Mechanisms for Researcher Access to Online Platform Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Status Report by the EU/USA: “Academic and civil society research on prominent online platforms has become a crucial way to understand the information environment and its impact on our societies. Scholars across the globe have leveraged application programming interfaces (APIs) and web crawlers to collect public user-generated content and advertising content on online platforms to study societal issues ranging from technology-facilitated gender-based violence, to the impact of media on mental health for children and youth. Yet, a changing landscape of platforms’ data access mechanisms and policies has created uncertainty and difficulty for critical research projects.


The United States and the European Union have a shared commitment to advance data access for researchers, in line with the high-level principles on access to data from online platforms for researchers announced at the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC) Ministerial Meeting in May 2023.1 Since the launch of the TTC, the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) has gone into effect, requiring providers of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs) to provide increased transparency into their services. The DSA includes provisions on transparency reports, terms and conditions, and explanations for content moderation decisions. Among those, two provisions provide important access to publicly available content on platforms:


• DSA Article 40.12 requires providers of VLOPs/VLOSEs to provide academic and civil society researchers with data that is “publicly accessible in their online interface.”
• DSA Article 39 requires providers of VLOPs/VLOSEs to maintain a public repository of advertisements.

The announcements related to new researcher access mechanisms mark an important development and opportunity to better understand the information environment. This status report summarizes a subset of mechanisms that are available to European and/or United States researchers today, following, in part VLOPs and VLOSEs measures to comply with the DSA. The report aims at showcasing the existing access modalities and encouraging the use of these mechanisms to study the impact of online platform’s design and decisions on society. The list of mechanisms reviewed is included in the Appendix…(More)”

Feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Paloma Caravantes and Emanuela Lombardo: “This article examines the potential of feminist democratic innovations in policy and institutional politics. It examines how feminist democratic innovations can be conceptualised and articulated in local institutions. Combining theories on democratic governance, feminist democracy, social movements, municipalism, decentralisation, gender equality policies and state feminism, it conceptualises feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics as innovations oriented at (a) transforming knowledge, (b) transforming policymaking and public funding, (c) transforming institutions, and (d) transforming actors’ coalitions. Through analysis of municipal plans and interviews with key actors, the article examines feminist democratic innovations in the policy and politics of Barcelona’s local government from 2015 to 2023. Emerging from the mobilisation of progressive social movements after the 2008 economic crisis, the findings uncover a laboratory of feminist municipal politics, following the election of a new government and self-proclaimed feminist mayor. Critical actors and an enabling political context play a pivotal role in the adoption of this feminist institutional politics. The article concludes by arguing that feminist institutional politics at the local level contribute to democratising policy and politics in innovative ways, in particular encouraging inclusive intersectionality and participatory discourses and practices…(More)”.and 

This City Pilots Web3 Quadratic Funding for Public Infrastructure

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Makoto Takahiro: “The city of Split, Croatia is piloting an innovative new system for deciding how to fund municipal infrastructure projects. Called “quadratic funding,” the mechanism aims to fairly account for both public and private preferences when allocating limited budget resources.

A coalition of organizations including BlockSplit, Funding the Commons, Gitcoin, and the City of Split launched the Municipal Quadratic Funding Initiative in September 2023. The project goals include implementing quadratic funding for prioritizing public spending, utilizing web3 tools to increase transparency and participation, and demonstrating the potential of these technologies to improve legacy processes.

If successful, the model could scale to other towns and cities or inspire additional quadratic funding experiments.

The partners believe that the transparency and configurability of blockchain systems make them well-suited to quadratic funding applications.

Quadratic funding mathematically accounts for the intensity of demand for public goods. Groups can create projects which individuals can support financially. The amount of money ultimately directed to each proposal is based on the square of support received. This means that projects attracting larger numbers of smaller contributions can compete with those receiving fewer large donations.

In this way, quadratic funding aims to reflect both willingness to pay and breadth of support in funding decisions. It attempts to break tendency towards corruption where influential groups lobby for their niche interests. The goal is a fairer allocation suited to the whole community’s preferences.

