Emphasizing the "Public" in Public Affairs Implementing a bottom-up, blog-centric new media strategy at an institution of public policy

Abstract

In the Spring of 2007, the University of Minnesota's Office of Service and Continuous Improvement (OSCI) approved a grant from its Service and Process Improvement Fund (SPIF) for a grassroots initiative entitled “Emphasizing the "Public" in Public Affairs” (see Appendix A). The aim of the proposal was to use an already existing university resource called “UThink” to build weblogs for the various research centers at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs to enable the centers to better publicize their own research and events and to serve as easily accessible public affairs resources for each center's particular policy field, policy makers, the blogosphere, the mainstream media, and elite or otherwise highly engaged publics. At $12,125, the grant was the smallest approved by OSCI for the 2007-2008 academic year, and was funded primarily due to the substantial benefit/cost ratio it promised to achieve. Further, the committee which approved the project included the following affirmation of its merits: “Reviewers supported this project because it will further develop the Humphrey Institute as an exceptional organization. It will be a model for other departments to follow and it will demonstrate what is possible through UThink with a systematic and coordinated plan” (OSCI, 2007). Most blogs hosted by the UThink system are deployed in an ad-hoc fashion as personal opinion blogs, collaborative research blogs, or as online complements to offline, traditional courses taught at the University. The Humphrey blogging project, by contrast, is an organized institution-wide effort that seeks to integrate blogs and blogging practices into the core of the organization's academic research and outreach efforts.