Migration Data using Social Media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission JRC Technical Report: “Migration is a top political priority for the European Union (EU). Data on international migrant stocks and flows are essential for effective migration management. In this report, we estimated the number of expatriates in 17 EU countries based on the number of Facebook Network users who are classified by Facebook as “expats”. To this end, we proposed a method for correcting the over- or under-representativeness of Facebook Network users compared to countries’ actual population.

This method uses Facebook penetration rates by age group and gender in the country of previous residence and country of destination of a Facebook expat. The purpose of Facebook Network expat estimations is not to reproduce migration statistics, but rather to generate separate estimates of expatriates, since migration statistics and Facebook Network expats estimates do not measure the same quantities of interest.

Estimates of social media application users who are classified as expats can be a timely, low-cost, and almost globally available source of information for estimating stocks of international migrants. Our methodology allowed for the timely capture of the increase of Venezuelan migrants in Spain. However, there are important methodological and data integrity issues with using social media data sources for studying migration-related phenomena. For example, our methodology led us to significantly overestimate the number of expats from Philippines in Spain and in Italy and there is no evidence that this overestimation may be valid. While research on the use of big data sources for migration is in its infancy, and the diffusion of internet technologies in less developed countries is still limited, the use of big data sources can unveil useful insights on quantitative and qualitative characteristics of migration….(More)”.

Transparency, Society and Subjectivity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Emmanuel Alloa and Dieter Thomä: “This book critically engages with the idea of transparency whose ubiquitous demand stands in stark contrast to its lack of conceptual clarity. The book carefully examines this notion in its own right, traces its emergence in Early Modernity and analyzes its omnipresence in contemporary rhetoric.

Today, transparency has become a catchword outplaying other Enlightenment values like empowerment, sincerity and the notion of a public sphere. In a suspicious manner, transparency is entangled in the discourses on power, surveillance, and self-exposure.

Bringing together prominent scholars from the emerging field of Critical Transparency Studies, the book offers a map of the various sites at which transparency has become virulent and connects the dots between past and present. By studying its appearances in today’s hyper-mediated economies of information and by linking it back to its historical roots, the book analyzes transparency and its discontents, and scrutinizes the reasons why it has become the imperative of a supposedly post-ideological age…(More)”.

Reduced‐Boundary Governance: The Advantages of Working Together

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Jeremy L. Hall and R. Paul Battaglio of Special Issue of the Public Administration Review: “Collaboration, cooperation, and coproduction are all approaches that reflect the realization that creative solutions look beyond traditional, organizational, and structural boundaries to overcome various capacity deficiencies while working toward shared goals….One of the factors complicating measurement and analysis in multistakeholder approaches to solving problems and delivering services is the inherently intergovernmental and intersectoral nature of the work. Performance now depends on accumulated capacity across organizations, including a special form of capacity—the ability to work together collaboratively. Such activity within a government has been referred to as “whole of government” approaches or “joined up government” (Christensen and Lægreid 2007). We have terms for work across levels of government (intergovernmental relations) and between government and the public and private sectors (intersectoral relations), but on the whole, the creative, collaborative, and interactive activities in which governments are involved today transcend even these neat categories and classifications. We might call this phenomenon reduced‐boundary governance. Moving between levels of government or between sectors often changes the variables that are available for analysis, or at least introduces validity issues associated with differences in measurement and estimation (see Brandsen and Honingh 2016; Nabatchi, Sancino, and Sicilia 2017). Sometimes data are not available at all. And, of course, collaboration or pooling of resources typically occurs in an ad hoc or one‐off basis that is limited to a single problem, a single program, or a single defined period of time, further complicating study and knowledge accumulation.

Increasingly, public service is accomplished together rather than alone. Boundaries between organizations are becoming blurred in new approaches to solving public problems (Christensen and Lægreid 2007). PAR is committed to better understanding the circumstances under which collaboration, cooperation, and coproduction occurs. What are the necessary antecedents? What are the deterrents? We are interested in the challenges that organizations face as they pursue collaborative action that transcends boundaries. And, of course, we are interested in the efficiency and performance gains that are achieved as a result of those efforts, as well as in their long‐term sustainability.

