New knowledge environments. On the possibility of a citizen social science.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Joseph Perelló: “Citizen science is in a process of consolidation, with a wide variety of practices and perspectives. Social sciences and humanities occupy a small space despite the obvious social dimension of citizen science. In this sense, citizen social science can enrich the concept of citizen science both because the research objective can also be of a social nature and because it provides greater reflection on the active participation of individuals, groups, or communities in research projects. Based on different experiences, this paper proposes that citizen social science should have the capacity to empower participants and provide them with skills to promote collective actions or public policies based on a co-created knowledge.

Citizen science is commonly recognised as the participation of the public in scientific research (Vohland et al., 2021). It has been promoted as a way to collect massive amounts of data and accelerate its processing, while also raising awareness and spreading knowledge and a better understanding of both scientific methods and the social relevance of results (Parrish et al., 2019). Some researchers support the idea of maintaining the generality and vagueness of the term citizen science (Auerbach et al., 2019), due to the youth of the discipline and the different ways it can be understood (Haklay et al., 2020). Such diversity can be considered positively, as a way to enrich citizen science and, more generally, as a catalyst for the emergence of trans-disciplinary and transformative science.

The sociologist Alan Irwin, one of the authors to whom we owe the concept, already said over 25 years ago: «Citizen Science evokes a science which assists the needs and concerns of citizens» (Irwin, 1995, p. xi). The book argues that citizens can create reliable knowledge. However, decades later, the number of contributions using the term citizen science in social sciences and humanities is scarce, smaller than the number of items published in environmental sciences or biology, which predominate in the field (Kullenberg & Kasperowski, 2016). Nevertheless, there is a growing consensus that social sciences and humanities are necessary for citizen science to reach maturity, both so that the object of study can also be of a social nature, and also so that these disciplines can provide a more elaborate reflection on participation in citizen science projects (Tauginienė et al., 2020)….(More)”.

Government algorithms are out of control and ruin lives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst


Nani Jansen Reventlow at Open Democracy: “Government services are increasingly being automated and technology is relied on more and more to make crucial decisions about our lives and livelihoods. This includes decisions about what type of support we can access in times of need: welfare, benefits, and other government services.

Technology has the potential to not only reproduce but amplify structural inequalities in our societies. If you combine this drive for automation with a broader context of criminalising poverty and systemic racism, this can have disastrous effects.

A recent example is the ‘child benefits scandal’ that brought down the Dutch government at the start of 2021. In the Netherlands, working parents are eligible for a government contribution toward the costs of daycare. This can run up to 90% of the actual costs for those with a low income. While contributions are often directly paid to childcare providers, parents are responsible for them. This means that, if the tax authorities determine that any allowance was wrongfully paid out, parents are liable for repaying them.

To detect cases of fraud, the Dutch tax authorities used a system that was outright discriminatory. An investigation by the Dutch Data Protection Authority last year showed that parents were singled out for special scrutiny because of their ethnic origin or dual nationality.  “The whole system was organised in a discriminatory manner and was also used as such,” it stated.

The fallout of these ‘fraud detection’ efforts was enormous. It is currently estimated that 46,000 parents were wrongly accused of having fraudulently claimed child care allowances. Families were forced to repay tens of thousands of euros, leading to financial hardship, loss of livelihood, homes, and in one case, even loss of life – one parent died by suicide. While we can still hope that justice for these families won’t be denied, it will certainly be delayed: this weekend, it became clear that it could take up to ten years to handle all claims. An unacceptable timeline, given how precarious the situation will be for many of those affected….(More)”.

How laws affect the perception of norms: empirical evidence from the lockdown

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Roberto Galbiati, Emeric Henry, Nicolas Jacquemet, and Max Lobeck: “Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of societal norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel….(More)”.

Disrupting the Welfare State? Digitalisation and the Retrenchment of Public Sector Capacity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Rosie Collington: “Welfare state bureaucracies the world over have adopted far-reaching digitalisation reforms in recent years. From the deployment of AI in service management, to the ‘opening up’ of administrative datasets, digitalisation initiatives have uprooted established modes of public sector organisation and administration. And, as this paper suggests, they have also fundamentally transformed the political economy of the welfare state. Through a case study of Danish reforms between 2002 and 2019, the analysis finds that public sector digitalisation has entailed the transfer of responsibility for key infrastructure to private actors. Reforms in Denmark have not only been pursued in the name of public sector improvement and efficiency. A principal objective of public sector digitalisation has rather been the growth of Denmark’s nascent digital technology industries as part of the state’s wider export-led growth strategy, adopted in response to functional pressures on the welfare state model. The attempt to deliver fiscal stability in this way has, paradoxically, produced retrenchment of critical assets and capabilities. The paper’s findings hold important implications for states embarking on public sector digitalisation reforms, as well as possibilities for future research on how states can harness technological progress in the interests of citizens – without hollowing out in the process….(More)”.

Research directions in policy modeling: Insights from comparative analysis of recent projects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alexander Ronzhyn and Maria A. Wimmer: “With the increased availability of data and the capacity to make sense of these data, computational approaches to analyze, model and simulate public policy evolved toward viable instruments to deliberate, plan, and evaluate them in different areas of application. Such examples include infrastructure, mobility, monetary, or austerity policies, policies on different aspects of societies (health, pandemic, skills, inclusion, etc.). Technological advances along with the evolution of theoretical models and frameworks open valuable opportunities, while at the same time, posing new challenges. The paper investigates the current state of research in the domain and aims at identifying the most pressing areas for future research. This is done through both literature research of policy modeling and the analysis of research and innovation projects that either focus on policy modeling or involve it as a significant component of the research design. In the paper, 16 recent projects involving the keyword policy modeling were analyzed. The majority of projects concern the application of policy modeling to a specific domain or area of interest, while several projects tackled the cross-cutting topics (risk and crisis management). The detailed analysis of the projects led to topics of future research in the domain of policy modeling. Most prominent future research topics in policy modeling include stakeholder involvement approaches, applicability of research results, handling complexity of models, integration of models from different modeling and simulation paradigms and approaches, visualization of simulation results, real-time data processing, and scalability. These aspects require further research to appropriately contribute to further advance the field….(More)”.

