Comments on: Thoughts on my thesis

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:51:00 +0000

Whislt you are doing your back-ground research you might be interestind in this http://www.gimi.co.uk/

We all find clients approach targeting youth differently from keeping youth messages on their main sites, to going for “youth style” sub-sites to full on social networking sub-sites.

Yours
Pete

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:03:00 +0000

Thanks again to everyone who gave me feedback and ideas and leads etc!
I’m about to blog about the decision that I’ve made and which has been approved for me. I have a little time before starting further work and the main thesis will be done next year. I’m sure I’ll be utilising social media then!
Until then though, once again, many thanks for taking time to read my post and answer.
Sarah

By: Björn Holmberg

Björn Holmberg — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:17:00 +0000

I agree with Liz, even though you might just have decided on social media and youth-participation.

The question that drives me with such an thesis is how effective any "project" for eParticipation with regards to youth will be if there's no organisational awareness on the work-related implications of social media and web2.0 technology? If anything web2.0 tech can have a huge impact on the way we work internally, and we might just need to wrap our heads around it if we're ever going to be successful in utilizing it in our dialouge with citizens, both older and younger.

Anyways, good luck with your thesis!

Cheers,
Björn

By: PaulG

PaulG — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Yup, narrow down your target.

You twitter so pick on twitter's effect (microblogging's if you will) upon a) councils, b) young people.

Is there evidence of an overlap and coming-together?

Take a little-used local library service (seek out the worst-used on purpose) which evolves a branch to explicitly engage with young ppl (OK, big discovery - the twitterati - young-minded-people) and communicate directly to those that subscribe.

Lessons learned, advertising cost must be less than 100 ukp etc.

Use your twitter network to create the ideas, and the implementations ...

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:08:00 +0000

Thanks Liz – that’s really helpful. I’m keeping track of all these leads as even if youth angle doesn’t end up being my angle for thesis I am sure we’d be interested in some work-based research to inform our b_line brand

By: Liz Azyan

Liz Azyan — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:16:00 +0000

Hi Sarah,
Lots of good suggestions. Just thought I’d add, if young citizens tickles your fancy, then I really recommend that you look at Danah Boyd’s work at http://www.danah.org/papers/ . She’s done a lot of great work with young people and definitely a top researcher in this area. Good luck!

Liz

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Hi Tim – thanks for your comment. I’ll check those links out. Cheers for taking the time to respond.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Thanks Dan – really useful suggestion and examples. We do some of this ourselves (Derbyshire CC) with our b_line brand (You Tube, Bebo, MySpace etc) so interesting to hear of other examples for both the thesis ideas and in work life as well!

By: Tim Davies

Tim Davies — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Hey Sarah

I would personally love to see more on the young citizens theme. There is a lot of anecdote and under-the-radar activity going on – but right now very little I’ve found by way of good quality benchmarks / case studies and evaluation.

The communities at http://www.networkedparticipation.co.uk and http://www.youthworkonline.org.uk both exploring this from the practitioner level – but mostly basing our work on non-academic research and loosly documented action research right now.

Tim

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:20:00 +0000

Thanks Liz – turning the eye inward might be a good way to research something new and could be of real use as well! Thank you!