The initiative will build on open source quadratic funding infrastructure already deployed for other uses like funding public goods on Ethereum. Practical web3 tools can help teadministration manage funding rounds and disburse awards…(More)”.

Designing an instrument for scaling public sector innovations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mirte A R van Hout, Rik B Braams, Paul Meijer, and Albert J Meijer: “Governments worldwide invest in developing and diffusing innovations to deal with wicked problems. While experiments and pilots flourish, governments struggle to successfully scale innovations. Public sector scaling remains understudied, and scholarly suggestions for scaling trajectories are lacking. Following a design approach, this research develops an academically grounded, practice-oriented scaling instrument for planning and reflecting on the scaling of public sector innovations. We design this instrument based on the academic literature, an empirical analysis of three scaling projects at the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and six focus groups with practitioners. This research proposes a context-specific and iterative understanding of scaling processes and contributes a typology of scaling barriers and an additional scaling strategy to the literature. The presented instrument increases our academic understanding of scaling and enables teams of policymakers, in cooperation with stakeholders, to plan and reflect on a context-specific scaling pathway for public sector innovations…(More)”.

Digital transformation of public services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Policy Brief by Interreg Europe: “In a world of digital advancements, the public sector must undergo a comprehensive digital transformation to enhance service delivery efficiency, improve governance, foster innovation and increase citizen satisfaction.

The European Union is playing a leading role and has been actively developing policy frameworks for the digitalisation of the public sector. This policy brief provides a general overview of the most relevant initiatives, regulations, and strategies of the European Union, which are shaping Europe’s digital future.

The European Union’s strategy for the digital transformation of public services is centred on enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and user-centricity. This strategy also promotes interoperability among Member States, fostering seamless cross-border interactions. Privacy and security measures are integral to building trust in digital public services, with a focus on data protection and cybersecurity. Ultimately, the goal is to create a cohesive, digitally advanced public service ecosystem throughout the EU, with the active participation of the private sector (GovTech).

This policy brief outlines key policy improvements, good practices and recommendations, stemming from the Interreg Europe projects BEST DIH, BETTER, ENAIBLER, Next2Met, Digital Regions, Digitourism, Inno Provement, ERUDITE, iBuy and Carpe Digem, to inform and guide policymakers to embark upon digital transformation processes successfully, as well as encouraging greater interregional cooperation…(More)”.

Objectivity vs affect: how competing forms of legitimacy can polarize public debate in data-driven public consultation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alison Powell: “How do data and objectivity become politicized? How do processes intended to include citizen voices instead push them into social media that intensify negative expression? This paper examines the possibility and limits of ‘agonistic data practices’ (Crooks & Currie, 2021) examining how data-driven consultation practices create competing forms of legitimacy for quantifiable knowledge and affective lived experience. Drawing on a two-year study of a private Facebook group self-presenting as a supportive space for working-class people critical of the development of ‘low-traffic neighbourhoods’ (LTNs), the paper reveals how the dynamics of ‘affective polarization’ associated the use of data with elite and exclusionary politics. Participants addressed this by framing their online contributions as ‘vernacular data’ and also by associating numerical data with exclusion and inequality. Over time the strong statements of feeling began to support content of a conspiratorial nature, reflected at the social level of discourse in the broader media environment where stories of strong feeling gain legitimacy in right-wing sources. The paper concludes that ideologies of dataism and practices of datafication may create conditions for political extremism to develop when the potential conditions of ‘agonistic data practices’ are not met, and that consultation processes must avoid overly valorizing data and calculable knowledge if they wish to retain democratic accountability…(More)”.

EBP+: Integrating science into policy evaluation using Evidential Pluralism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Joe Jones, Alexandra Trofimov, Michael Wilde & Jon Williamson: “…While the need to integrate scientific evidence in policymaking is clear, there isn’t a universally accepted framework for doing so in practice. Orthodox evidence-based approaches take Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) as the gold standard of evidence. Others argue that social policy issues require theory-based methods to understand the complexities of policy interventions. These divisions may only further decrease trust in science at this critical time.

