Author: Nick Booth

5 reasons why we trust the internet more than we do government.

Which of the following institutions do you trust?
Which of the following institutions do you trust? - blue means not all all, yellow a little, red a lot

We trust the internet more than we do government. That seems to be what this survey from The Guardian is telling us.  (Yes it is only one survey – so I understand).

The image above represent part of the answer to the question “Which of the following institutions do you trust?” – blue means not all all, yellow a little, red a lot.  It tells us far more people trust the internet a little than they do all of our major layers of government (and the press).

What might be going on here?:

  1. Perhaps people are expressing trust for the relationships they make on the internet? 89% of people responded to another part of the survey by saying they trust their friends (only 73% said the same of spouse/partner!).
  2. Are we more likely to trust things we find on the net a little because we have choice there?  We can go to other bits of the net to find a better version of what we need.  We can’t do that with government.
  3. As a development of the above, we are in control on the net – we navigate the journey. How true is that of government?
  4. When government lets us down it tends to do it in a more meaningful way than a web page which doesn’t load fast enough or spouts garbage. With government much more closely involved in important things in out life we’re more likely to feel strongly about it.
  5. It’s no surprise few people trust the internet a lot – the internet is not an institution. In fact asking people to compare the internet with the EU is a bit daft.

Of course it could just be wrong?

What is scrutiny and how can it get better?

Scrutinising scrutiny
I’ve just spent the larger part of my day reading about the scrutiny processes of local councils. Of course, this is the sort of thing I do for fun, but there was a serious purpose at hand. As part of my MA in online journalism, but also as part of my work at Podnosh I’ll be looking at how the web can be used to improve scrutiny processes in local government.

How are you going to start?
There’s a lot to do, but I’ve started by trying to answer a simple question for myself: What is scrutiny? That’s what all the reading is about. As someone who worked as the local government correspondent for a pretty decent local newspaper, I should have a fairly strong knowledge of this, but if I’m being honest I don’t. And if I don’t know then I imagine I’m not alone.

Shut up and tell me what scrutiny is
Scrutiny – means ‘to search’ and apparently originally meant to ‘sort rubbish’ (hmm… interesting!). In its local government context scrutiny is the business of examining and holding to account the decision-making process. The Local Government Act of 2000, required all councils to make decisions through an executive group of councillors, or cabinet. It also set up an overview and scrutiny process so councillors outside the executive could overview the council’s decisions to ensure they met the requirements of the budget and the council’s policy framework. I learned all that from Wikipedia and the Centre for Public Scrutiny’s Introduction To Scrutiny. Whoppee!

I’m going to be writing about this a lot, so I won’t dawdle, but I already have a few thoughts:

1. Scrutiny’s bloody important, because it goes to the heart of the democratic process. It’s how decision making (what government does) is overseen and checked and everyone should be interested in it, because it’s the crucial bit of democracy: we elect people, they do stuff. We need to know about it.

2. Scrutiny is difficult to understand and it isn’t, well, sexy. Which is weird, given point one.

3. I’ve singularly failed to answer how it can be made better. But it strikes me it might be a bit early for that!

This is the new MAC: Midlands Arts Centre

I had a quick look round MAC – the  arts centre in Cannon Hill park in Birmingham – thanks to Neil Holland and others from the comms team there. This video doesn’t show you everything, just a taste.  There’s plenty more to see when it opens on May 1st  with a gig from Misty’s Big Adventure and lots of other goodness – including a new commission from Stan’s Cafe and some new audio walks for the park.

I know I don’t normally write about this sort of thing but the old Mac oozed community and connection – this is brighter and fresher and better.