*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** This post is from the democracy side .... Yesterday in a speech to the Minnesota Citizens League I used the phrase "E-mailing Alone" to illustrate how we needed to move people from almost exclusive private communication with friends, family, and co-workers to include forms of online public communication as a part of everyday life. That is, online exchange that is fully public in nature among our neighbors and communities on up to the national and international level. When comparing social capital in communities in the future it will be important to measure citizen use of the Internet in public engagement. How does the existence of an online public commons (i.e. http://e- democracy.org/mpls or http://onlinedemocracy.winona.org ) change or not change real civic participation in a community? Does only change the dynamic among or the power held by those who already shown up, or does it extend and deepen the sense that people may participate in more meaningful ways both online and in-person? Steven Clift Democracies Online ------- Forwarded message follows ------- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 16:41:47 -0500 Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [BetterTogether.org] Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey and new website As a member of the Better Together mailing list, we wanted to let you know that on March 1, 2001 the Saguaro Seminar released the results from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, the largest survey of civic engagement in America conducted to-date: almost 30,000 people were polled in 40 communities covering 29 states. It included a national sample of 3,000 and 26,200 Americans across these 40 communities. We conducted the 25-minute phone survey in partnership with local sponsors (in almost all cases local community foundations). The community foundations want to use the survey to set a benchmark so they can come back in several years and gauge their progress as they work as community catalyst and funder, supporting efforts likely to increase social capital in their communities. Visit http://www.cfsv.org/communitysurvey to find out more about the survey, access the national and local results, or download a copy of the survey. The list of communities surveyed is also available on the www.cfsv.org site. We encourage other communities that didn't participate to consider administering the survey locally and comparing their results to other communities that did participate. In addition, the data will be housed at the Roper Center at the U. of Connecticut and should be publicly available starting March 15. Roper can be reached via the web at: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu In addition, one of the sponsoring community foundations (the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation) has a new and informative website on social capital at: http:/www.bettertogetherNH.org Regards. Tom Thomas Sander Executive Director Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------- End of forwarded message ------- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 ------- End of forwarded message ------- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
