Trust the Trust?
The BBC Trust wants to know what you think about BBC.co.uk but it doesn’t know how to ask. So it is going around asking people how it should question people about what they think of the corporation’s online services. This is not as dumb as it sounds.
I was part of a group of bloggers being consulted abouttheir consultation by the BBC Trust (which is the new body charged with overseeing the BBC). It is part of the official review process which includes a website, meetings, opinion polls and focus groups. They are keen to get beyond the usual suspects and so they invited some excellent bloggers such as Sunny Hundal, Simon Dickson and Mick Fealty to give their views. Of course, we all had quite different views of BBC.co.uk and how the Trust should interact with the blogsphere.
And this is where I don’t think the Trust ‘gets’ New Media, yet. It simply isn’t possible to use the same frameworks for consultation online. People want real ownership of the process. As Sue Thomas from Leicester’s De Montfort University pointed out, people are used to being creators online, so they don’t want to be treated as passive consumers when being consulted either.
As with all attempts at openess and consultation, the Trust can’t win. If it is too open then the process becomes unfocussed and they don’t get the neat answers that they can stick in their glossy reports. But I am afraid that openess and a realisation that consultation is a process not a product is the only way to work in the new networked world. I look forward to the Trust’s continued engagement and an even more imaginative response.
October 16th, 2007 at 12:38 am
[...] The BBC Trust meets the blogosphere Published October 15th, 2007 bbc Well done to Charlie Beckett for getting his piece on Monday evening’s BBC Trust seminar online so quickly, practically before I’d left the building. And he managed to hit the nail on the head, when he says ‘consultation is a process not a product… in the new networked world’. Maybe that’s why we’re having so much trouble identifying the right way to make formal consultation work online: maybe the whole premise of the question is wrong. [...]
October 16th, 2007 at 2:53 am
[...] I was invited along with more intelligent, accomplished and thoughtful bloggers than I, who mostly write on issues around technology, society and culture etc. David Wilcox hosted it. Charlie Beckett and Anthony Mayfield, who I read already, were there. Mick Fealty, aka Sluger O’Toole, was the only other political blogger apart from myself. Also nice to meet JP and Simon Dickson and others. Both Simon and Charlie have written about it already, which just shows how dedicated they are as bloggers. I feel a bit slack already. [...]
October 16th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Charlie
Many thanks for coming – was great meteing you
The “Trust can’t win” – well the Trust can but try and am sure you can help us come up with an imaginative response
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:57 am
Reaching out to bloggers? Admit limited transliteracy…
I wrote recently about how large organisations may be able to reach out to bloggers to promote conversations in the public interest, and the sensitivites involved. Here’s some news of a project along those lines that I and colleagues been…