EBP+ offers a broader framework within which both orthodox and theory-based methods can sit. EBP+ also provides a systematic account of how to integrate and evaluate these different types of evidence. EBP+ can offer consistency and objectivity in policy evaluation, and could yield a unified approach that increases public trust in scientifically-informed policy…

EBP+ is motivated by Evidential Pluralism, a philosophical theory of causal enquiry that has been developed over the last 15 years. Evidential Pluralism encompasses two key claims. The first, object pluralism, says that establishing that A is a cause of B (e.g., that a policy intervention causes a specific outcome) requires establishing both that A and B are appropriately correlated and that there is some mechanism which links the two and which can account for the extent of the correlation. The second claim, study pluralism, maintains that assessing whether A is a cause of B requires assessing both association studies (studies that repeatedly measure A and B, together with potential confounders, to measure their association) and mechanistic studies (studies of features of the mechanisms linking A to B), where available…(More)”.

A diagrammatic representation of Evidential Pluralism
Evidential Pluralism (© Jon Williamson)

Citizen Jury on New Genomic Techniques

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kai P. Purnhagen and Alexandra Molitorisova: “Between 26-28 January 2024, a citizen jury was convened at the Schloss Thurnau in Upper Franconia, Germany to deliberate about new genomic techniques (NGTs) used in agriculture and food/feed production, ahead of the vote of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on the European Commission’s proposal for a regulation on plants obtained by certain NGTs and their food and feed. This report serves as a policy brief with all observations, assessments, and recommendations agreed by the jury with a minimum of 75 percent of the jurors’ votes. This report aims to provide policymakers, stakeholders, and the public with perspectives and considerations surrounding the use of NGTs in agriculture and food/feed production, as articulated by the members of the jury. There are 18 final recommendations produced by the jury. Through thoughtful analysis and dialogue, the jury sought to contribute to informed decision-making processes…(More)”.

Central banks use AI to assess climate-related risks

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Article by Huw Jones: “Central bankers said on Tuesday they have broken new ground by using artificial intelligence to collect data for assessing climate-related financial risks, just as the volume of disclosures from banks and other companies is set to rise.

The Bank for International Settlements, a forum for central banks, the Bank of Spain, Germany’s Bundesbank and the European Central Bank said their experimental Gaia AI project was used to analyse company disclosures on carbon emissions, green bond issuance and voluntary net-zero commitments.

Regulators of banks, insurers and asset managers need high-quality data to assess the impact of climate-change on financial institutions. However, the absence of a single reporting standard confronts them with a patchwork of public information spread across text, tables and footnotes in annual reports.

Gaia was able to overcome differences in definitions and disclosure frameworks across jurisdictions to offer much-needed transparency, and make it easier to compare indicators on climate-related financial risks, the central banks said in a joint statement.

Despite variations in how the same data is reported by companies, Gaia focuses on the definition of each indicator, rather than how the data is labelled.

Furthermore, with the traditional approach, each additional key performance indicator, or KPI, and each new institution requires the analyst to either search for the information in public corporate reports or contact the institution for information…(More)”.

Ukrainians Are Using an App to Return Home

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Yuliya Panfil and Allison Price: “Two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the human toll continues to mount. At least 11 million people have been displaced by heavy bombing, drone strikes, and combat, and well over a million homes have been damaged or destroyed. But just miles from the front lines of what is a conventional land invasion, something decidedly unconventional has been deployed to help restore Ukrainian communities.

Thousands of families whose homes have been hit by Russian shelling are using their smartphones to file compensation claims, access government funds, and begin to rebuild their homes. This innovation is part of eRecovery, the world’s first-ever example of a government compensation program for damaged or destroyed homes rolled out digitally, at scale, in the midst of a war. It’s one of the ways in which Ukraine’s tech-savvy government and populace have leaned into digital solutions to help counter Russian aggression with resilience and a speedier approach to reconstruction and recovery.

According to Ukraine’s Housing, Land and Property Technical Working Group, since its launch last summer eRecovery has processed more than 83,000 compensation claims for damaged or destroyed property and paid out more than 45,000. In addition, more than half a million Ukrainians have taken the first step in the compensation process by filing a property damage report through Ukraine’s e-government platform, Diia. eRecovery’s potential to transform the way governments get people back into their homes following a war, natural disaster, or other calamity is hard to overstate…(More)”.