The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by John Wihbey: “While the public believes that journalism remains crucial for democracy, there is a general sense that the news media are performing this role poorly. In The Social Fact, John Wihbey makes the case that journalism can better serve democracy by focusing on ways of fostering social connection. Wihbey explores how the structure of news, information, and knowledge and their flow through society are changing, and he considers ways in which news media can demonstrate the highest possible societal value in the context of these changes.

Wihbey examines network science as well as the interplay between information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the structure of knowledge in society. He discusses the underlying patterns that characterize our increasingly networked world of information—with its viral phenomena and whiplash-inducing trends, its extremes and surprises. How can the traditional media world be reconciled with the world of social, peer-to-peer platforms, crowdsourcing, and user-generated content? Wihbey outlines a synthesis for news producers and advocates innovation in approach, form, and purpose. The Social Fact provides a valuable framework for doing audience-engaged media work of many kinds in our networked, hybrid media environment. It will be of interest to all those concerned about the future of news and public affairs….(More)”.

Are We Game for Gamification? Potential and Limits of Game-Design Elements to Foster Civic Engagement and Encourage Participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gianluca Sgueo: “Together with robotics, artificial intelligence, biometrics and data, (serious-) games fall within the technological paradigm that is evolving the administration of public entities. The use of game-design elements beyond mere entertainment is not entirely a new approach to problem solving. Business actors have long-incorporated game-design elements – such as badges, points, levels, rankings, prize challenges, and virtual currencies – into their marketing and communications strategies. However this phenomenon has progressed dramatically in recent years, with the public sector at the forefront of experiments with ‘gamification’. To public regulators, the gamification of governance seems promising on three fronts. First, it encourages innovative, and cost-saving, approaches to regulatory challenges. Second, it presents an opportunity to nurture the trust of citizens, and thus enhance perceptions of legitimacy. Third, it creates new incentives to promote civic engagement and foster participation. What was once simplistically labelled as ‘play’ could become a primary form of interaction with public regulators. After all, who wouldn’t want to have an opportunity to impact on public choices, and do so in a non-boring, novel and dynamic, way?

The gamification of governance – claims this paper – shows great potential to foster civic engagement and encourage participation in policy-making. The data around the general publics’ response and perception to game-design incentives are encouraging. Yet – argues this paper – gamification is not without risks. Various challenges are posed by gamified policy-making, particularly with regards to security and inclusiveness (i.e. do gamified policies conform to recognized security and privacy standards? Are they sufficiently inclusive?). Additionally, concerns surround the quality of public’s response to gamified incentives (i.e. is gamification merely encouraging low-risk/low-cost engagement, or does it genuinely drive public participation, both online and offline?). Questions have also been raised about the longevity and duration of engagement – are game-design elements fostering long-term, durable, civic engagement, or do they merely encourage one-time, occasional, participation? This paper develops around five concepts that are key to understanding the link between gamification with civic engagement and public sector’s innovation. The first is “Reputation”, followed by “Automation” and “Structure”. The fourth and fifth consist of “Nudging” and “Crowdsourcing”, respectively. Alongside the analysis of these concepts, and their respective interplay, the paper provides an empirical account of efforts to ‘gamify’ public policies, at both national and supranational levels; it illustrates the outcomes that public regulators expect from efforts with gamification; and it considers the weaknesses, both practical and theoretical, related to the use of game-design elements to encourage participation….(More)”.

What Is (in) Good Data?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introductory Chapter by Monique Mann, S. Kate Devitt and Angela Daly for the book on “Good Data”: “In recent years, there has been an exponential increase in the collection, aggregation and automated analysis of information by government and private actors. In response to this there has been significant critique regarding what could be termed ‘bad’ data practices in the globalised digital economy. These include the mass gathering of data about individuals, in opaque, unethical and at times illegal ways, and the increased use of that data in unaccountable and discriminatory forms of algorithmic decision-making.

This edited collection has emerged from our frustration and depression over the previous years of our academic and activist careers critiquing these dystopian ‘Bad Data’ practices. Rather, in this text on ‘Good Data’ we seek to move our work from critique to imagining and articulating a more optimistic vision of the datafied future. We see many previous considerations of Bad Data practices, including our own, as only providing critiques rather than engaging constructively with a new vision of how digital technologies and data can be used productively and justly to further social, economic, cultural and political goals. The objective of the Good Data project is to start a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder conversation around promoting good and ethical data practices and initiatives, towards a fair and just digital economy and society. In doing so, we combine expertise from various disciplines and sectors, including law, criminology, justice, public health, data science, digital media, and philosophy. The contributors to this text also have expertise in areas such as renewable energy, sociology, social media, digital humanities, and political science. There are many fields of knowledge that need to come together to build the Good Data future. This project has also brought together academic, government and industry experts along with rights advocates and activists to examine and propose initiatives that seeks to promote and embed social justice, due process rights, autonomy, freedom from discrimination and environmental sustainability principles….(More)”.

