Web 2.0 and mental health support

Social innovation camp is another good example of the interest surrounding using Web 2.0 for non-profits/community use. This particular blog post on the site caught my eye, about using Web 2.0 type tools to help those with mental health problems. It asks ‘could the online social space created by the web complement [talking] therapies?’ which is exactly the kind of thing IMH are looking at for the new website. Logically, it makes sense- there’s been research done into peer support that suggests it can be very helpful, and maybe that could be transferred to the web. There are also sites like Mental Health Forum that allow users to have virtual peer support. However, Web 2.0 applications could offer even more- a blog for example could allow users to share much more of their experience than a forum does, a social networking feel to a site could allow users to feel much more ownership of a site and create their own content.
One of the main problems, though, is creating an effective community. One of the links on this post shows an idea by Kerri Jones that was submitted to the camp, suggesting a national online health and wellbeing centre. She argues that there is no one single national resource that does this, and she’s right. But I’m not sure how feasible it is. With social networking, blogs or forums, it is not necessarily a case of ‘if you build it, they will come’. It has to be easy to use, something that users feel they are getting a real benefit from, and that meets their information or support needs. And the more people that use it, the more powerful it becomes. On-line communities don’t always work. But maybe there is something to say for working from a local base, on a smaller scale, to test out what works and what doesn’t. It’s also a way of generating publicity for this kind of service, if it is promoted by a service people already use. If people know it is there, that’s the first step in getting them to use it and create something useful.

Web 2.0 and the ‘tech elite’

I was interested in this survey asking ‘do Web 2.0 solutions solve problems only the tech elite have?’ It seems to be referring to more ‘tecchy’ applications specifically, rather than mainstream stuff like facebook.
So far it’s almost even with ‘Yes! Regular people choose a social network and stick to it, geeks join every one and then need FriendFeed’ and ‘Sometimes. My mother may never need FriendFeed, but a few years in, she’s digging Gmail.’
I was interested in it because a lot of people blogging about social action and web 2.0 seem very into twitter, like Beth Kanter which the survey blurb describes as ‘particularly geek only’. I set up a twitter feed for this blog because I was curious to see how it worked: (twitter feed here), though I haven’t really done anything with it (I’m not ‘following’ anyone or vice versa). I can see though, if you’re involved in a group trying to achive something collaborative, or share ideas, like the social media group are doing, that twitter could be a pretty useful tool.
However, it got me thinking about the actual importance, and prevalence, of all Web 2.0 tools. One of my university tutors from Sri Lanka was surprised that pretty much no-one had a blog, apart from a couple of people who contribute to a work based log – she kind of assumed it would be more popular. Blogs though, can be quite a bit of work and have to be sustainable subject wise.
I know that most people I know have a facebook account (not me, though) and most of them are still relatively active. That’s a pretty homogenous group though. There are still a lot of people out there who don’t use social networking on the web. I think it’d be interesting to see how many people who use for example the IMH site that we’re working on the project for use social technology already, and how many who don’t who would be interested in it.
I think what I’m trying to say is, there’s a lot of focus on Web 2.0 type applications, and there’s stronge evidence to say there is a drip down effect from the early ‘geek only’ adopters, but how many people do find it isolating/excluding? A kind of Web 2.0 digital divide.
I actually do see a very strong benefit from a lot of Web 2.0 stuff- or I wouldn’t be doing this blog, but it’s always worth considering the other side!

Back to the day job…

 

As a wannabe librarian, I’m interested by the concept of Library 2.0. When I’ve been reading about it, especially in blogs, I’ve noticed quite a few mentions of Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan, but I’ve never bothered having a good look at it.
They definitely use a lot of Web 2.0 type applications – there’s several blogs, which actually seem to get commented on, RSS feeds, and they have the option to actually tag books in the catalogue using user generated tags. There has been some criticism about it, especially about lack of individual mass . Laura Cohen notes in her (now defunct) library 2.0 blog just because it isn’t exactly how you’d envisage it doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked, or isn’t useful to someone. I’d agree that there is a potential problem about critical mass, but as long as it runs in tandem to traditional cataloguing schemes so you can still find information in the usual way, there’s no harm in doing things like that. If nothing else, it sends out a message that the library is open to people getting involved.

Council goes Web 2.0?

Whilst looking for something else completely, I found an article about Manchester City Council’s website in Computer Weekly from last year (25/07/07- not available on their website though) that claims the council’s new site launched last year is “Web 2.0″. Hmm. I really liked some aspects of the site- it has the option to show lists of popular topics as a tag cloud for example, which is really user friendly and a typical feature of web 2.0 stuff- but the ‘cloud’ itself is tags assigned by the website itself, not its users. It also has a news RSS feed – though I always think the most useful feeds for the council website would be for jobs (but maybe that’s just my agenda…) The article also seems to suggest that there’s the option for social bookmarking, though I couldn’t see that anywhere on the site.
However- I guess what I’m most interested in is, is it Web 2.0? Possibly not, if you consider the idea of Web 2.0 as being open to user generated content, which I’d argue is the defining factor. There isn’t an option to do that here. But then again, do we really need or want a council site to be fully web 2.0 operational? I’m not sure there’s a need for it in any case. It does have some useful web 2.0 style surface features that make it more user friendly to those used to using social networking sites and blogs, and these are mostly optional (like the tag cloud) meaning that those unfamiliar with this don’t necessarily need to be confronted with it. I’d be interested to see how much web 2.0 design could be used on a site like this, and it be effective. I’d imagine it could potentially incorporate more of a local community forum, though there are issues from a corporate identity or responsiblity point of view.

 

BSL on YouTube

As part of the IMH project we are looking at web 2.0 resources and specifically at providing something for the deaf community, which got me thinking about how the deaf community might use web 2.0. Not unsurprisingly, there are plenty of British Sign Language (BSL) (and ASL- American Sign Language) videos on YouTube, often with attached video comments. Here’s one I found that’s thinking specifically about Web 2.0 for the deaf community. Unfortunately, I don’t understand BSL so I’m not sure exactly what this one says, but the summary was particularly interesting. It’s titled deaf people, BSL people, and virtual worlds, about if deaf people can adapt virtual worlds to suit them so they can use BSL for example. I like the idea that virtual worlds have the possibility to be adapted and made accessible to all.
However, this is possibly not as straightforward as you might hope. There’s an interesting discussion here on the Second Life Insider blog, on the possibility of being able to sign in Second Life, and the problems/benefits of adding voice to Second Life for deaf or blind SL users.

Welcome to my blog

This blog is to document my exploration of the use of Web 2.0 for community purposes or non-profit organisations. I’m not an expert, but I’m hoping to learn more and explore the topic. I’m involved in a project with the charity Information for Mental Health where they are hoping to incorporate Web 2.0 or some form of user generated technology into their website in order to allow the site’s users’ to add their own knowledge and experiences to the resource.
However, in this blog I’m not just interested in mental health resources, but in the whole idea of Web 2.0 in the community. See the links for the kinds of things I’m interested in.