Measuring the Societal Benefit of Online Civic 'self-help' Sites

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The research will be conducted in four main phases. The first phase will involve an assessment of the existing work in the academic literature and also more specific reports by MySociety and similar groups to profile their online users and the societal value of their sites. We will identify the key gaps in practitioner and academic knowledge, both methodologically and theoretically, and specify our research questions and the sites we will study. Based on this review in the second phase of the research we will design the analysis to provide the type of rich qualitative and quantitative evidence to address our central research questions regarding measuring the sites' impact. In the third phase of the research we will carry our empirical data collection. This will consist of four two-wave panel surveys fielded on the MySociety sites - They Work For You, Fix My Street, Fix My Transport and Write To Them. The surveys will be used to identify the new users and those that are less involved in civic and political matters and from a non-typical participatory background. All individuals participating in wave 1 of the surveys will be invited to take part in an extension to the analysis by completing an online time diary over a three month period following their interaction with the site. First time users will be targeted in particular with follow up invitations. The time diaries will be filled in ideally on a weekly basis and track users social, political and communal activities. Time diarists and those completing wave 1 of the survey will then be invited to complete wave 2 once the time diaries are completed. This will measure levels of social and political trust, social connectedness, and feelings of confidence in their ability to solve their own and other/community/political problems. In the final phase of the research we will conduct online focus groups with selected time diarists and triangulate with survey and time diary data to address the key questions of what motivated participation on the site, if first-time use was converted into further activism how and why that occurred. Once the results are produced we will prepare a report for MySociety and dissemination across the voluntary sector that will summarize our findings and provide recommendations about what tools and actions are most likely to be undertaken by first time users of campaigning and community sites, and how these act as triggers to create the skills confidence and networks to allow them to continue to undertake self-initiated activism. We will also include recommendations on how this 'conversion' can be monitored and measured by organizations. Finally we will prepare a paper for academic publication that will utilize the data to present the first qualitative over time study of online users of these public service sites. The panel element will allow us to gain a unique insight into how far an individual's visit to the site influenced subsequent activities and particularly the extent to which, by dealing with a personal problem or local concern they felt more able to deal with problems in their own lives and their neighbourhood/society more generally, how far they achieved things they could not otherwise have done, were better equipped to solve subsequent problems when they arose.