Extending ICT tools

All the pilots used social media to some extent and several but not all incorporated it into co-creation.  Successful examples of reaching out with high use of social media to contribute to co-creation processes are the pilots in Italy, Finland, and Spain.  All of them feature multiple resources and platforms selected and mixed in ways that were made to work in the relevant local and service contexts. In Spain, for example, social media accounts and the webpage were run by Co-Crea-Te beneficiaries themselves with occasional input and guidance from mentors. For this pilot the technology is a leveler in the sense that, due to its increasing accessibility, it could be done by anyone and handing this over to citizens gives them a feeling of belonging. Indeed the transfer of power was real and could be a source of tension with public service organizations. Estonia is an instructive example of a highly digitalized county where the use of social media in CoSIE was medium rather than high, as we might have expected. The pilot set out to adopt social media with enthusiasm and some success. However, for their target group personal meetings and encounters were still very important. Reflecting back with hindsight, the pilot leaders observed that, “we wouldn’t expect so much from technology when it comes to small, rural communities and vulnerable people”.

Social media has the potential to reach groups who do not respond to more traditional methods. This was a main driver for the Finnish pilot with young people outside employment, education or training.  In addition to organizing hackathon events in physical space, this pilot curated social media data to highlight different points of view from the target group. The Finnish CoSIE team developed a dedicated tool for scanning, classifying and analysing social media content. This was successful in that it yielded valuable information about the lives of young people not accessible any other way, although a downside was that data could not be linked any particular location or service. Social media data, they reflected, is not necessarily better than data acquired in other ways (e.g. via trusted NGO partners) but can be a powerful tool with different indicators and ideally would be used from the start to end of a project.

Some pilots did not utilize social media for co-creation (although they deployed it for purposes of communication and dissemination). There are good reasons for this for which learning for policy can be derived. On a positive note there was the potential of innovative, non-digital ways of interacting for co-creation, as anticipated in the work package task. A less positive reason was that digital exclusion.  It was not entirely surprising that digital exclusion would be an inhibiting factor for engaging people beset by various forms of social exclusion on account of age, income, health, skills or geographic location (Sakellariou 2018). However, rather less predictably the so called ‘digital divide’ was not the only issue that limited opportunities for co-creation through digital technologies. In the UK pilot in criminal justice, professionals and beneficiaries alike associate social media with shame and stigmatization. In Nieuwegein (the Netherlands) the barrier was similar. Inhabitants in the pilot site (a community beset by many social problems) were distrustful of digital communication with municipality services and also thought the community was stigmatised in social media because the local reputation for anti-social behaviour.

It is very easy at policy level to overstate the potential of digital media and understate the reasons it may be unwelcome and even inappropriate for some marginalised and stigmatized groups. This goes deeper than limits of assets and skills that, in theory at least, could be relatively straightforward to fix. Commercial social media platforms in some contexts are seen as inherently harmful (a position that worldwide events since the start of the CoSIe project may tend to amplify). The pandemic and consequent lockdown caused some resourceful instances of rapid uptake of digital solutions in the CoSIE pilots but also serves to remind us how much co-creation benefits from of face-to-face relationships. The CoSIE pilots together demonstrate a policy lesson that ICT technology in co-creation is definitely an enabler and catalyst, but generally complementing rather than replacing personal encounters and communication.

A final reflection is that, far more than social media and open data, the pilots demonstrate the power of the digital interventions that were incorporated into the CoSIE project as tools to advance co-creation. All the pilots used Community Reporting either as an input into co-creation, for co-evaluation, or both. Community Reporting in the CoSIE pilots shows a step forward in the way “lived experience storytelling can be a mechanism through which public services can truly reconnect with citizens” (Trowbridge and Willoughby, in press). In contrast to many popular commercial platforms, Community Reporting curates stories in ways that are governable and ethically responsible.  It enables them to be mobilised for change.