Public Broadcasting’s Platforms for Interaction

I’ve spent some time digging around Gather.com and the Public Interactive Public Action beta and I’ve come away with somewhat more positive feelings about both.

I think the social networking aspect of these and other sites has less potential for public broadcasters – at least for now, while our main demographic is still late-GenX/Baby Boom. This generation discovered the internet as adults and although it’s changed how they interact, it’s not been the revolutionary shift that our next generation of listeners is living through now as teens and 20-somethings.

So to my mind, that pushes networking down the list – and makes interaction the most important concept for us to aim for. And I think it’s hugely important because interaction goes to the heart of what public broadcasting is about. The kinds of experiences that our “founding fathers” envisioned in 1967 – the multi-way conversation that would entwine broadcasters, listeners, culture-makers and public policy-makers – are the experiences we’re actually able to deliver with the Internet. This isn’t just the logical next step, it’s core to our mission as public service broadcasters.

So far, the main model for interaction that we’ve implemented has been comments. It’s a great first step, but it doesn’t fulfill the promise because while it’s a form of interaction, it takes place within a highly-controlled environment – listeners can comment on what we do. And while comment threads may veer off in other directions, they’re forced to exist within the rigid structure we’ve imposed – the original story that sparked the conversation, the thread’s title and category and keywords. The infrastructure of comments channels the river, so to speak.

I think the key to living up to our promise is to open the gates wider and invite listeners to be partners with us in generating content. This causes a lot of fear and consternation but it needn’t. And frankly it shouldn’t since this kind of interaction is really a part of our mandate.

Gather

Gather doesn’t have the strongest interface; it’s cluttered, and despite my efforts at customizing my account, I still don’t feel like I’m finding out about stuff on the site that might interest me. I can’t easily track topic areas with RSS, for instance. I’m not terribly interested in seeing the latest photos people have posted to the site on the front page, etc.

In talking to some people in pubradio about Gather I’ve consistently heard two things: it doesn’t feel like public radio; and a lot of the stuff that users submit isn’t that good.

Here’s what I think, having spent some time on the site: some of the content isn’t that great. But some of it is. The writing that people are doing about current events, politics, arts, restaurant, books, etc, and the comments others submit to these pieces are high level stuff.

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that works and what doesn’t work on Gather, and here’s my opinion: to the extent that Gather is a place for people to share their thoughts on ANY issue they’d like to; to the extent that Gather is a place for others to comment on that work; to the extent that Gather is a place where people can find others who share views or ideas or interests and form sub-groups, it’s great.

It boils down to this, in my view: to the extent that Gather is a public square, it’s a success.

Here’s where I think it doesn’t work as well: it also tries to be your blog. When Gather becomes the place for your pictures of your dog, your daily ramblings about going to the grocery store, etc., it falls down. The blog dilutes its effectiveness as a public square.

Public Action

This is hard to talk about because I’ve seen so little of it, but based on those brief views:

Public Action is trying to be the compromise tool for public broadcasters who feel like they need to have some kind of comment function open and the others who think it might be good, but are afraid of it. It offers a wide range of customization – you can moderate comments, you can let them go live immediately, you can approve groups, you can let listeners vote on groups, you can let a thousand groups bloom.

Users are encouraged to play the social networking game to a certain extent – they can create profiles, I think they can upload a picture, they can choose as their “icon” a favorite show or their station. It’s acceptable, not particularly over-the-top on the Friendster scale of networking.

At stations that follow a more open model, listeners should find it easy to comment on stories, form groups, etc. But I think Public Action – at least as it “exists” now – misses the boat on User Generated Content. The architecture is comments on stories, and not on original content. Yes, someone could write a thoughtful essay on banning smoking in restaurants and bars, and if the station has published a story on that topic, the listener has a place to put it. If there isn’t a story on that topic, where does it go? How does it ever get noticed or read? Do I have to create a “Smoking in Restaurants” group to ever have a chance of seeing that piece? That listener has broken out of the architecture of comments and promptly falls into a black hole.

Comments and groups are the tip of the iceberg of UGC, and it’s hardly the most important part.

The true value of our capability to generate interaction online isn’t the “I agree” or “you’re full of crap” comment. It’s allowing our website to be the place where our smart, thoughtful listeners, with their range of experiences and views, can share that intelligence and experience – a true public square. Some of our listeners will never contribute but will drop by to read what other people are writing. Some people are going to be happy enough leaving a comment. But I think plenty of our listeners are going to feel strongly enough about a topic that they’ll sit down and write 300-500 words of well-reasoned prose about it; or maybe they’ll make an audio or video story. We need to be the place where they go to present this kind of stuff; and the place where they can expect to be engaged by others at that same level.

We need to let our listeners be partners with us.

So, what is this architecture of participation? I’m certainly no expert, but I think it has to include:

• The ability to comment on anything we do or anything anybody else writes;
• The ability for listeners to submit lengthy content – text, audio or video;
• A system that allows open submission but also a level of curatorial responsibility – someone at the station who reads this stuff, pushes the good stuff to the front of the line;
• A process for users to nominate or recommend stuff they see that’s really good;
• A showcase for this great stuff;
• A mechanism for the station to not only ask for submissions in general, but in particular. If you’re working on a series on poverty, its outlines don’t need to be a secret. You can tell your online users what’s coming, what the focus of the series is, and ask them to submit their views on poverty. What you end up with is a richer exploration of the issues of poverty – far richer than you as a station can yourselves create because you’ve drawn on the expertise of your vast audience. (mind you, I don’t mean this to be “tell us how to cover the story”; certainly, this “public insight journalism” component is really good and we should all pursue something like this; but what I want to avoid is always forcing the issue to float around the station; the issue is poverty and its impact on the community, and while some people will express their views to you about how you should cover it in your series, the issue of poverty is bigger than you and your station and its series.);
• A mechanism to feed some of the very best of what listeners submit back to the air – from reading excerpts of essays, to airing portions of audio commentaries;
• At the end of the list, a way for users to get to know each other better, discover people with similar interests, discover others’ personal blog sites, etc.

I feel all of this is important for a few reasons:

• As I said earlier, it’s not a nice thing to do – it’s core to our mission.
• We must respect our audience enough not treat them as the great unwashed. We are taking their money; we are thinking of ten different ways to have a deeper relationship with them, all of them designed to benefit us. We’d better make sure it’s not all one-way. They are our partners.
• Haarsager, Hagel and others have talked about serendipitous discovery, and have reminded us that our podcasts can bring us entirely new audiences. So can this content, if it’s allowed to escape the straitjacket of comments to become a community public square – the website that your community comes to believe is the first place to check out when they want to know what people think about an issue or a hot topic of local discussion. (does this mean the public square should escape your station’s website ala Terry Heaton? Maybe.)

I believe public service broadcasting should be the hub of all important discussions in the community, the place listeners AND citizens look to for leadership in promoting arts and culture, discussion of public policy issues – in short, the vitality of the community.