Fieldwork part 2

My "field"
As I mentioned in my earlier entry on fieldwork, WiserEarth (www.wiserearth.org) become my "field". It is social networking site with over 45 thousand registered users and hundreds of different groups and initiatives. WiserEarth is often compared to Facebook - WiserEarth have what Facebook is lacking, a common goal, not merely collecting as many friends as possible, but also a vision of social change. Behind the building of this platform is the organisation Natural Capital Insitute (NCI), and its founder - the famous Paul Hawken (environmentalist and author of many books including Blessed Unrest: How the largest Movement in the world Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming.) WiserEarth vision is to work as One, to unite people around a common goal, mobilize people and come up with solutions. Gather stories of success, collaborate, discuss and gather groups of like minded.


Entry
As a newbie and researcher in WE one is overwhelmed with all the possibilities, all the activity going on. Which group should I join? How do I know that this is the right for me? How could I understand this massive community? Is it possible to perform reserach here? Who should I talk to and so on. My strategy initially was to select a few groups, join them and share my thoughts and hopes around my research. I choosed around 3-4 and joined them, introduced myself in different discussions/chat. I was also soon invited in a pair of new groups by people who found me and my profile (where I presented myself in pretty much the same style as in this blog) and soon I had a constant stream of updates coming to my inbox. As soon as I had become familiar with some of the groups I started to introduce myself to individuals I found interesting (especially persons with knowledge about technology, activism and peace but also sustainability, WE and social media). It only took about a week to get to know the friendly atmosphere that is significant for WE (at least for the groups I´m a member of), but my impression of the platform "culture" was that it was a bit messy. A lot of people was members in a variety of groups and a lot of groups had interesting discussions. Still, it seemed like a lot of groups had activities outside WE as well (and they only used WE for contacts). I missed the coordination of action and thoughts (even though some groups inside WE most certainly tries to solve some of the major problems in the world) in WE as a whole, that is, the vision of the platform and the members acting as a whole.


Fieldwork
Interviews in anthropology and ethnology is seen as a rich resource of informations and give us a valuable insight in how people perceive and interpret the world. My first interviews via skype and facebook was planned and performed about two weeks after my first entry on WE and they took around 2 hours each. It was very interesting interviews ranging over a wide variety of different questions. I soon understood that my research focus was of great interest but also that my quest for the perfect online innovative collaboration platform could´nt be performed over a 10 week period (especially not since it took 2 weeks to find WE and expert informants). Many of my informants was experts in their area and gave me valublae insights and tips about building a community. It is by now very clear that a community in the style of the ProPeace Platform is (and must be) a long (and slow) process but also that many organisations and persons around the world is interested in the creation of this kind of platform.

A community of communites
In a netnographic perspectives, one should choose a vibrant community with members focused around one topic/interest. WE is really a community of communites and could also be compared with a marketplace or a city square with different discussiongroups (all interesting in their own ways). My informants gave me insights in their own professional lives, both online and offline, inside WE and outside. They have given me information about how one can think around community-building but also how one can think around peace and mobilisation of people towards action. My netnographic material consists of 6-7 deep interviews (that is qualitative interviews ranging from 1-2 hours), e-mails, transcripts from various forum discussions and texts from and about WE. Even though I have a very richmaterial, I don´t think that I have the key to how to build the perfect ProPeace Platform. But I do think that I have many valuable tips and strategies, metaphors (which works as models in how to think about building and maintaining a community) but also what doesn´t work and what one could avoid (here technical discussions and forums for improvements in WE has been a rich resource).


Ethics
The stakeholders in this research is not only myself and TFF but also members of WE and more specifically my informants, of whom many have said that they are very interested in my future results. I have also been invited to share my results and work with other organisations in their work. When it comes to social change, I think this is very doable, especially since this is not about a competition, but rather about cooperation.


The Future
My research will be presented to The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in January 2011. I´m in my analysis phase right now and have a lot of material to transcribe, decode, translate and analyse. The final product will take the form of a strategy for how TFF should think around the building of The ProPeace Platform (that is, it will be a recipe around how one can create an online culture of propeace and collaboration and initiate people to participate in this creation). I will update my blog (more frequently) with more refelctions around my analysis and the future work.

Project description for "Peace in web 2.0"

Background

In 2010 TFF (The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research¹) celebrates its 25 years anniversary. The TFF brand is also globally acknowledged, but even though TFF has a strong profile online (including network among various academics and decision makers), they are experiencing difficulties in reaching out to various groups in society, especially the youth. Plans for the future of the foundation is discussed internally and one result or vision of these discussions is a concept called the Pro-Peace Platform.

