The troubling results of a survey were released by Legal & General in the United Kingdom this week… Next Door Strangers. Here’s some expert commentary and sample press coverage. From the summary (my emphasis added)…
A survey of 2,000 British residents, covering a range of ages and geographic locations, revealed that more than one quarter (27%) of us say we “do not trust” our neighbours and most of us (59%) feel we neither have a lot in common with nor share the same values (44%) as them.
The report also found that the majority of British residents don’t know their neighbours’ names and wouldn’t recognise them if they passed them in the street (70%). According to the research, on average, we would only immediately recognise just over one in three (37%) of the people from our street.
British neighbourhoods are divided on values and sense of community and responsibility:
- More than a third (35%) of us don’t believe that we should have any responsibility for the safety or security of our neighbourhoods
- Nearly half (44%) don’t accept any responsibility for the safety or security of a neighbour’s property
- One in four (25%) of us admit we’d do nothing if we saw someone hanging around our neighbours’ home suspiciously, either out of fear, embarrassment or indifference
- The majority (61%) never socialise with their neighbours, not even occasionally
- Half of us (50%) do not even enjoy “spending time with” our neighbours.
In contrast to the traditional view of neighbourly duties, 42% of us would not trust our neighbours with our homes when we are not there and over one in three, (36%) when we are on holiday. 78% of respondents said they do not share keys with their neighbours.
This has clear implications for home security. Our findings indicate that people feel less responsibility for looking out for suspicious activity in their street, which, along with taking practical security measures, is one of the best ways of discouraging burglars.
I’d love to see this survey run in the United States… similar results to be expected? And then to see it run in Front Porch Forum‘s pilot service region… I’d wager the sense of community and involvement is significantly better. Also from the report…
Social networking online is the most modern form of socialising and getting to know people. Indeed, it seems some of the values of neighbourliness have shifted online. Many of us are now more ‘neighbourly’ with people on social networks than with those in our street: 34% of social networkers are ‘friends’ with or ‘follow’ people they’ve never met before on Facebook or Twitter but fewer than one in five (19%) are online friends with an actual real-world neighbour.
Only 8% have bothered to check if a neighbour is on a social network site.
But online tools are also a powerful and popular way of learning more about and engaging with your neighbourhood.
Knight News Challenge award winner Front Porch Forum explained here… http://to.pbs.org/bbmK3o
James Fallows article about Google and the news industry is worth a read. He hears from several Googlers who think that it’s all about (1) distribution, (2) engagement and (3) monetization. All critical elements, of course, but what’s missing is the dumbing-down of news we’ve witnessed over the past few decades. What do these elements matter — reaching people, getting them to read, and turning a buck — when all you have to offer is USAToday-type snippet-size pieces about the same topics over and over?
Here’s how Google’s Krishna Bharat put it in Fallows’ piece…
… he said that what astonished him was the predictable and pack-like response of most of the world’s news outlets to most stories. Or, more positively, how much opportunity he saw for anyone who was willing to try a different approach.
The Google News front page is a kind of air-traffic-control center for the movement of stories across the world’s media, in real time. “Usually, you see essentially the same approach taken by a thousand publications at the same time,” he told me. “Once something has been observed, nearly everyone says approximately the same thing.” He didn’t mean that the publications were linking to one another or syndicating their stories. Rather, their conventions and instincts made them all emphasize the same things. This could be reassuring, in indicating some consensus on what the “important” stories were. But Bharat said it also indicated a faddishness of coverage—when Michael Jackson dies, other things cease to matter—and a redundancy that journalism could no longer afford. “It makes you wonder, is there a better way?” he asked. “Why is it that a thousand people come up with approximately the same reading of matters? Why couldn’t there be five readings? And meanwhile use that energy to observe something else, equally important, that is currently being neglected.” He said this was not a purely theoretical question. “I believe the news industry is finding that it will not be able to sustain producing highly similar articles.”
Moderating Front Porch Forum in our region while monitoring the local media in our corner of Vermont, I can share that “tonight’s top stories,” as decided by local professional editors, don’t always align with what neighbors are discussing on FPF. Indeed, a service like FPF is a great way to uncover the other hundred stories that don’t get picked up by traditional local media.
Congratulations to SeeClickFix.com (from the New Haven Register)…
YARDLEY, Pa. — Journal Register Co., a multimedia company in local news and information and parent company of the New Haven Register, announced Tuesday a major citizen journalism initiative in conjunction with New Haven-based SeeClickFix and that company’s unique program to empower citizens to improve their communities.
Starting immediately, all 18 of Journal Register Co.’s daily newspapers and online publications in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio are partnering with www.SeeClickFix.com in the communities they serve…
UPDATE: More about SCF, as well as Everyblock and Outside.in.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more