Challenges for achieving effective online deliberation
The way we think about internet nowadays is changing, and the more we understand the important implication that it has on the country’s political, economic and social sector allows us to ask the question of how can internet influence the way we live in the society, how can internet influence the way we make decision, and the way we integrate with the public. Farrell, 2012, emphasized that we should think about the internet as a bundle of mechanisms that we can in principle disentangle from each other. Doing this will also allow us to think systematically about how politics, economic and social interaction are likely to change as the Internet becomes ever more integrated into everyday activity. This mechanism allows us to integrate with the public through online engagement. Public engagement embraces the idea of 2-way and ongoing process of communication for both public participation and public communication and it is always important to learn the benefits of online engagement not only that but learn about the challenges and possible strategies to overcome these challenges with. Follow up, I will highlight 3 challenges that I believe are the top three challenges for achieving effective online engagement as well as introducing of suitable strategy to overcome each of these challenges.
Accessibility
I believe that one of the top challenges for online engagement is the accessibility of participants to online information through the internet. Internet access refers to the way individuals connect to the internet using different technological devices and access different services such as email and the World Wide Web (Techtopedia, 2019). My experience from a developing country point of view is that some areas within the country especially the rural area and outer islands have not yet fully developed and have no internet coverage so far, therefore the knowledge to use the internet service and online engagement tool is still lack in this area, therefore limit them from participating in online engagement.
Strategy
As to conclude, dealing with the challenge of accessibility, maintaining the trust and monitoring discussions during online engagement is not an easy task. Applying the different strategies suggested for these challenges will result in effective ways of online engagement with the public. The challenges that I have mentioned are drawn from experience in developing countries whereas they can differ from a developed country. So, it depends on the context and situation that the country is currently faced. To move along the continuum of online engagement, the government needs to be able to develop a good relationship with the people and involve them in the process so far.
Maintaining Trusts between Government and Citizen
Another challenge for achieving effective online engagement is the ability to capture and maintain the trust of citizens throughout the online engagement process. So, if the online engagement is not interesting enough to get people to involve during the duration of the program then citizens might likely withdraw based on them losing their trust in the government and they do not want to participate anymore. Citizen has something of value to offer during online engagement and that is the heart of engaging with the citizen (Eppel, 2019). There needs to be a two-way integration where government trusts in citizens to provide valuable ideas and feedback and citizen trust in government to make sure that their voices are heard and take into account during the policy design.
Strategy
Citizens nowadays value transparency, accessibility of information, more responsive services to be provided by the government so, therefore, it is always important that citizens are being informed from the start of the process until the end for them to feel involved and consider their time as worthwhile. During the online engagement, it is always important to keep citizens informed of the status of what the discussion is all about and for them to still maintain their trust in the public sector. Starting the process with a clear sense of purpose and link to what the organization objection and vision enables citizens to feel a sense of security while engaging in the program. Always provide ongoing feedback so that citizens will know if the engagement was effective or not. There is a need to become more citizen centric
Ongoing Monitoring
Another challenge is making sure that discussions during the online engagement always stay on topic. When there is a lot of platforms developed, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Blog Post, direct marketing, websites and so forth, there are always room for going off track with discussions if it is not properly monitored and usually difficult to direct back citizen to the whole purpose, objectives and the intended outcome to achieve from the online engagement. This is usually a challenge and usually involves ongoing monitoring to make sure online engagement is effective.
Strategy
The strategy to tackle this challenge lies with the responsibilities of different moderators within the team who monitor the discussion. There needs to be ongoing monitoring of discussion and constantly remind the idea of where to get to, long term objectives and outcome needs to be communicated at the start. A clear analysis of stakeholders and participants need to be done before assigning them to selected platforms, for example, different platforms for youths, older people, and so forth. Platforms are usually designed for different purposes for different groups so it is always important to know your participant well. A clear purpose, to who and what outcome to achieve it communicated clearly. Assign different personnel within the team for monitoring and constant reminder for the participant when they start to go off-topic is always important.
Conclusion
As to conclude, dealing with the challenge of accessibility, maintaining the trust and monitoring discussions during online engagement is not an easy task. Applying the different strategies suggested for these challenges will result in effective ways of online engagement with the public. The challenges that I have mentioned are drawn from experience in developing countries whereas they can differ from a developed country. So, it depends on the context and situation that the country is currently faced. To move along the continuum of online engagement, the government needs to be able to develop a good relationship with the people and involve them in the process so far.
References
Cheung, N. (2003). Guest editorial — Broadband internet access for every household. IEEE Communications Magazine, 41(12), 28–28. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2003.1252795
Epple, E (2019) Online Lecture: EGOV 503, Trimester 3 [Power Point Slides],Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington
Farrell, H. (2012). The Consequences of the Internet for Politics, Washington, USA: George Washington University. Doi: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-030810–110815
Internet Access definition retrieved from https://www.techopedia.com/definition/7776/internet-access