Policy Impacts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “Over the past 50 years, researchers have made great strides in analyzing public policy. With better data and improved research methods, we know more than ever about the impacts of government spending.

But despite these advances, it remains surprisingly challenging to answer basic questions about which policies have been most effective.

The difficulty arises because methods for evaluating policy effectiveness are not standardized. This makes it challenging, if not impossible, to compare and contrast across different policies.

Policy Impacts seeks to promote a unified approach for policy evaluation. We seek to promote the Marginal Value of Public Funds, a standardized metric for policy evaluation. We have created the Policy Impacts library, a collaborative effort to track the returns to a wide range of government policies…(More).

Why don’t they ask us? The role of communities in levelling up

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Institute of Community Studies: “We are delighted to unveil a landmark research report, Why don’t they ask us? The role of communities in levelling up. The new report reveals that current approaches to regeneration and economic transformation are not working for the majority of local communities and their economies.

Its key findings are that:

  • Interventions have consistently failed to address the most deprived communities, contributing to a 0% average change in the relative spatial deprivation of the most deprived local authorities areas;
  • The majority of ‘macro funds’ and economic interventions over the last two decades have not involved communities in a meaningful nor sustainable way;
  • The focus of interventions to build local economic resilience typically concentrate on a relatively small number of approaches, which risks missing crucial dimensions of local need, opportunity and agency, and reinforcing gaps between the national and the hyper-local;
  • Interventions have tended to concentrate on ‘between-place’ spatial disparities in economic growth at the expense of ‘within-place’ inequalities that exist inside local authority boundaries, which is where the economic strength or weakness of a place is most keenly felt by communities.
  • Where funds and interventions have had higher levels of community involvement, these have typically been disconnected from the structures where decisions are taken, undermining their aim of building community power into local economic solutions…(More)”.

Seek diversity to solve complexity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Katrin Prager at Nature: “As a social scientist, I know that one person cannot solve a societal problem on their own — and even a group of very intelligent people will struggle to do it. But we can boost our chances of success if we ensure not only that the team members are intelligent, but also that the team itself is highly diverse.

By ‘diverse’ I mean demographic diversity encompassing things such as race, gender identity, class, ethnicity, career stage and age, and cognitive diversity, including differences in thoughts, insights, disciplines, perspectives, frames of reference and thinking styles. And the team needs to be purposely diverse instead of arbitrarily diverse.

In my work I focus on complex world problems, such as how to sustainably manage our natural resources and landscapes, and I’ve found that it helps to deliberately assemble diverse teams. This effort requires me to be aware of the different ways in which people can be diverse, and to reflect on my own preferences and biases. Sometimes the teams might not be as diverse as I’d like. But I’ve found that making the effort not only to encourage diversity, but also to foster better understanding between team members reaps dividends….(more)”

How to be a good ancestor

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sigal Samuel: “In 2015, 20 residents of Yahaba, a small town in northeastern Japan, went to their town hall to take part in a unique experiment.

Their goal was to design policies that would shape the future of Yahaba. They would debate questions typically reserved for politicians: Would it be better to invest in infrastructure or child care? Should we promote renewable energy or industrial farming?

But there was a twist. While half the citizens were invited to be themselves and express their own opinions, the remaining participants were asked to put on special ceremonial robes and play the part of people from the future. Specifically, they were told to imagine they were from the year 2060, meaning they’d be representing the interests of a future generation during group deliberations.

What unfolded was striking. The citizens who were just being themselves advocated for policies that would boost their lifestyle in the short term. But the people in robes advocated for much more radical policies — from massive health care investments to climate change action — that would be better for the town in the long term. They managed to convince their fellow citizens that taking that approach would benefit their grandkids. In the end, the entire group reached a consensus that they should, in some ways, act against their own immediate self-interest in order to help the future.

This experiment marked the beginning of Japan’s Future Design movement. What started in Yahaba has since been replicated in city halls around the country, feeding directly into real policymaking. It’s one example of a burgeoning global attempt to answer big moral questions: Do we owe it to future generations to take their interests into account? What does it look like to incorporate the preferences of people who don’t even exist yet? How can we be good ancestors?…(More)”.

The Diffusion of Disruptive Technologies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Nicholas Bloom, Tarek Alexander Hassan, Aakash Kalyani, Josh Lerner & Ahmed Tahoun: “We identify novel technologies using textual analysis of patents, job postings, and earnings calls. Our approach enables us to identify and document the diffusion of 29 disruptive technologies across firms and labor markets in the U.S. Five stylized facts emerge from our data. First, the locations where technologies are developed that later disrupt businesses are geographically highly concentrated, even more so than overall patenting. Second, as the technologies mature and the number of new jobs related to them grows, they gradually spread across space. While initial hiring is concentrated in high-skilled jobs, over time the mean skill level in new positions associated with the technologies declines, broadening the types of jobs that adopt a given technology. At the same time, the geographic diffusion of low-skilled positions is significantly faster than higher-skilled ones, so that the locations where initial discoveries were made retain their leading positions among high-paying positions for decades. Finally, these technology hubs are more likely to arise in areas with universities and high skilled labor pools….(More)”