Government Information in Canada: Access and Stewardship

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Amanda Wakaruk and Sam-chin Li: “Government information is not something that most people think about until they need it or see it in a headline. Indeed, even then librarians, journalists, and intellectually curious citizens will rarely recognize or identify that the statistics needed to complete a report, or the scandal-breaking evidence behind a politician’s resignation, was sourced from taxpayer-funded publications and documents. Fewer people will likely appreciate the fact that access to government information is a requirement of a democratic society.

Government Information in Canada introduces the average librarian, journalist, researcher, and intellectually curious citizen to the often complex, rarely obvious, and sometimes elusive foundational element of a liberal democracy: publicly accessible government information.

While our primary goal is to provide an overview of the state of access to Canadian government information in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, we hope that this work will also encourage its readers to become more active in the government information community by contributing to government consultations and seeking out information that is produced by their governing bodies. ….

One of our goals is to document the state of government information in Canada at a point of transition. To help orient readers to today’s sub-discipline of librarianship, we offer four points that have been observed and learned over decades of working with government information in academic environments.

  1. Access to government information is the foundation of a functioning democracy and underpins informed citizen engagement. Government information allows us to assess our governing bodies — access that is required for a democracy to function.
  2. Government information has enduring value. The work of countless academics and other experts is disseminated via government information. Government publications and documents are used by academics and social commentators in all areas of intellectual output, resulting in the production of books, reports, speeches, and so forth, which have shaped our society and understanding of the world. For example, the book that introduced the public to the science of climate change, Silent Spring, was full of references to government information; furthermore, legal scholars, lawyers, and judges use legislative documents to interpret and apply the law; journalists use government documents to inform the electorate about their governing bodies. Government information is precarious and requires stewardship.
  3. The strongest system of stewardship for government information is one that operates in partnership with, and at arm’s length of, author agencies. Most content is digital, but this does not mean that it is posted and openly available online. Furthermore, content made available online does not necessarily remain accessible to the public.
  4. Government publications and documents are different from most books, journals, and content born on the Internet. Government information does not fit into the traditional dissemination channels developed and simplified through customer feedback and the pursuit of higher profits. The agencies that produce government information are motivated by different factors than those of traditional publishers…(More)”.

Cities, Government, Law, and Civil Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Heidi Li Feldman: “For too long, legal commentators have developed accounts of law, governments and civil society, and rights to access that society, from a national-federal perspective. As Americans increasingly live in cities, it is time for legal theorists to concentrate on municipalities as the locus of civil society. From an American national-federal perspective, government and law play primarily a remedial role with regard to civil society, stepping in only to resolve great inequities, usually by creating legally recognized civil rights and enforcing them. Civil society and civil rights, however, exceed this cramped national-federal window on it. Throughout the United States today, civil society is a multi-faceted arena for social coordination and social cooperation, for consonant and collective action of many different kinds. The only reason civil rights and the legal protection of them matters is because participation in civil society is makes it possible for individuals to engage in all manner of activities that are useful, enjoyable, and worthwhile. In other words, the significance of civil rights follows from the existence of a civil society worth participating in. To the extent that government can and does make civil society viable and valuable, it is an integral part of civil society. That feature gets lost in a remedial account of the relationship between government, law, and civil society. 

Perhaps the role of cities in civil society has been neglected by the legal academy because cities are not sovereigns. Sovereignty has often been the issue that provokes theoretical attention to government and its role in civil life. At the heart of the federal-national account of civil society and government is the potential threat the sovereign poses to other actors in civil society. But there is no necessary connection between concentrating on the nature and workings of sovereignty and considering the role for government and law in civil society. And when a government is not a sovereign, its ability to threaten is inherently constrained. That is what examining cities, non-sovereign governments embedded in a web of other governments, shows us. 

When we turn our attention to cities, a very different role for government and law emerges. Cities often exemplify how government and law can enable civil society and all those encompassed by it. They show how government can promote and amplify collective action, not only at the local level but even at the international one. In the United States today, governments can and do provide resources for consonant and collective action even in nongovernmental settings. Governments also coordinate and cooperate alongside fellow actors such as citizen activist groups, small and large businesses, labor unions, universities and colleges, and other nongovernmental organizations. This is particularly apparent at the local level. By delving into local government, we gain a distinctive perspective on the intersection of government and law, on one hand, and civil society, on the other — on what that intersection does, can, and should be like. This paper develops a first iteration of a locality centered account of civil society and the role for government and law within it. I examine a particular municipality, the City of Pittsburgh, to provide a concrete example from which to generate ideas and judgements about the terrain and content of this localist account….(More)”.

Google Searches Could Predict Heroin Overdoses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rod McCullom at Scientific American: “About 115 people nationwide die every day from opioid overdoses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A lack of timely, granular data exacerbates the crisis; one study showed opioid deaths were undercounted by as many as 70,000 between 1999 and 2015, making it difficult for governments to respond. But now Internet searches have emerged as a data source to predict overdose clusters in cities or even specific neighborhoods—information that could aid local interventions that save lives. 