In this issue, we feature a series of articles that highlight research that focuses on working together, through collaboration, coproduction, or cooperation. The issue begins with a look at right‐sizing the use of volunteerism in public and nonprofit organizations given their limitations and possibilities (Nesbit, Christensen, and Brudney 2018). Uzochukwu and Thomas (2018) then explore coproduction using a case study of Atlanta to better understand who uses it and why. Klok et al. (2018) presents a fascinating look at intermunicipal cooperation through polycentric regional governance in the Netherlands, with an eye toward the costs and effectiveness of those arrangements. McGuire, Hoang, and Prakash (2018) look at the effectiveness of voluntary environmental programs in pollution reduction. Using different policy tools as lenses for analysis, Jung, Malatesta, and LaLonde (2018) ask whether work release programs are improved by working together or working alone. Finally, Yi et al. (2018) explore the role of regional governance and institutional collective action in promoting environmental sustainability. Each of these pieces explores unique dimensions of working together, or governing beyond traditional boundaries….(More)”.

The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Mahyar Arefi and Conrad Kickert: “Who shapes our cities? In an age of increasing urban pluralism, globalization and immigration, decreasing public budgets, and an ongoing crisis of authority among designers and planners, the urban environment is shaped by a number of non-traditional stakeholders.

The book surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, providing an overview of the various scholarly debates and territories that pertain to bottom-up efforts such as everyday urbanism, DIY urbanism, guerilla urbanism, tactical urbanism, and lean urbanism. Uniquely, this books seeks connections between the various movements by curating a range of views on the past, present, and future of bottom-up urbanism. The contributors also connect the recent trend of bottom-up efforts in the West with urban informality in the Global South, drawing parallels and finding contrast between social and institutional structures across the globe. The book appeals to urbanists in the widest sense of the word: those who shape, study, and improve our urban spaces….(More)”.

Games, Powers and Democracies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Gianluca Sgueo; “The book aims at discussing the promises and the challenges behind the use of gamification in public governance, both at the national and supranational levels.

In the first part it will review the landscape of gamification, take a brief look at its history, provide definitions and examples of its application within the private and public sectors (at the national level), and introduce the readers to a number of problems linked with the use of gamification (with no aim at being comprehensive).

The second part of the proposed book will shift the focus from the descriptive to the problematic analysis of gamification in governance.Building on previous parts, the third section of the proposed book will venture beyond the empirical analysis and will address the impact of gamification strategies on participatory democracy in the national and supranational legal spaces.

Here an extract from the book: Foreword and part of Chapter 1….(More)”.

Motivating Bureaucrats through Social Recognition

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Evidence from Simultaneous Field Experiments by Varun Gauri,Julian C. Jamison, Nina Mazar, Owen Ozier, Shomikho Raha and Karima Saleh: “Bureaucratic performance is a crucial determinant of economic growth. Little is known about how to improve it in resource-constrained settings.

This study describes a field trial of a social recognition intervention to improve record keeping in clinics in two Nigerian states, replicating the intervention—implemented by a single organization—on bureaucrats performing identical tasks in both states.

Social recognition improved performance in one state but had no effect in the other, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of behavioral interventions. Differences in observables did not explain cross-state differences in impacts, however, illustrating the limitations of observable-based approaches to external validity….(More)”.

Think Strategically About Prize Hosting

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Charlie Brown & Robert Q. Benedict at Stanford Social Innovation Review: ” For many in the social sector, hosting a prize has become practically compulsory. But prizes have also proved divisive, sparking debates about their intended use, the value they provide, and the costs they incur. With so many conflicting perspectives, are there any guidelines to help decide whether a prize is worth pursuing?

We have spent more than a decade working with foundations, corporations, government agencies, and NGOs to design and host prizes; we’ve also observed dozens more competitions hosted by others and made our fair share of missteps along the way. The motivations behind prizes vary but generally cluster into one of two groups: awareness, an aim to raise the profile of an organization or issue area to generate momentum; and disruption, which incentivizes innovation, surfaces new solutions, or fundamentally changes an entrenched system.

Some organizations already have a solution in mind and use a prize to find the best partners for implementing it—more like an open request for proposals (open RFP) than an innovation search. We would categorize this sort of effort under the awareness rubric. Another large share of prizes, also overtly about awareness, are essentially marketing efforts, and lay the groundwork for future brand positioning and programmatic grants and activities. By contrast, disruption prizes seek the attention of highly focused experts to address a long-standing, difficult problem by drawing innovative solutions from the fringes of the field.