The vision of the ProPeace Platform states that it is ”a new type of platform” where the message and philosophy of ”pro-peace is promoted”. It also states that the platform should promote constructive thinking, ways of seeing, ideas, information and concrete proposals that highlights the pro-peace of our time. The central core to the idea is to ”give peace a visibility”, something that would be reflected in the content of the platform, in forms of eg: videos, photographs, arts etc. accompanied with reviews, debates and discussions. There would be academic studies with proposals, all kinds of peace courses, links to online learning and so forth. Another central aspect of the vision though, is that the platform bridges academia and cultural production, that it highlights culture in general and culture of peace activities in particular. The focus would be on “what was done, what can be don and how and who are the like-minded to link up with to move the world.” Various groups and initiatives in society should meet on this platform, and together form a global movement for peace.

The ProPeace Platform is a place that makes peace and peace-culture visible - for the concerned citizens, students, academics, artists and media people. It is a place “filled with “aha”-, “wonderful”-, I did not know that”- experiences” and a a place where the user get a sense of “Yes, there is hope – people have done it”. This should energize and appeal to people, especially the youth, around the globe and ignite the will to contribution. The basis for this could be a form of wiki or another form of social community, where people are devoting, with time and knowledge.

My Project – “Peace in Web 2.0”

I will perform a research-project for full-time for 10 weeks (from 18^th October – 17^th December) during the autumn. The project will be a pre-study for the ProPeace Platform, its content and its structure and the task would be to analyze social media with a focus on youth and people movements (like the peace movement and the anti racism movement). A mapping of other successful platforms could be performed as well as anthropological methods to interview users. In this way TFF could gain valuable information about the mechanisms of social media and patterns of the youth and also how the culture of peace could be amalgamted with the culture of Web 2.0.² My main research questions are:

How do you create this kind of architecture? (Are there any examples out there that corresponds to the ProPeace Idea?)

How do you create an atmosphere of change-making and the will to contribute?

How do the users use social media with a focus on people movements and how do these social media use the users?

The result of this research could take the form of an action-plan or a strategy for how TFF should design the process of creating the platform and how the user should be involved. It should give insights to “peacetrends” on the Internet and a picture of the potential future user of the platform. A future goal could also be to present some form of visual “prototype” for the platform, eg. in a presentation for TFF.

Method

In order to attract certain groups of people, TFF need to map theses groups wishes, needs, behaviours, movements etc. A mapping which could be done online through netethnography ( or virtual ethnography) by using and analysing social networks on eg. twitter and facebook.³ Netnography also includes participant observation (an anthropological term for being there- on site) in social communities online. Besides netethnography; qualitative interviews and/or focusgroup interviews with associates, students, researchers and people of diverse background will be used in order to answer my research questions. The knowledge gained from this could be the foundation for the ProPeace Platform.

Theories

The theories I intend to use includes the theories about "The Experience Economy” and "place-making" (Magic, Culture and the New Economy by Orvar Löfgren and Robert Willim) + (Kulturell ekonomi : skapandet av värden, platser och identiteter i upplevelsesamhället by Lars Aronsson (Red)) and various articles concerning the underlying philosophies about Web 2.0 and Innovation.

Notes:

1 TFF (founded in 1986) is an independent think tank and an all-volunteer global network with associates all over the world. Their goals are based on ”peace by peaceful means” and include; ”conflict-mitigation, peace research and education to improve conflict understanding at all levels and promote alternative security and global development based on nonviolent politics, economics, sustainability and ethics of care.” TFF works in areas such as; Burundi, the former Yugslavia, Iraq, Iran and other places in the Middle East as well as in Sweden. (http://www.transnational.org)

2 Web 2.0 is a concept and a development of the Internet which builds upon a digital and open culture, which is developed through the collaboration between users. It is constructed by social networks like twitter and facebook. Users share, interact and collaborate and is therefore as important as the platform itself. This can be compared with Web 1.0 were the vast majority of the users simply consumed the content.

3 Potential subquestions: How do young people become engaged in social movements today? How do they organize themselves? In what way do the want their information? Movieclips, pictures, live-chat etc. How do they process information? (Do the share it with others? Do the want to download it?) Do they want to contribute? How do we reach certain groups in a time when individuals are bombarded with messages and information? In what ways can web 2.0 promote new forms of thinking around peace?