The importance of community conversation: building a community communication system
Creators: name: Miles, Gillian
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: The importance of community conversation explores the characteristics of community building and engagement activities as understood and applied in some organisations by senior representatives in the Victorian Public Service. The broader community building and social capital agenda is explored through theoretical literature and empirical data. The community communication model offers future direction for addressing the gap in symbolic and systemic communications as a fundamental component of community development activity.<br><br>Elements of interpretivism, structuration and semiotic theory have been utilised in an attempt to create a methodology to understand that that community conversations can occur. This eclectic approach is referred to as the paradigmatic architecture throughout the text. <br><br>The body of work was guided by two research questions:<br><br><i>What are the understandings of senior representatives from government agencies regarding community building and its application within their organisation and more broadly across government?</i><br><br><i>Do gaps emerge from the theoretical literature and empirical body of knowledge on community building and its logic?</i><br><br>The importance of community communication introduces a paradigmatic framework in which to apply the knowledge of community building in two portfolios within the Victorian Public Service, the portfolios of Environment and Transport. <br><br>The empirical data was generated through deep peer-constructed conversations with senior representatives in the state bureaucracy, and the theoretical data through a wide ranging review of community development, social capital building and semiotic literature. The research juxtaposes key elements of Interpretivism, structuration and semiotic theories to build the narrative of the community building agenda being implemented in parts of the Victorian public service. The ontologies of the research paradigm and two theories used to generate data and build the narrative of community conversation are subtly different but aligned, as together they recognise that the construction of social reality is created by individuals and their collective monitoring and adaptation of social structures. <br><br>The data generated by the in-depth conversations have been thematically arranged around five key concepts in order to build the narrative of the community conversation. <br>Findings from the research include three main points: the logic for community strengthening in the two portfolios has not been consistently applied; the reform of government business is not intellectually contextualised by an understanding of social capital; and communication is not recognised as a foundation principle in policy or practice.<br><br>The researcher proposes a response to the inconsistent application of community building and the limited system-based thinking on communications through the generation of the community communication model. Taking social communication as a foundation principle, the model is an attempt to bring together the process of making meaning in public places and community development methods, to provide guidance in the design of community relationships.<br><br>Within the formation of the paradigmatic architecture, the argument of the thesis utilises the following logic;<br><br>• Semiotics considers action to be socially constructed and when juxtaposed with interpretivism and structuration enables an explanatory architecture to be theorised<br>• The paradigmatic architecture can be used as a methodology to explore cultural constructions, and in this instance community engagement<br>• The analysis of community building through using a community communication model can address gaps in the current understanding and implementation of community building activity.<br><br>This thesis commences the building of a community communication model. The model serves as the starting point for additional research into government attempts at community building and as a conceptual framework for practitioners to explore as they continue to search for innovation in generating social capital.<br>