What is Digital Engagement?

What is Digital Engagement?

In the last week, at least six people have asked me to write a glossary of terms to help them with their ‘digital vocabulary’. I hope this is helpful for all of you adapting your businesses and work to meet the increased demand for digital engagement.

Let’s start with engagement.

Engagement – is an activity, an interaction between two or more people. It involves communication and the exchange of information. #Engagement generates relationships and affects trust. It is the foundation for collaboration. Click To Tweet

Digital engagement – is an engagement using technology. It can be done online, offline / in-person using digital tools, or virtually.

Online engagement – engaging with others online. Often done between events.

Offline engagement – engaging with others in-person.

Virtual engagement – using technology to engage virtually i.e. not in the same physical place. Often done live in ‘real time’ as events.

Virtual facilitation – encouraging and managing participation, and group dynamics in meetings, workshops, events that enable virtual engagement. 

Online facilitation – encouraging and managing participation and group dynamics in an online environment.

Engagement technology – technologies that enable and support online and offline engagement. This includes tools to: engage; to manage, analyse and report information about and from participants; or to manage the relationships generated through engagement.

EngageTech – is short-hand for engagement technology. At engage2, we use it to describe engagement technology that meets the security, privacy and accessibility requirements of governments.

Civic technologies – are technologies that address social challenges and deliver social outcomes. They enable engagement between people within communities, and between communities and governments. Civic technologies make it easier for people to find and use services, engage with governments, and self-organise to deliver socioeconomic change in their communities.

CivicTech – shorthand for civic technologies.

Collaboration technologies – a sub-set of engagement technologies. These tools enable collaboration while engaging online, offline or virtually.

CollabTech – shorthand for collaboration tech.

Civic innovation – innovations designed and delivered by people for their communities. Civic innovators intend to have a social impact. They design solutions – civic technologies, services, products and organise community groups – to deliver social change that has a positive impact on the people and places around them.    

Civic engagement – engaging in your local community.

Civic space – public spaces that are used for civic engagement. These spaces can be physical, online, or virtual. 

EngageTech is a sub-set of CivicTech because it enables engagement between government and community. It is also part of a much broader category that some refer to as GovTech i.e. technology for government.

Amelia