Crowdsourcing Scoop’s Election Journalism

Thursday, 9 March 2017, 3:24 pm
Article: Opening The Election

Which Election Issues should we explore further? A HiveMind Exploration

This discussion is now closed. We will have further discussions for you to take part in on the top issues soon.

The goal of this interactive HiveMind exploration is to get community input on which issues Scoop should be investigating further over this election year. We will then run further discussions in more detail on some of these key areas as well as crowdfunding professional journalistic investigations.

We believe looking at key issues from all sides of the debate and listening to a wide range of voices in order to surface innovative cross party solutions is an important role for an engaged media organisation in a modern democratic society.

However, given our resource limitations, Scoop can only hope to take on 5-10 of these issues in sufficient depth in this campaign, so this first step of the engagement process is to help us decide on the key issues we should focus on further.

Please bear in mind - we are not asking at this point for you to take a side on these issues nor even which issues you are personally most interested in or affected by. Rather we are keen to hear what issues you think warrant further discussion and media investigation in order to enhance the debate. Some factors to take into account here may include:

• the relative importance/significance of the issue,
• the amount or lack of quality coverage in the media,
• the amount of misinformation in the media
• the potential for good solutions or a new approach to emerge from outside the political system on this issue.

Instructions for participation

1. Scroll to the voting box below these instructions, and find the first statement with agree / disagree / pass buttons to have your say;

2. Then Vote (there are 24 issue statements in total to vote on.)

• Click Agree on statements that represent issues you think Scoop should focus on in 2017 (try to limit this to your top 10)
• Click Disagree on statements you do not think Scoop should focus on in 2017
• Click pass if you are unsure whether the issue is important

3. Please vote on at least 10 questions or the system will not register any of your votes.

Additional Tips
• First read the full list of 24 potential election issues below the voting window and preselect your top 10 choices
• If you strongly feel an important issue has been missed you can suggest it by adding a comment
• The statements will appear in random order so please make a note of your selections from the list below the voting portal in advance.
• Statements you pass on will not return – you only have one chance to agree or disagree on each statement

This discussion is now closed. You can view it below but please do not vote. Please look out for future conversations.

If the Voting pane is not displaying you can click this link to open in a new window

The full list of Issues

1 Inequality
2 Immigration
3 Mental Health
4 Aged Care
5 Race Relations (Maori relations, changing ethnic makeup)
6 Law & Order (Justice Policy/Prisons)
7 Geographical inequity (imbalance in spending on regions)
8 Privatisation (asset sales, social housing etc)
9 Social Mobility
10 Gender Politics (Rape culture, pay equity)
11 Political disengagement
12 Housing (Homelessness/availability/affordability)
13 Superannuation
14 Taxation (to cut or not to cut)
15 Student Debt
16 Intergenerational Equity (the generation gap)
17 The environment (water quality, smart green economy, climate change)
18 Natural disaster preparedness and recovery
19 Population - Should NZ Be Growing faster or slower
20 Foreign Policy (Should it be Independent?)
21 Employment (the future of work)
22 Health
23 The ‘Social Investment’ or big data approach to social spending
24 Education (Standards, costs, charter schools)

Context

Please note - we have not yet taken a view or official editorial stance on any of these issues. We are merely presenting what we have assessed to be the most likely broader issues to emerge as important topics in this election cycle. There are a number of more specific issues contained within each and obviously a lot of crossover between issues. We may well have missed important issues here too and do not claim this list to be comprehensive. However, we also want to keep this discussion relatively focused so please do not be offended if we do not accept a comment you have suggested.

This is an experiment in using the Pol.is software tool for a new purpose and we thank you for participating; it will help us learn more about the uses and limits of this engagement tool. We welcome any feedback about this discussion and hope you will return to engage in further discussions on Hivemind to have your say further on these and other key issues as part of our ‘Opening the Election’ project.

Please visit the Pledgeme page to find out more about ‘Opening the Election’ or to pledge to help us make this happen

We will also be running real world events to get further input on this question, so if you would like to get involved please get in touch.

For more information you can contact Scoop’s Community Engagement Manager Joseph Cederwall on Joe@Scoop.co.nz

© Scoop Media

Opening The Election

A 2017 Open News Project

Help Scoop to open the news this election cycle through a participatory, citizen powered and open licensed news project in collaboration with expert freelance journalists and editors. We are building a groundswell of readers and citizens to help Scoop implement this more open approach to independent media in 2017.

Contact Opening The Election

• News - Election2017
• Supporters - Thank you page
• Email - joe@scoop.co.nz