When I started fine-tuning the concept of online community activation, I began seeing community everywhere. Community seemed to be part of just about every organization and business’s goal, mission, or plan that I saw. That really made me wonder how these communities were being engaged and built, and what that meant in practice (and theory).
I’ve been pursuing these questions by reading about other groups, talking to other community managers and builders, and visiting communities. This learning is helping me figure out how community activation might differ from other styles of community building. Importantly, I’m learning more about the contexts that community activation might be most appropriate for (stay-tuned for a future blog post on this topic!).
Community activation is a specific type of community building that has the main goals to 1. Empower the community so it can function with the least amount of reliance on a community manager, and 2. Fledge groups in the community so that they don’t need a manager or the organization anymore for support.
Community activation is based on participatory approaches or community-based approaches. My particular point of view about participatory approaches comes from conservation & development and field-based academic research–a way of thinking that mostly began around the 1970’s (see the classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed that helped to kick off this movement). In these contexts, participatory approaches were seen as a way to counter “parachute research” (or development). Parachute research occurs when a more powerful, wealthy player swoops down upon a selected “study site” and subjects the people and nature there to their own research or development agenda and goals–without really considering how the project might benefit or harm them. I’m sure you can imagine the amount of harm that has been and continues to be done with such an approach. Here are examples of what parachute research means in global health and conservation.
On the other hand, participatory approaches aim to flip the narrative so that the stakeholders of a project are empowered to make decisions about the project. A truly community-based approach means that the idea for a project and the power to implement it comes from the people who would be most affected by the results of the project. However, since most communities don’t have the resources or organization to pull off such a project, outside stakeholders might step in to help (e.g., researchers, government, businesses, non profits etc). This presents the scenario that we’re looking at for online community activation.
In other words: community activation is when an organization or business uses their considerable resources and power (socioeconomic and political capital) to help organize and empower a community, so that the community can reach their own goals and address their own needs.
My colleague Michelle Fox describes community activation as “breathing the spirit back into your community engagement”. And I just love that, because that’s exactly right.