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Emerging Practices for Virtual Community Engagement

Overview

Emerging Practices for Virtual Community Engagement

Virtual community engagement includes any engagement conducted outside of a physical meeting space, such as video conferencing, webinars, teleconferencing, social media, text and paper outreach. These practices can increase the number of participants by offering additional opportunities for involvement but should not replace opportunities to engage in-person if the options are safe. Although these practices expand options for participation, they should be utilized and designed with the user and target population in mind, as not all groups are able to access technology in the same way. The digital divide (i.e. the gap in access to information, communication, and broadband technology) precludes many low-income people, people of color, elderly and other important community members from accessing complex technological engagement such as webinars.

Consider numerous mechanisms for engagement to reach the most impacted and hard to reach populations, including social media tools such as Facebook Live which may be more accessible and widely used than videoconferencing technologies like Zoom.  Community engagement processes, regardless if they are virtual or in-person, should adhere to the framework and values previously discussed in the toolkit designed to foster inclusivity, authentic partnership, accessibility, meaningful engagement, and cultural humility. 

As discussed under “Inclusive and Intentional Engagement” and “Empowerment: Sharing Power and Capacity” sections, partnering with trusted community leaders and community-based organizations to co-design and receive feedback on the engagement process is an important step for building inclusive, accessible spaces for public participation.  This is also a critical step for virtual engagements given the varying degrees of access to technology and important insight that community partners bring in identifying the most effective approaches to reach a particular community.

In general, there are three overarching goals for hosting virtual meetings (applicable for in-person meetings as well):

  1. Learn by listening and gathering information from others
  2. Share information or analyses
  3. Hold a space for others to build connections and learn from one another and share.

 There are different tools available depending on the goal. 

Learning

  • Using surveys via online (including social media), through the telephone, or text. 
    • Ensure the survey is open and available for a long enough period of time for people to be noticed (see below for noticing practices) and respond.
    • Provide the survey in multiple languages.
    • Sharing demographic information can be threatening to some people. Make clear the intention of the survey and how the information will be used and shared. If the information isn’t relevant to the outcome, consider skipping specific demographic questions.
    • Have a phone number for people to call in case there are issues with the survey and make this available in multiple languages.
    • If the survey is collected online or through a phone application, consider how much data is used by participating; and design for low-data usage or “data lite” apps.
    • Ensure the survey is a reasonable length and not overly time consuming to complete.
    • Have a paper version of an online survey available in multiple languages, and publicize where and how paper surveys can be completed.
    • If telephone surveys are conducted, consider the potential for a mode effect bias. Pre-recorded phone interviews can garner more honest answers to sensitive questions than speaking directly to an interviewer.
  • Design matters for visualizing and interpreting data online.