Community capacity-building through social media surgeries

Podnosh is a social media company based in Birmingham that was founded by former BBC journalist Nick Booth. In 2012 it won the Big Society Award in the UK. Podnosh’s mission is to change the way that citizens and communities interact with their local council and other public agencies. The communication process between statutory agencies and people is typically a one way process so that most citizens find it hard to have their voice heard.  Podnosh believes that social media can transform this relationship – by making communications more collaborative and transparent and by providing a voice to the more marginalised in society.

The key objective of social media surgeries is to improve citizens’ ability to use social media in order improve:

• community cohesion and integration between residents of different backgrounds;
• participation of local people in neighbourhood and citywide organisations, events and civic institutions;
• empowerment and social inclusion in deprived neighbourhoods.

What are social media surgeries?

Social media surgeries bring local people together to learn and teach each other about how to use the web. They typically want to learn how to communicate, to campaign or to collaborate more effectively. The ethos behind the surgeries is that all you need is a place, and people who want to talk to each other, some of whom know how to use social media effectively – when these are in place, the interaction between the participants will ensure that learning takes place. A social media surgery’s only physical requirements are a room with wi-fi and facilities for refreshments, so that it’s a comfortable ambience. Surgeries are deliberately designed as informal learning environments, rather than formal structured training events. This means that the learning process is inclusive, fun and unintimidating. ‘Surgeons’ at the meetings are simply those people with sufficient knowledge of social media tools to give someone else advice. Some surgeons will have years of experience with ICT – whilst others may only have a few months but already want to share their experiences with other active citizens or community groups.  As part of the inclusive learning philosophy, there are no barriers or eligibility criteria – anyone can turn up, sign in and get involved.

Podnosh’s first social media surgery took place in Birmingham in 2008, as part of Blog Action Day on Poverty. Nick Booth felt that social media surgeries would be well suited to help community groups to alleviate poverty by widening their social networks. He organised a room at the BVSC for a meeting of 15 existing bloggers and 30 people who wanted to learn more. The meeting had a very creative atmosphere, and participants were able to immediately make valuable connections. Nick immediately realised the potential of social media surgeries and the value of organising regular events.

Why do they work?

What’s particularly attractive about the social media surgery model is its ‘viral marketing’ character, whereby one person learns how to used social media and then teaches other people in their social network, who then teach others, and so on...  

Individuals who initially attend social media surgeries as participants have since become social media ‘surgeons’. One such example was Karen Caine, who by the time she attended her fourth meeting, was coming to help others as a volunteer ‘surgeon’ (she has since been employed by Podnosh as a member of staff). This highlights that though it is important to have highly skilled and experienced people in the room, the really important characteristic of a ‘surgeon’ is not that they know a great deal about social media but that they can help and encourage others who know less than themselves.  Surgery ‘patients’ are empowered because the relationship between experts and others is reasonably equal – so, for example, it actually helps when a ‘patient’ sees a surgeon ‘googling’ to get an answer to a patient’s question – “just like I would!”

Despite the importance of informality, a surgery nevertheless benefits from a surgery manager who can act as a facilitator to greet ‘patients’, keep track of the learning in the room, check that people who have been ‘paired off’ are continuing to work effectively together, and that people are enjoying the event. Moreover, expectations need to be managed to prevent participants from becoming disappointed or demoralised because they have arrived hoping for more than can realistically be achieved in one session.

To make the whole process of running a social media surgery easier, Podnosh has created a website which gives people a systematic guide on how to design and run local surgeries.  This website currently supports surgeries in 63 different places -  although they are mostly in the UK, they have now also developed international roots, with social media surgeries having been run in Barcelona, Cape Town, Den Haag, Frederisksburg (Pennsylvania), and Drimnagh (Dublin). Check out the website by clicking here.

How Podnosh developed social media surgeries in Birmingham

In 2009 Nick was approached by the Department for Communities and Local Government, as part of its Timely Information to Citizens Project which funded ten English councils (including Birmingham) to enable citizens to use open data from local authorities.  

Nick’s assumption was that this openness, while welcome, would be useless if citizens and community groups could not effectively use the information provided, because they didn’t have sufficient ICT skills. Looking to overcome this barrier, Nick and some other members of his social media network ran a number of local workshops in Lozells and Acocks Green.  This proved to be a mixed success.  In Acocks Green, they were able to key into an existing capacity to run successful workshops using social media -  there were individuals with the right skills, and some of them were actually already passing these skills on to others.  However, this was not the case elsewhere - Nick discovered that in most neighbourhoods it was difficult to find people with the necessary digital skills. Clearly, the social media surgery model could be used to alleviate this problem. Nick applied for Be Birmingham’s Active Citizens Fund for funding in autumn 2009 to put this into practice. The funding began in April 2010.

Initially the project planned to target Yardley, Edgbaston and one other constituency that would be confirmed when a suitable venue was found.  In Edgbaston, Podnosh searched for a comfortable and friendly place that didn’t have to be paid for, such as a café with wi-fi, and the Arco Lounge neighbourhood café on Harborne High Street filled these criteria.

In Yardley, Podnosh found it very difficult to find a suitable venue with wi-fi. It even offered to provide wi-fi cost-free for a venue for twelve months but couldn’t find any takers.  Eventually, the surgeries were held in St Michael's and All Angels Church in South Yardley, with wi-fi routed through a door from the vicar’s study!

