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The approach has made significant contributions to public communications in other parts of the country. In Barnet LBC, outlets such as the council’s whereilive.org site and the blog written by leader Mike Freer (Con), have helped identify factors that contribute to the fear of crime.

They have also enabled it to find ways to improve this, such as visible policing, better street lighting and activities for young people.

At Medway Council, head of marketing Simon Wakeman says that in 2006 podcasts allowed young people to talk to the council about the public services they used in ways they enjoyed and felt comfortable with.

For six months, podcasts were created for and by young people under the editorial control of the communications team. There were about 400 downloads for each podcast. The method was successful because it was appropriate for the target community.

“We chose podcasts because a high proportion of young people have MP3 players,” Wakeman says. “While newspapers look to reach thousands, young people tend to respond to smaller outreach methods.”

At Plymouth City Council, for example, Labour group leader Tudor Evans posted an offensive tweet about a member of the British National Party. Council chief executive Barry Keel reacted by banning access to social media through council computers, despite Cllr Evans’ apologies.

“I was using Twitter to reach out to people who would not normally engage with politics and to communicate my personality,” Cllr Evans says. “The council banned staff from using social media, but councillors have different dialogues and different roles to staff members.”

Cllr Evans believes the opportunity is being missed for council staff to use social media for public communications. “Only press office staff can now access Twitter — and they’re using it to post jobs,” he says. “The library has an award-winning Twitter feed, which cannot continue. The LGA cited YouTube use as excellent practice; in Plymouth
this is banned.”

The Problem with Experts

In his award-winning book On Political Judgment, social
psychologist Philip Tetlock analyzed the predictions of those
professionals who advise government about political and economic
trends. Pitting these professional pundits against minimalist
performance benchmarks, he found "few signs that expertise translates
into greater ability to make either ‘well-calibrated’ or
‘discriminating’ forecasts." It turns out that professional status has
much less bearing on the quality of information than we might assume,
and that professionals–whether in politics or other domains–are
notoriously unsuccessful at making informed predictions.