The working hypothesis was that some people searching for information on heroin and other opioids might overdose in the near future. To test this, a researcher at the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology (UCIPT) and his colleagues developed several statistical models to forecast overdoses based on opioid-related keywords, metropolitan income inequality and total number of emergency room visits. They discovered regional differences (graphic) in where and how people searched for such information and found that more overdoses were associated with a greater number of searches per keyword. The best-fitting model, the researchers say, explained about 72 percent of the relation between the most popular search terms and heroin-related E.R. visits. The authors say their study, published in the September issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, is the first report of using Google searches in this way. 

To develop their models, the researchers obtained search data for 12 prescription and nonprescription opioids between 2005 and 2011 in nine U.S. metropolitan areas. They compared these with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration records of heroin-related E.R. admissions during the same period. The models can be modified to predict overdoses of other opioids or narrow searches to specific zip codes, says lead study author Sean D. Young, a behavioral psychologist and UCIPT executive director. That could provide early warnings of overdose clusters and help to decide where to distribute the overdose reversal medication Naloxone….(More)”.

Beyond the IRB: Towards a typology of research ethics in applied economics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michler, Jeffrey D., Masters, William A. and Josephson, Anna: “Conversations about ethics often appeal to those responsible for the ethical behavior, encouraging adoption of “better,” more ethical conduct. In this paper, we consider an alternative frame: a typology of ethical misconduct, focusing on who are the victims of various types of unethical behavior. The typology is constructed around 1) who may be harmed and 2) by what mechanism an individual or party is harmed. Building a typology helps to identify times in the life cycle of a research idea where differences exist between who is potentially harmed and who the existing ethical norms protect.

We discuss ethical practices including IRB approvals, which focuses almost entirely on risks to subjects; pre-analysis plans and conflict of interest disclosures, which encourage transparency so as to not mislead editors, reviewers, and readers; and self-plagiarism, which has become increasing common as authors slice their research ever more thinly, causing congestion in journals at the expense of others….(More)”.

Blockchain helps refugees gain access to financial services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “…Blockchain has also lead to huge steps forward in this sector, enabling greater transparency for consumers in the food industry. This latest innovation could also combine both worlds in using blockchain to take back control of personal data.

Gravity Earth seeks to provide equal access and opportunity to digital IDs, a growing necessity in the modern world. Digital identities allow access to key financial services, mobile communication, and other online benefits. At the moment, Gravity Earth estimates that around 1.5 billion people across the globe do not have an official proof of identity.

The Nairobi-based startup sought to change this by allowing anyone to create a secure, self-sovereign digital ID based on their personal data. The blockchain-based process can be done wherever you are and on any mobile device. Their solution allows currently disadvantaged people to store and share personal data with whoever they want. In so doing, it also allows users to build on existing traditional IDs, but does not depend on them.

The products is currently close to its first deployment at a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. Gravity Earth will use it to track attendance at three refugee schools. In the future, the startup is also looking to work closely with more refugee-orientated NGOs…(More)”

See also: Field Report On the Emergent Use of Distributed Ledger Technologies for Identity Management

Innovation Contests: How to Engage Citizens in Solving Urban Problems?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sarah Hartmann, Agnes Mainka and Wolfgang G. Stock: “Cities all over the world are challenged with problems evolving from increasing urbanity, population growth, and density. For example, one prominent issue that is addressed in many cities is mobility. To develop smart city solutions, governments are trying to introduce open innovation. They have started to open their governmental and city related data as well as awake the citizens’ awareness on urban problems through innovation contests. Citizens are the users of the city and therefore, have a practical motivation to engage in innovation contests as for example in hackathons and app competitions. The collaboration and co-creation of civic services by means of innovation contests is a cultural development of how governments and citizens work together in an open governmental environment. A qualitative analysis of innovation contests in 24 world cities reveals this global trend. In particular, such events increase the awareness of citizens and local businesses for identifying and solving urban challenges and are helpful means to transfer the smart city idea into practicable solutions….(More)”

Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation ecosystems, technological advancements, and societal challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction of Special Issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change by Francesco PaoloAppio, MarcosLima, and Sotirios Paroutis: “Smart Cities initiatives are spreading all around the globe at a phenomenal pace. Their bold ambition is to increase the competitiveness of local communities through innovation while increasing the quality of life for its citizens through better public services and a cleaner environment. Prior research has shown contrasting views and a multitude of dimensions and approaches to look at this phenomenon. In spite of the fact that this can stimulate the debate, it lacks a systematic assessment and an integrative view. The papers in the special issue on “Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation Ecosystems, Technological Advancements, and Societal Challenges” take stock of past work and provide new insights through the lenses of a hybrid framework. Moving from these premises, we offer an overview of the topic by featuring possible linkages and thematic clusters. Then, we sketch a novel research agenda for scholars, practitioners, and policy makers who wish to engage in – and build – a critical, constructive, and conducive discourse on Smart Cities….(More)”.