FCO European Youth Parliament Forum
URL
CASE STUDY OWNER
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)
LESSONS LEARNT
Strengths
- This forum set out to achieve and delivered a good geographic spread of users;
- There was close and well-managed collaboration between staff at the FCO and EYP;
- The forum raised an impressive range of discussion themes, with opportunity for further suggestions from users;
- Several experts and politicians were recruited to contribute to the forum;
- Summaries of discussions were produced at the close of forum and distributed to registrants and the media.
Potential for improvement
- The depth and frequency of interaction by experts and politicians was not consistent;
- Closer link-up with other outreach activities (such as offline summits) would have bolstered the purpose and usage of the forum;
- Rate of registrations and volume of posts were low;
- There was insufficient time was given for the forum to develop a sense of community;
- Greater use could have been made of rich media content;
- Given the core user group, the registration and participation rates may have benefited from inclusion of a translation service.
OVERVIEW
The European Youth Parliament (EYP) is a pan-European educational foundation that seeks to promote young people’s skills in communication and team-building. Its members are encouraged to take a practical interest in current affairs and the democratic process.
The European Youth Parliament has a UK Division (EYP UK). The EYP UK Outreach Programme is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
POLICY PURPOSE
This forum was not part of a formal consultation exercise.
The EYP seeks to foster young people’s awareness of European citizenship and politics through events that involve young people in more than 30 countries at a local, regional, national and international level.
The FCO wanted to support the EYP UK, which was aiming to supplement its offline events with an online forum. The forum sought to enhance engagement by discussing a series of topical themes:
- Climate change;
- Employment skills;
- European enlargement;
- International aid;
- Movement of labour;
- Security.
There were also discussions about the experience of being an EYP member, and which discussion topics should be raised on the forum.
MODEL
Online deliberative forum.
The forum was readable by anyone but registration was required to contribute. The core user group was young people aged between 16 – 22 years from across the European Union.
The forum was pre-moderated. Moderation was carried out by named members of the EYP UK alumni.
Each discussion was initiated with a statement and questions from a member of the moderation team, or a contributing expert or politician. The FCO’s communications division helped to find experts and politicians who could get involved in the forum. It supported the EYP moderators as they developed content and promotional activity for the forum.
DURATION
The forum ran from January 9 to February 26, 2007.
PUBLICITY
The forum was advertised via EYP and FCO email alerts, newsletters and websites. EYP members also promoted it at their schools and colleges.
Press releases were sent to other websites that promote civic and political engagement amongst young people.
There was no paid-for marketing.
OTHER METHODS
The forum was one element of the EYP UK’s broader Outreach Programme, which includes workshops and events held regionally and nationally.
USER PROFILES
216 registered users: 42% were male, 58% female.
The diagram below gives an overview of the demographic breakdown of the FCO-EYP forum registrants.
Users accessed the internet mostly from home and regarded themselves as regular internet users.
The majority of registrants had not voted in European elections (65%) and had had no contact with their MEP (59%). Meanwhile, a slight majority had not taken part in a political or policy discussion online previously (52%).
Overall, political efficacy and knowledge were high amongst registrants, perhaps explained by their previous engagement with the EYP (either as members or having attended organised events).
USAGE TRENDS
Participants made 57 posts. An additional 15 were made by moderators and 22 were made by (recruited) experts.
Most registrations came in the first month; the rate dropped away in the second month, though the number of visits to the site rose. The spectator rate amongst registrants and ‘passing’ visitors remained high compared with the participation rate, as demonstrated by the following table:
USER FEEDBACK
Responses to post-activity feedback were limited (n=11). The responses received were positive about the experience of using the forum and for the prospect of using online tools to promote political engagement generally:
The users did not register with the forum with the expectation that they would be able directly to influence policy. The opportunity to deliberate with policy makers was a prime motivation.
Respondents reported that most of the forum’s dialogue took place between users. Interaction between moderators and users was reported favourably, but there was felt to be insufficient participation on the part of either experts or politicians.
Despite the predominance of peer-to-peer interaction, a number of users said that they expected a greater depth of deliberation. These users complained that the linear structure of the discussions made it difficult to develop arguments and, as a result, the volume of contributions fell away over time.
DETAILED FEEDBACK
The forum was a good addition to the EYP UK’s Outreach Programme. The asynchronous nature of the forum facilitated interaction between young people who would not otherwise have met because they lived in different countries.
Users rated their experience of the forum positively and the collaboration between the EYP UK and FCO was successful, enabling them to host discussions by young people from around Europe on a range of topical issues. These discussions were archived, the themes condensed and a record distributed widely with the intention of promoting the inclusion of young people’s views in debates about Europe happening elsewhere.
There were, however, a number of elements missing from this forum, which could have increased engagement. Given that registrants were politically aware and efficacious, it makes sense to consider how the forum could have converted passive engagement into active participation. Greater involvement by experts and politicians would, undoubtedly, have benefited this forum – particularly as the prospect of talking to them was an important motivating factor behind user registrations. All the deliberation was in English; having translation services available or multi-lingual moderators may have also boosted (or sustained) the numbers of non-English speaking participants.
Another important factor to consider is that these young people use the internet regularly for leisure, educational and work purposes. As a result, they have come to expect a high standard of website and that certain rules of engagement are observed. Given the available budget and time, the forum would never have been able to match the design standards of many of the more established and popular online communities that participants visit. However, it could have made more use of audio and video content, and could have been marketed through existing social network sites.
The forum lacked a ‘sense of community’. Other social network sites build this through interactions between users that are based on allowing individuals to control the amount of information they share with one another. Generally, users will share quite a lot (through their profiles), in the knowledge that if they share, others will reciprocate. This encourages the quick formation of bonds based on shared interests, rather than waiting for these to build over an extended period of time, or on the basis of only rough impressions.
The forum benefited from its link with offline workshops and events organised by the EYP. In this instance, it was not possible to make the most of this opportunity due to short lead-in times and limited resources. However, it is evident that using online forums to build connections between young people, who might then be able to meet at EYP ‘offline forums’, holds great potential. It would also be a useful agenda-setting tool in the run-up to an event, or as a means to support follow-up activity.
For the purposes of evaluation, there is also scope for the FCO to encourage the further use of forums by the EYP in the future to facilitate open feedback from its members and users.
FOLLOW UP
EYP has its own website with some social networking functionality. The EYP UK is hoping to develop a similar functionality on its website.
The FCO has previously run online forums; this forum was welcomed as an opportunity to update knowledge and skills. The FCO is exploring participative media further for the benefit of future engagement exercises.
