Linking closely to the recent local Community Action Day (Hands On Handsworth, 2010), the most appropriate route forwards with small social media progressive steps has been the approval of my Social Media as Practice assignment 2 proposal, called “Snap Handsworth” (Hadley, 2010).
This assignment 2 project is based around the collecting of digital photographs, hosting these on Flickr (Flickr, 2010), linking this gallery to the Hands on Handsworth website, and forwarding action required to Fix My Street (Fix My Street, 2010).
In detail, I propose to purchase a small digital stills camera and instruct local Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers on appropriate methods of use, how to obtain good quality photographs in varying light conditions, picture composure and framing. An integral part of the process will be the education possibly required to further encourage community engagement, whereby an officer would hold a conversation with a local resident, who would perhaps highlight physical areas of concern to them, such as litter, graffiti, fly-tipping or pot holes. As part of the engagement process, the officer would photograph the identified situation, and note the geographical location, with postcode. Then, upon return to the Police station, this photograph would be uploaded to the local community account at Flickr to be shared and linked to the gallery on the Hands on Handsworth website. This identified and evidenced ‘incident’ would then be digitally reported on the Fix My Street website by the officer, sending an alert email to the appropriate department of Birmingham City Council, who are then obliged to investigate and act upon their findings. Drawing upon similar thinking to the “long tail” methodology (Anderson, 2006) , and “street level culture” (Florida, 2003) definition, the reporting process is then traceable by any citizen, encouraging long-term open digital communication with peers, transparency in line with council policy, and communication with local residents, police officers and local neighbourhood managers, building a stronger sense of community cohesion.
The progress of such a reporting method can then be included as agenda items at local neighbourhood meetings explaining the process to the citizens, encouraging both citizens and officers to follow the progress of the reports on line via the social networking platforms used. This practice would then demonstrate an agreed appropriateness of one solution to social media context, both for the ‘client’ and also the local citizens.
As identified earlier however, more defined work based on the issues of “digital literacy and inclusion” (Lane-Fox, 2009) should perhaps be defined and clarified to make the full opportunity of this project reach its potential level of success. Given that this assignment 2 project will run for just one month in practice, I therefore propose to share my findings and report with Digital Birmingham. It is their brief and remit to address such issues in local communities, and this organisation has the resources in place to make further progress, following completion of this pilot project, allowing for one aspect of my exit strategy towards the Personal Development Planning segment of this project.