Help Me Investigate.com blog

In the first of a series of posts reflecting on the first 10 weeks of Help Me Investigate I’m going to look at how social dynamics played out on HMI, and what we might do on that side of things if we move into full development.

What sort of community?

One of the most exciting points of HMI’s development was when we started to see a genuine community emerge with a shared interest. In this case, that shared interest was in data, and emerged in large part because of a couple of particularly active users with that interest who fed off each other’s activity.

What was curious about this was how it raised the question of ‘What sort of community is this site designed for?’

Now, using agile development meant that, while we were designing for particular types of user, we also adapted to react to the real users who used it. But would whatever community first dominated skew the site away from other types of user?

At least one user commented that the site was very ‘FOI-heavy’ and risked excluding users interested in different types of investigations, or who saw FOI as too ‘highbrow’ for them.

So the question is: do we aim to support other communities within the site to ensure a broader range of investigations? Or do we focus on that niche of data/FOI-focused investigations?

We’ve partly played with this by bringing in a second support journalist with a consumer background - Colin Meek - to complement the FOI/data strengths of Heather Brooke.

At the same time we’re actively involving users with other investigations, and as more users have come onto the site these have naturally broadened into consumer, property and law. I think the initial answer is that the community is not large enough yet to be dominated by a particular strand, or for us to take that decision on whether to focus on one niche.

Not social enough

The main disappointment of these first few weeks has been the lack of users getting involved across investigations. Users tend to stick to their own investigation and the idea of ‘helping another so they help you’ has not been established.

This may not be so unusual. I’m waiting for some analytics from the site, but I suspect there may be a power law distribution at work here - often seen on the internet - of a few people being involved in lots of investigations, most being involved in one, and a steep upward curve between.

The community manager, Nick and myself have invited people to investigations where we can see a shared interest or location; and Stef has developed a ‘related investigations’ section at the bottom of every investigation, as well as a ‘recommended investigations’ section on the homepage based on a user’s tags.

There are also a lot of technical features we have held back from developing which would encourage more cross-investigation activity, including being able to invite other users to an investigation (currently you have to know their email address), and being able to invite users to a particular challenge you think they’d be good at. I also wonder whether distinguishing between ‘proposers’/'instigators’ (those who start an investigation) and ‘helpers’ (those who join) - through profile ‘badges’ for example (more on badges in a future post) - may be helpful socially, creating a social pressure not to merely start an investigation but help on others?

I have also not seen as much evidence of users inviting others as I would have expected. Partly this has been through a fault in site design - the ‘Invite people’ button was not in a prominent enough position until a few weeks ago and it’s currently not possible for users to send a general invite to the site. A third issue is that some invite emails are being filtered into Junk Mail folders. This is simply a budget issue, and in a fully funded development phase we would address this.

Technical issues aside, I don’t feel we’ve done enough culturally to encourage invites and promoting investigations. We need to set more ‘invite others’ challenges; we need to be scouring Facebook groups, forums and blogs for more potential investigators; and we need to be helping users to campaign for their investigations to raise awareness. On all fronts I suspect the ‘invite-only’ status of the site has held us back mentally and technically. That may not be a bad thing as we focus on building the culture of the site but at some point we need to be brave in deciding it is strong enough to take on allcomers.

Social = engaged

One of the concepts behind the site was that if you had a social connection with an investigation you were more likely to become engaged in it. This has certainly been born out in practice. The first time I experienced this was when I joined an investigation by Donato Esposito into two bus companies running buses on the same route. Apart from my professional role on the site I knew Donato as a friend and that dynamic led me to learn all sorts of information - on bus deregulation - I would otherwise have never explored.

Likewise, when I started an investigation into hospital parking charges it was not done with particular enthusiasm. But when another user dug out some useful information from me I felt a social pressure to ‘pay back’ that effort with my own. I became more engaged in the investigation, more active, and have dug out increasingly interesting information as a result.

That’s been incredibly heartening. On the other side, however, is the tragedy of the commons - when people feel their efforts are being exploited elsewhere. Journalists are notable for taking more from the site than they put in, and this is a cultural issue that we are addressing on an ongoing basis through communication and workshops. At the very least journalists have added official reaction and a formed narrative to the stories that they have taken from the site; but that still generally requires someone to chase them to add it to the site. One journalist has contributed enormously to the site; another was particularly helpful in obtaining raw data on a story that was doing the rounds of the local newsrooms. I have met with dozens of journalists to explain the site, but it will take hands-on workshops and institutional recognition and support to truly change this. Thankfully we are already on the path to both of these with more than one news organisation.

Tags: critical review, social dynamics