The Sunday (oops, Monday!) Diigo Links Post (weekly)

by Yule Heibel on April 11, 2011

So… I thought I didn’t have a Sunday links post, but looking on my admin page just now, it seems I do. Just the one, though… 😉

  • The complexities of public engagement…
    QUOTE
    Key public engagement questions
    “We’ve learned lessons from the past and we’re asking more nuanced questions,” says Dr. Edna Einsiedel. “Now we have to deconstruct and interrogate the terms themselves.”

    Here are a series of questions she suggest researchers ask themselves as they engage the public.

    > How are ‘publics’ framed and constructed? They can include the general public, affected publics (patient organizations and end-user groups), and activist organizations and other stakeholder groups. How you define them will have implications on the kinds of public engagement activities you do.

    > How ‘publics’ become engaged in the policy process and the policy networks that different publics participate in are important, and not just within the government arena. You also have to look at how publics engage on the issue outside the official arenas – through stakeholder group activities, social media and other non-official ways.

    > What does participation or engagement really mean? How is it conducted and to what ends?

    > How are impacts defined and investigated? How does public engagement impact decisions that are actually taken? Impacts on the policy decision are a very limited way of describing impacts; you can also talk about institutional learning, for example, within the policy community, or changes in institutional trust.
    UNQUOTE

    tags: edna_einsiedel public_engagement communication

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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