of names and topics, including: the mayor, council members, city manager, key employees, and key project names or issues.
- Participate in the conversation. Blogs have comments for a reason. When a blogger misrepresents your organization make it a point to respond in the blog’s comment section. Surprisingly, only one official mentioned in the LA Times article is making an effort to respond to citizen bloggers. Many public officials simply ignore bloggers, or, at most, openly complain about the inaccuracy of the information on community blogs and the anonymity of the bloggers. A few officials have sought legal remedies — given the fact that there are more bloggers than lawyers, the legal approach is one that won’t scale and should only be used as a last resort, and even then only in the most extreme cases.
In my next post I’ll provide some guidelines for government agencies that are brave enough to consider blogging.
I mainly want to say bravo…and where’s that next post with guidelines? I’m curious.
To echo what you’ve said, it seems to me that govt agencies in this age of transparency really have no choice. The local focused conversations are going on whether or not the agencies in question want to participate in the new media.
The argument made for NOT engaging with the critiquing/blogging group usually is “the more you engage them, the more they’ll expect to be engaged.” If you believe it’s a battle of attrition, then I guess agencies can live with the consequences…and maybe the critics will just go away, but probably not. And even if they do, they’re still voters after all.
More likely is that the gadflies (as well as the rational, involved citizens with valid concerns) won’t and the more you ignore them, the more ammunition is at their disposal – for their neighbors’ ears as well as for demonizing public officials and their agents at public hearings.
Seems that having a PIO on board to address/deflect the unfair, incomplete critiques should be a basic requirement, especially in small jurisdictions where too few decision makers have the chutzpah to stand up to constituents when they stand up in any concentrated number.
I wonder what certain City Managers in particular smaller jurisdictions have to say.
~DE
Hey Darren:
Thanks for the comment. Points well taken.
I think many agencies fear that they’ll be overrun by blogging zealots who eat up a lot of time ranting incessantly about issues they don’t fully understand.
While that’s bound to be a part of the conversation, I think that most agencies will be surprised to find that they will also encounter a fair amount of quality feedback from citizens with legitimate concerns.
For the agencies who choose to engage in this medium, the challenge will be to minimize the damage done by the ranting zealots, while encouraging the participation of concerned citizens.
One thing’s for sure, new media and blogs are not going away. It’s only a matter of time before agencies at all levels of government are forced to come to terms with this new communication platform. Typically, most of the agencies that I talk to are several years behind where they should be.
You caught me on the blogging guidelines. That obviously was not my next post. Instead, I’ve been working through some ideas on how I can provide assistance to agencies who are finally waking up to the fact that the internet is changing, and that their constituents expect more from them as a result. Guidelines will certainly be a part of that program, but I’m envisioning something more comprehensive.
Details to follow.