Participants Balk at Controversial Topics

A. Adam Glenn
10:20 AM | bio | Comments: 4

It might seem a good starting point for building virtual community when people already know each other in the real one. But for Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker, we've been surprised to find that doesn't seem so true. For many potential users of our online group blog and forums, the risks of speaking about a controversial topic so openly in an online public forum appear just too great. When we launched our project in the summer of 2007 in the wake of the city's approval of a carbon tax to fight global warming, we began with the premise that experts and... continued...

Topics: Best Practices, Participation, Philosophy
Tagged: boulder carbon tax tracker, forums, group blogs, online conversation

Boulder's ClimateSmart Lacks Online Community

A. Adam Glenn
2:18 PM | bio | Comments: 0

Why the journalistically independent Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker fills a gap that local government web sites cannot. continued...

Topics: Government & Politics, Participation, Philosophy
Tagged: Boulder, Boulder+Carbon+Tax+Tracker

Following the Carbon Cash in Colorado

A. Adam Glenn
4:55 PM | bio | Comments: 0

When Boulder, Colo., voters passed the nation's first municipal "carbon tax" last fall, it was an engraved invitation for me and my partner Amy Gahran at citizen journalism outfit I, Reporter. As long-time veteran environmental journalists with years of online experience, we've been on the look-out for ways to explore participatory journalism's potential on a tough eco-issue like global warming, with a local focus on a story that has national and international implications. Then the Knight Foundation gave us our opportunity last May by funding our plan to build and launch our Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker citizen journalism web site. Since then, we've plunged ahead, learning as we go about what it takes to involve local citizens in such a complex, slow-breaking, but crucially important story. continued...

Topics: Best Practices, Education, Government & Politics, Participation, Technology
Tagged: Boulder, Carbon Tax, citizen journalism, global warming, Ireporter

A Conversation, Any Which Way

A. Adam Glenn
2:24 PM | bio | Comments: 0

One of the big lessons we've learned in just a few months into the Boulder Carbon Tax Tracker project is the enormous challenge of getting community members to think of themselves as journalists.So we're about to try a new approach. This week, we'll launch a new bulletin board service on the site with the aim of drawing in those citizen journalists through the relatively simple mechanism of the online comment. continued...

Topics: Best Practices, Education, Government & Politics, Participation, Technology
Tagged: Boulder, Carbon Tax, citizen journalism, distributed journalism, global warming, Ireporter, message boards, online forums