These motivations are legitimate and meaningful. But nearly all prizes use the language of innovation and disruption in their communications, to spark excitement and lend weight to the challenge being posed. This tendency can create potential problems by treating disparate goals—awareness versus disruption or even innovation—as equivalent and can lead organizations to use a counterproductive strategy for their needs. An awareness campaign that is marketed as an innovation prize, for example, risks alienating participants, who often invest enormous effort with the expectation of seeing their ideas, or those of a worthy competitor, implemented in a significant way.

Matching a host’s goal with the right kind of prize strategy is perhaps the most important, most ignored task that prize hosts face. A mismatch of intention and strategy can result in not only lackluster results but, more important, damaged trust with entrants and weakened credibility for the host….(More)”.

The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Martha C. Nussbaum: “…In The Monarchy of Fear she turns her attention to the current political crisis that has polarized American since the 2016 election.

Although today’s atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the problem: the political is always emotional. Globalization has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame. Blame of immigrants. Blame of Muslims. Blame of other races. Blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.

Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fearuntangles this web of feelings and provides a roadmap of where to go next….(More)”.

Google.gov

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Adam J. White at New Atlantis: “Google exists to answer our small questions. But how will we answer larger questions about Google itself? Is it a monopoly? Does it exert too much power over our lives? Should the government regulate it as a public utility — or even break it up?

In recent months, public concerns about Google have become more pronounced. This February, the New York Times Magazine published “The Case Against Google,” a blistering account of how “the search giant is squelching competition before it begins.” The Wall Street Journal published a similar article in January on the “antitrust case” against Google, along with Facebook and Amazon, whose market shares it compared to Standard Oil and AT&T at their peaks. Here and elsewhere, a wide array of reporters and commentators have reflected on Google’s immense power — not only over its competitors, but over each of us and the information we access — and suggested that the traditional antitrust remedies of regulation or breakup may be necessary to rein Google in.

Dreams of war between Google and government, however, obscure a much different relationship that may emerge between them — particularly between Google and progressive government. For eight years, Google and the Obama administration forged a uniquely close relationship. Their special bond is best ascribed not to the revolving door, although hundreds of meetings were held between the two; nor to crony capitalism, although hundreds of people have switched jobs from Google to the Obama administration or vice versa; nor to lobbying prowess, although Google is one of the top corporate lobbyists.

Rather, the ultimate source of the special bond between Google and the Obama White House — and modern progressive government more broadly — has been their common ethos. Both view society’s challenges today as social-engineering problems, whose resolutions depend mainly on facts and objective reasoning. Both view information as being at once ruthlessly value-free and yet, when properly grasped, a powerful force for ideological and social reform. And so both aspire to reshape Americans’ informational context, ensuring that we make choices based only upon what they consider the right kinds of facts — while denying that there would be any values or politics embedded in the effort.

Addressing an M.I.T. sports-analytics conference in February, former President Obama said that Google, Facebook, and prominent Internet services are “not just an invisible platform, but they are shaping our culture in powerful ways.” Focusing specifically on recent outcries over “fake news,” he warned that if Google and other platforms enable every American to personalize his or her own news sources, it is “very difficult to figure out how democracy works over the long term.” But instead of treating these tech companies as public threats to be regulated or broken up, Obama offered a much more conciliatory resolution, calling for them to be treated as public goods:

I do think that the large platforms — Google and Facebook being the most obvious, but Twitter and others as well that are part of that ecosystem — have to have a conversation about their business model that recognizes they are a public good as well as a commercial enterprise.

This approach, if Google were to accept it, could be immensely consequential….(More)”.

On the Rise of FinTechs – Credit Scoring using Digital Footprints

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

NBER Working Paper by Tobias Berg, Valentin Burg, Ana Gombović and Manju Puri: “We analyze the information content of the digital footprint – information that people leave online simply by accessing or registering on a website – for predicting consumer default. Using more than 250,000 observations, we show that even simple, easily accessible variables from the digital footprint equal or exceed the information content of credit bureau (FICO) scores. Furthermore, the discriminatory power for unscorable customers is very similar to that of scorable customers. Our results have potentially wide implications for financial intermediaries’ business models, for access to credit for the unbanked, and for the behavior of consumers, firms, and regulators in the digital sphere….(More)”.