When looking for the third venue, Podnosh tried to find suitable venues in Weoley Castle, Northfield and other areas. Again, it proved extremely difficult to find a suitable venue with wi-fi. It was discovered that even places like public libraries which theoretically had wi-fi capability, couldn’t be used because this capability had not actually been activated. These experiences, in themselves, provided a wake up call to Birmingham Council about poor connectivity and the inability to utilise existing capacity in the city.

Following these problems, Podnosh eventually found the Learning Hub at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as the third venue. This allowed people from voluntary and community groups in the area around the hospital to improve their social media skills.

At the Yardley and QE hospital venues, Podnosh held three surgeries, and was able to hold four surgeries in Edgbaston. Each round of surgeries at the three venues was intended to take place between a month and six weeks apart – this gave attendees sufficient time to test out what they learnt and come back with fresh questions. The project was successfully completed in mid-March 2011.

Since then new organisations have joined the surgery movement.  One of Podnosh’s clients the social housing organisation Midland Heart, has taken over running the Lozell’s social media surgery.  There they continue to work with local community groups, and have helped to handover two hyperlocal blogs to be run by neighbourhood forums.

Another Podnosh client - the charity Birmingham Settlement is running a social media surgery in its main neighbourhood Aston.  This followed work with Podnosh to improve skills in the organisation, which are now being passed onto the community.

Volunteers have set up and run a number of surgeries in the Bearwood neighbourhood - bordering Sandwell. Likewise a small number of surgeries were run by volunteers in Oscott.  

A new network of surgeries is being developed in south Birmingham with funding support from the local community safety partnership. This will see a combination of Podnosh staff, public sector workers, volunteers and community activists sharing knowledge - learning from each other and supporting each other.

In a survey of the participants of the Birmingham social media surgeries, two thirds of respondents indicated that participating in the social media surgeries had helped them to do their jobs better and another two thirds reported that what they had learnt in the surgery had helped their organisation to improve its communications.  All participants agreed that they would recommend that anyone in a community organisation should take part in a social media surgery.
Social media surgeries also result in a number of wider outcomes. First and foremost they help to build community capacity by gearing up citizens and community organisations to use social media. Social media also allow individuals to spread more information locally than can be achieved by traditional means – enabling communities to organise themselves more effectively. They surgeries have helped people to launch low cost local websites which have helped communities to keep in touch with each other and to communicate with local authorities and service providers more effectively, using less time and energy.

The Birmingham social media surgeries helped the social enterprise The Crossway, which provides support on issues such as debt and pregnancy, and more general support for the elderly and the general community (click here). The Crossway now understands the benefits of using social media and the internet to promote the services it provides. Similar improved outcomes have been achieved by other new websites which the social media surgeries helped to develop.

In some cases the participants have created surgeries in their own neighbourhoods. John Popham, a social media expert, who came from Yorkshire to help run the first few surgeries in Birmingham has started running his own social media surgeries in Sheffield.

The funding from the local strategic partnership Be Birmingham has helped to nurture the social media surgeries which have become a growing movement.  Since that first surgery in 2008 they have been run in 12 areas of the city - a total of 117 events involving 458 people who have worked on creating or improving at least 96 websites or social media accounts for community and voluntary orgs.  In October 2012 Podnosh had recorded that about 2985 people have taken part in social media surgeries in the UK, of which more than 400 act as volunteer surgeons.  

During the project Podnosh also developed a web-based impact assessment tool for social media Surgeries. The impact assessment tool captures both intended and unintended consequences of social media surgeries and allowed a richer picture of the quality of the outcomes of the project than raw statistics can provide. (Click here to see what was recorded at the first Harborne surgery).

The project had a budget of £9,635.50 and the project came £538 under its planned budget of £9,636. These costs can be seen in the table below.

Lessons for those interested in becoming social media surgery organisers

1. The key issue is getting people to turn up and this depends on getting access to the relevant people who would appreciate help, through the networks of which they are members.  If an approach is not working, the surgery needs to ask how it can connect to more trusted local individuals or community groups.
2. Surgeries need to be flexible and dynamic to fit in with the needs of the networks whose members turn up for help. The surgery will only work where participants are comfortable and where they believe they will get something from it.
3. This isn’t training, it’s about creating a space where people can share and learn.  For this project, working in local areas of Birmingham, it was crucial to think about what participants wanted to achieve and how they actually used the internet. Once this was understood, then a tool that makes sense to the participant can be selected, in line with their skill level. Although the participants tend to have very little time to spare, once they find something useful they focus on it and make sure that they get it working for them.
4. Social media surgeries can be a scalable and repeatable model, as witnessed by the 60 or more that have now sprung up around the UK - but they need to respond to the needs of specific networks, making use of their social capital. Podnosh has since done work with the Take Part Pathfinder and Every Voice Counts, acting as a catalyst to encourage volunteer led surgeries to spring up. This has resulted in seven new surgeries emerging in the West Midlands region.

Lessons for local authorities and public agencies

1. Allow public officials to use social media with the same openness as citizens – it is soon noticed if this is not the case and, if noticed, it produces an unfavourable image of the public sector.  
2. Where the main purpose of working in partnership with a private firm or social enterprise is to access its innovative practices, the monitoring systems which are used must not be so over-burdensome as to undermine this innovative capacity.
3. To encourage joint working with private firms and social enterprises, appropriate overhead cost recovery must be built into contracts and grants.
4. Small-scale investment in brokers who can encourage people to establish their own surgeries could pay dividends in terms of new ways to talk to the public.
5. Surgeries thrive where there is social capital - network building is a core part of how that happens.

For more information go to the Podnosh website https://podnosh.com/