I’m starting on the research phase of my doctorate quite soon. Research for anthropology is in a model of “participant observation”, so the aim is to go to as many civic technology things as practical, listen, make notes, ask questions, be involved. This is going to be lovely and not too different to a normal month for me, I hope. This phase should last 18 months(ish) as I’m part-time. As my research is specifically around elections, I’m also going to be holding on for a general election. There are London Mayorals and locals during my fieldwork period, but a bigger election is always better (from the point of view of my research).
This data collection is all going to help me write the thesis. That’s about 100,000 words in about seven chapters covering the data of what happened and situating it in previous research, seeing what is the same and what is different.
But, while I’m looking forward to writing that (!), there is something a lot more interesting to be done. In the time I’ve been reading about civic tech, I’ve noticed a split in the books between pretty dry academic sets of case studies with too much data and not enough interpretation and the opposite in what we might optimistically call “business books”. These are books like New Power (a boring regurgitation of a first year sociology lecture on types of power, but with a front cover endorsement from Richard Branson).
Is there something in the middle to be written? I’ve been helping to put together a reading list for new civic techies for Democracy Club and I’ve noticed that a fair few of the links are to reflections from people who’ve worked on this for a while of where not to go wrong and how not to waste your time and money (this classic from Josh Tauberer is a favourite).
I’ve also noticed the wonderful feedback that the Civic Tech Field Guide has rightly garnered, especially with its focus on listing failed projects as a way of understanding What Works.
So, my first thought is about writing a UK context guide to Doing Good Things on The Internet. Although then my issue is that it quickly dives into polemic and, in all honesty, I’ve only worked on building services rather than building an organisation from scratch.
I’m also wary of writing things that are too descriptive. Sometimes it would be a good idea for people to suggest a future positive direction of travel for the world (of online civic institutions), even if that turns out not to be correct.
So, I’m looking for suggestions. A discovery phase of understanding what books are lacking, what ideas you feel are unexplored and I’ll see what the research supports.
