you might find this intresting:
"Americans use a range of approaches to keep informed about what is happening in their communities and online activities have been added to the mix. Face-to-face encounters and phone calls remain the most frequent methods of interaction with neighbors. At the same time, internet tools are gaining ground in community-oriented communications."
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Neighbors-Online.aspx
and some analysis from e democracy:
"We’d rather use technology to have fewer strangers starting from where you live everyday. In short, meeting your neighbors online might just be the best opportunity to connect a nation in public life and counter those intent on pulling us a apart with online partisanship and political diatribe masked as online interaction."
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/858
Comments
Excellent!
Great find!
Andre Angelantoni
Founder, PostPeakLiving.com
Some thoughts...
Great articles Ed! Just reading through, a few thoughts:
Is it worth exploring if we could capture (as part of this project) some patterns on communication, specifically online but also bridging the online and offline? Maybe patterns is a format that would work in some cases not others, perhaps a comparison of comms methods would also be useful for TIs, e.g. email lists, Twitter, blogs, etc. Highlight what the benefits and important points are to using them? I know you've done some of that Ed, but could it be extended/developed to fit with part of the material this project creates, which is specifically aimed at TIs to digest?
I guess the "neighbourhood mailing list" is a many-to-many group kind of list that anyone would/could post to, which seems to be the most popular. Is this the same as forums? Does that suggest that forums should support interaction via email, if possible?
How useful might it be for a TI to include feeds or content of related general news, to pull people to their site? I know this is not something we (Belsize) are doing currently and obviously it may take scarce resources...