Crowdsourcing Scoop’s Election Journalism

Which Election Issues should we explore further? A HiveMind Exploration

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. First read the list of 25 potential election issues below (The issues)

2. Please agree with up to 12 statements from the list below that you feel are core issues that we should focus on this year

3. Please disagree with up to 12 statements that you definitely do not think we should focus on this year

4. If you are on the fence about whether these issues are important to cover please just click pass

5. If you strongly feel an important issue has been missed you can suggest it by adding a comment

Additional Tips

• It is essential that you vote on at least 10 questions in total in order for the Pol.is algorithm to register your votes

• The questions will appear in random order so perhaps make a note of your selections from the list below the voting portal in advance.

The 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