Changing Metaphors

Yesterday SeeClickFix was a stream. Today, it's a hybrid animal creature that's "neither fish nor foul."

This change in metaphor took place on the HuffPost, where we were written about for the second day in a row. Yesterday's article by journalist Sally Duros mentioned SeeClickFix as one of many streams of hyperlocal news coverage, converging into something bigger. Today's article by Gadi Ben-Yehuda (pictured at right), director of social media for IBM's Center for the Business of Government, calls SeeClickFix an innovative tool in the Gov 2.0 kit, since it pushes social media beyond a tit-for-tat between citizens and government.

Ben-Yehuda argues that the use of digital media for governance is typically limited to citizens complaining about governments and governments showing off to citizens. SeeClickFix, on the other hand, provides the opportunity for citizens to unite and fix problems on their own. Citing examples like a park clean-up in Pontiac, MI, Ben-Yehuda attributes SeeClickFix's unique success to the following developments:

• The self-organizing features of social media
  
  
• The resources of the government-as-a-platform
  
  
• The utility of Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) to focus and analyze community action

Ben-Yehuda writes that he hopes to see more platforms like SeeClickFix come along soon. Click here to read the full thing. And check out this animated video about using GIS for civic engagement. Ben-Yehuda will lead a panel on the topic tomorrow in Washington, DC.

Looking for Unshakable Meaning?

SeeClickFix is more than just reporting pot holes. According to Arianna Huffington, it can be part of a strategy to recuperate "unshakable meaning" in an uncertain time.

In a Huffington Post entry published Thursday afternoon, Huffington mentioned SeeClickFix as an important way to reach out and connect with community. Huffington believes that the need for community is an essential part of being human:

The longing for necessariness is in our DNA. In The Fourth Instinct, I wrote about this part of ourselves -- the instinct that compels us all to go beyond our impulses for survival, sex, and power, and drives us to expand the boundaries of our caring beyond our solitary selves to include the world around us: 'The call to community is not a hollow protestation of universal brotherhood. It is the call of our Fourth Instinct to make another's pain our own, to expand into our true self through giving. This is not the cold, abstract giving to humanity in general and to no human being in particular. It is concrete, intimate, tangible.'

By connecting community members, SeeClickFix can help fulfill this longing. Click here to read the full article.