Adverse police tweets – is it ACPOs fault?
Another day, another Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) “Guideline Document” – this time on the use of Social Media (SM) by police officers, police staff, volunteers, contracted staff and agency workers. Apparently, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has conducted a review of 1,588 officers active on social media sites, mainly Twitter. They found [...]
Frontline voices: Emma Daniel – Cool again, local democracy that is
“Thanks to digital tools – democracy can become cool again.” Emma Daniel writing on Huxley06 looks forward to a new social media-supported era of local democracy in which local people’s voices are welcomed.
The power of Mumsnet – for Blog Action Day #PowerOfWe #BAD12
This post is about Mumsnet. We believe that sites like Mumsnet could represent the future of developing public policy. They point to the potential of mass membership online platforms to engage thousands of people in practical consideration of policy issues and so radically widen participation in policy – or as we call it, guerilla policy. [...]
5 top tips for think tanks using social media
This is a summary of a presentation to the London think-tank summit ‘At the intersection of traditional and social media’, Europe House, 15th June 2012, by Mike Harris and Chris Sherwood. In our day jobs we work at existing organisations – a well-known think tank and a large national disability charity – that hope to inform and [...]
Do we need a manifesto for public and practitioner involvement in social policy?
This project – Guerilla Policy - is about developing a movement of people and organisations who use and provide public services, working together to create better social policy. Do we need to write a manifesto? Our project is based on the critique that much social policy is made by people who have little or no direct experience [...]
Reflections on New Think Tank – 4. Alex Kenmure
This is a series of posts in which we’ve invited people to give us their reactions to the New Think Tank project. This post: Alex Kenmure. Thanks to Alex for contributing the post, and we welcome your comments. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only recently started voting. For 12 years I’ve been a part of [...]
Reflections on New Think Tank – 2. Stephen Bediako and Emily Littlewood
This is a series of posts in which we’ve invited people to give us their reactions to the New Think Tank project. This post is from Stephen Bediako and Emily Littlewood from The Social Innovation Partnership. Thanks to Stephen and Emily for contributing the post, and we welcome your comments. Existentialism holds that the starting point [...]
Why we need a new approach to developing social policy – 9. It’s the future
This is the ninth in a series of posts on why social policy should be developed by and with the people who use and provide public and voluntary services. We’re publishing the last in the series on Monday, and we welcome your comments. According to How Stuff Works, the top five future technology myths are: 5. [...]
Ten reasons why we need a new approach to developing social policy – 6. Policy would be cheaper to research and develop
This is the sixth in a series of posts on why social policy should be developed by and with the people who use and provide public and voluntary services. We’re publishing the rest of the series over the next week and a half, and we welcome your comments. Innovation means that products and services get faster, [...]
Ten reasons why we need a new approach to developing social policy – 5. Policymakers and decision-makers could get intelligence more quickly
This is the fifth in a series of posts on why social policy should be developed by and with the people who use and provide public and voluntary services. We’re publishing the rest of the series over the next week and a half, and we welcome your comments. Ronald Reagan used to tell a joke about [...]
More than words – why think tanks should be more visual
At our branding workshop a couple of weeks’ ago one of the participants suggested that if we wanted to be accessible to a much broader audience than think tanks traditionally are then we should be much more visual. This struck me as a really interesting idea, and it’s worth considering more as we develop this [...]
What think tanks can learn from experiments in open journalism
No sector or industry is immune from the ‘open revolution’ – from software development, scientific research and publishing, to how businesses innovate more generally. Here are three experiments in ‘open journalism’ which also suggest how think tanks could work more openly. 1. Open sourcing The Guardian newspaper has embarked on a programme of open journalism. As Alan Rusbridger, the paper’s editor, has noted: [...]
The top 40 think tanks by website popularity
Here’s the (updated) top 40 most well-known UK think tanks ranked by the popularity of their websites (according to Alexa.com). The number in brackets is the global popularity ranking of the website. The RSA (115,276) Chatham House (184,918) The Overseas Development Institute (224,804) Adam Smith Institute (245,629) new economics foundation (258,708) Joseph Rowntree Foundation (402,928) The Institute of [...]
The top 35 think tanks by Twitter followers
Here’s the top 35 (well, 40 now since we’ve added a few as a result of updates) most well-known UK think tanks ranked by Twitter followers (this is only for the main organisational Twitter feed, i.e. it doesn’t include dedicated team or issue feeds, or individual feeds): Chatham House (19,320) The RSA (18,597) new economics foundation [...]
Why think tanks aren’t popular
We’re beginning to think about what our website should look like. This development blog – nice and clean though it is (thanks WordPress) – isn’t our proper website of course, just our temporary home. But it’s got us thinking about think tank websites and what they say about think tanks themselves. We’ve noted before that most [...]