Engaging with the public in public engagement with research (original) (raw)
Related papers
The work of public engagement (2013)
Comunicazioni Sociali no.3, 2013
This article explores the ‘the public’ in public engagement with research as a site of negotiation, production and possibility. In a contemporary context where the public cannot be taken for granted and is in a state of flux, it shows how three perspectives on the public, drawn from the vast literature on this topic, are differently useful. The article reflects on several ways these perspectives were used as part of the process of setting up a new participatory public engagement initiative called Participation Now, at The Open University (UK). The article also begins to illuminate how this process led to a particular set of ways of thinking about the social relevance and the responsibilities of contemporary research. The article therefore contributes to this special issue but also to the literature on the public and public engagement by charting a new process that has recently been developed and used to negotiate and mediate ‘‘the public’’ in public engagement.
Designing public-centric forms of public engagement with research (2015)
At a time when engagement initiatives are taking on a growing variety of forms and the public is increasingly difficult to conceptualise, this pamphlet introduces a new approach that will support public-centric forms of engagement with research. The pamphlet shows how you can be public-centric in your engagement practice by considering: how the public will be represented; the public roles an initiative will support; possibilities that will be offered for forms of public self-organisation. In the first part of this pamphlet this approach is introduced in more detail. The second part outlines how it can enable you to be more contextually responsive, theoretically informed and systematic when it comes to analysing the public and designing and evaluating engagement activities.
The frontiers of participatory public engagement
Currently missing from critical literature on public engagement with academic research is a public-centric analysis of the wider contemporary context of developments in the field of public engagement and participation. Drawing on three differently useful strands of the existing theoretical literature on the public, this article compares a diverse sample of 100 participatory public engagement initiatives in order to first, analyse a selection of the myriad ways that the public is being constituted and supported across this contemporary field and second, identify what socio-cultural researchers might learn from these developments. Emerging from this research is a preliminary map of the field of public engagement and participation. This map highlights relationships and divergences that exist among diverse forms of practice and brings into clearer view a set of tensions between different contemporary approaches to public engagement and participation. Two 'frontiers' of participatory public engagement that socio-cultural researchers should attend are also identified. At the first, scholars need to be critical regarding the particular versions of the public that their preferred approach to engagement and participation supports and concerning how their specific identifications with the public relate to those being addressed across the wider field. At the second frontier, researchers need to consider the possibilities for political intervention that public engagement and participation practice could open out, both in the settings they are already working and also in the much broader, rapidly developing and increasingly complicated contemporary field of public engagement and participation that this article explores.
Over recent years, many policy-makers and academics have come to the view that involving the public in policy setting and decision-making (or “public engagement”) is desirable. The theorized benefits of engagement (over traditional approaches) include the attainment of more satisfactory and easier decisions, greater trust in decision-makers, and the enhancement of public and organizational knowledge. Empirical support for these advantages is, however, scant. Engagement processes are rarely evaluated, and when they are, the quality of evidence is generally poor. The absence of standard effectiveness criteria, and instruments to measure performance against these, hinders evaluation, comparison, generalization and the accumulation of knowledge. In this paper one normative framework for evaluating engagement processes is considered. This framework was operationalized and used as part of the evaluation of a recent major UK public engagement initiative: the 2003 GM Nation? debate. The evaluation criteria and processes are described, and their validity and limitations are analyzed. Results suggest the chosen evaluation criteria have some validity, though they do not exhaustively cover all appropriate criteria by which engagement exercises ought to be evaluated. The paper concludes with suggestions on how to improve the framework.
Public Engagement: Building Institutional Capacity
Across OECD governments, there is a growing trend towards inclusive policy making whereby a broad range of citizens and groups are involved in decision-making processes-or in other words, public engagement. In contrast to closed-off and technocratically-driven policy development, public engagement broadens the number of voices heard in any policy decision and democratizes the process. This paper presents a primer to public engagement with a focus on how it is best structured within a bureaucracy. Throughout it is argued that: i) public relations and communications are functions of public engagement; ii) providing the appropriate structures and processes for the organized decentralization of public engagement expertise within ministries can be the foundation for participatory policy making and; iii) centralized coordination within the bureaucracy is a necessary component of such structures and processes.
Thinking through Public(s) for engaged research practice
2019
This review explores usage of the term public in debates about science and society. Since the 1980s, there has been a broad shift from public understanding and science communication towards engagement, dialogue and participation. I explore the multiple meanings of public in these debates, including the transition from singular the public to plural publics; the importance of imagined publics; the implications of science in public; and of the public interest. Academics and communicators from any field can benefit from thinking through public(s) in this way – therefore I close with some suggestions for changing research practice that flow from these ideas.
Developing a methodology for public engagement with critical research
In this article we argue that a refined understanding of 'public' and 'public engagement' can help researchers who produce critical research make better decisions towards achieving policy influence. We acknowledge the challenges critical researchers face in putting their research to work within the public domain. Critical research struggles to gain influence in bounded public spheres where research is valued as a consumable commodity rather than for its integrity or capacity for informing change. A starting point for developing a method of engagement is to understand better 'publics' and the different ways they may be conceptualised. We use Mahony and Stephansen's (2017) framework of three conceptualisations of the public in public engagement: bounded, normative and emergent. We use this framework to analyse our own experience of public engagement and attempts at policy influence in the Respecting Children and Young People Project. Through this analysis we recognise alternative ways to conceive of publics that may direct us away from some courses of action, and open new possibilities for public engagement with critical research.
Public engagement and government collaboration: Theories, strategies and case studies
2011
Public engagement, as a form of Citizen to Government collaboration, can be achieved by different forms of communication and dialogue between government, the public and other stakeholders to develop specific policies or services or to arrive at consensus-based decisions. It can range from surveys and questionnaires, to town meetings, focus group discussions, and correspondences, all of which can be delivered in face-to-face mode or in a virtual mode. Public engagement can also differ in the degree of citizen involvement. The engagement can range from citizens as voters, citizens that share government information, citizens that demand government accountability, to consultations of public opinion, dialog with citizens, and citizens involved in shared governance and government decision making.