Engaging Citizens in Policy Making

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Access book edited by Tiina Randma-Liiv and Veiko Lember: “Public administrations play a key role in the development of e-participation (Medaglia, 2012, p. 351), whether they are responsible for organizing and managing top-down online opportunities and other communication channels with which citizens can engage in the political arena or they partner up with bottom-up e-participation initiatives (Gil-Garcia, 2012; Welch and Feeney, 2014).

Following the knowledge gaps outlined above, this book will therefore focus on the ‘supply side’ of e-participation research (Krishnan et al., 2012). More specifically, the book will shed light on the national-, organizational- and individual-level context surrounding various e-participation initiatives. The demand side will be covered to some extent from the politico-administrative perspective in order to gauge how these issues are contextualized and dealt with by governments. While focusing on the ‘non-technical’ part of e-participation, this book does not limit itself to single-country case studies but intends to compare various administrative characteristics where e-participation initiatives are operating.

Furthermore, this book tries to avoid the normative trap usually associated with the theory and practice of participatory policy making. This means that it is not necessarily assumed that participation could or should be a feasible alternative to more hierarchical policy making or that more participation automatically equals more democracy or better policy or that the use of digital technology automatically leads to more meaningful participation. The normative bias present in e-participation research is a methodological challenge that must be acknowledged….(More)”.

Sustainable Smart City Transitions: Theoretical Foundations, Sociotechnical Assemblage and Governance Mechanisms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Luca Mora, Mark Deakin, Xiaoling Zhang, Michael Batty, Martin de Jong, Paolo Santi and Francesco Paolo Appio: “This book enhances the reader’s understanding of the theoretical foundations, sociotechnical assemblage, and governance mechanisms of sustainable smart city transitions.

Drawing on empirical evidence stemming from existing smart city research, the book begins by advancing a theory of sustainable smart city transitions, which forms bridges between smart city development studies and some of the key assumptions underpinning transition management and system innovation research, human geography, spatial planning, and critical urban scholarship. This interdisciplinary theoretical formulation details how smart city transitions unfold and how they should be conceptualized and enacted in order to be assembled as sustainable developments. The proposed theory of sustainable smart city transitions is then enriched by the findings of investigations into the planning and implementation of smart city transition strategies and projects.

Focusing on different empirical settings, change dimensions, and analytical elements, the attention moves from the sociotechnical requirements of citywide transition pathways to the development of sector-specific smart city projects and technological innovations, in particular in the fields of urban mobility and urban governance.

This book represents a relevant reference work for academic and practitioner audiences, policy makers, and representative of smart city industries….(More) (Open Access)”.

The Behavioral Code

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine: “Why do most Americans wear seatbelts but continue to speed even though speeding fines are higher? Why could park rangers reduce theft by removing “no stealing” signs? Why was a man who stole 3 golf clubs sentenced to 25 years in prison?

Some laws radically change behavior whereas others are consistently ignored and routinely broken. And yet we keep relying on harsh punishment against crime despite its continued failure.

Professors Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine draw on decades of research to uncover the behavioral code: the root causes and hidden forces that drive human behavior and our responses to society’s laws. In doing so, they present the first accessible analysis of behavioral jurisprudence, which will fundamentally alter how we understand the connection between law and human behavior.

The Behavioral Code offers a necessary and different approach to battling crime and injustice that is based in understanding the science of human misconduct—rather than relying on our instinctual drive to punish as a way to shape behavior. The book reveals the behavioral code’s hidden role through illustrative examples like:

   • The illusion of the US’s beloved tax refund
   • German walls that “pee back” at public urinators
   • The $1,000 monthly “good behavior” reward that reduced gun violence
   • Uber’s backdoor “Greyball” app that helped the company evade Seattle’s taxi regulators
   • A $2.3 billion legal settlement against Pfizer that revealed how whistleblower protections fail to reduce corporate malfeasance
   • A toxic organizational culture playing a core role in Volkswagen’s emissions cheating scandal
   • How Peter Thiel helped Hulk Hogan sue Gawker into oblivion…(More)”.

Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Angèle Christin: “When the news moved online, journalists suddenly learned what their audiences actually liked, through algorithmic technologies that scrutinize web traffic and activity. Has this advent of audience metrics changed journalists’ work practices and professional identities? In Metrics at Work, Angèle Christin documents the ways that journalists grapple with audience data in the form of clicks, and analyzes how new forms of clickbait journalism travel across national borders.

Drawing on four years of fieldwork in web newsrooms in the United States and France, including more than one hundred interviews with journalists, Christin reveals many similarities among the media groups examined—their editorial goals, technological tools, and even office furniture. Yet she uncovers crucial and paradoxical differences in how American and French journalists understand audience analytics and how these affect the news produced in each country. American journalists routinely disregard traffic numbers and primarily rely on the opinion of their peers to define journalistic quality. Meanwhile, French journalists fixate on internet traffic and view these numbers as a sign of their resonance in the public sphere. Christin offers cultural and historical explanations for these disparities, arguing that distinct journalistic traditions structure how journalists make sense of digital measurements in the two countries.

Contrary to the popular belief that analytics and algorithms are globally homogenizing forces, Metrics at Work shows that computational technologies can have surprisingly divergent ramifications for work and organizations worldwide…(More)”.

Open Data Governance and Its Actors: Theory and Practice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Maxat Kassen: “This book combines theoretical and practical knowledge about key actors and driving forces that help to initiate and advance open data governance. Using Finland and Sweden as case studies, it sheds light on the roles of key actors in the open data movement, enabling researchers to understand the key operational elements of data-driven governance. It also examines the most salient manifestations of related networking activities, the motivations of stakeholders, and the political and socioeconomic readiness of the public, private and civic sectors to advance such policies. The book will appeal to e-government experts, policymakers and political scientists, as well as academics and students of public administration, public policy, and open data governance…(More)”.

The Political Philosophy of AI: An Introduction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mark Coeckelbergh: “Political issues people care about such as racism, climate change, and democracy take on new urgency and meaning in the light of technological developments such as AI. How can we talk about the politics of AI while moving beyond mere warnings and easy accusations?

This is the first accessible introduction to the political challenges related to AI. Using political philosophy as a unique lens through which to explore key debates in the area, the book shows how various political issues are already impacted by emerging AI technologies: from justice and discrimination to democracy and surveillance. Revealing the inherently political nature of technology, it offers a rich conceptual toolbox that can guide efforts to deal with the challenges raised by what turns out to be not only artificial intelligence but also artificial power.

This timely and original book will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy of technology and political philosophy, as well as tech developers, innovation leaders, policy makers, and anyone interested in the impact of technology on society…(More)”.

Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jacob Mchangama: A global history of free speech, from the ancient world to today. Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.

In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech’s many defenders—from the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Rāzī, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activists—Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes.

Meticulously researched and deeply humane, Free Speech demonstrates how much we have gained from this principle—and how much we stand to lose without it…(More)”.

An archaeology of innovation: Approaching social and technological change in human society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Catherine J. Frieman: “This book is the first monograph-length investigation of innovation and the innovation process from an archaeological perspective. We live in a world where innovation, innovativeness, creativity, and invention are almost laughably over-used buzzwords. Yet comparatively little research has been carried out on the long-term history of innovation beyond and before the Industrial Revolution. This monograph offers both a response and a sort of answer to the wider trans-disciplinary dialogue on innovation, invention, and technological and social change. The idea of innovation that permeates our popular media and our political and scientific discourse is set against the long-term perspective that only archaeology can offer in dialogue with a range of social theory about the development of new technologies and social structures. The book offers a new version of the story of human inventiveness from our earliest hominin ancestors to the present day. In doing so, it challenges the contemporary lionization of disruptive technologies, while also setting the post-Industrial-Revolution innovation boom into a deeper temporal and wider cultural context. It argues that the present narrow focus on pushing the adoption of technical innovations ignores the complex interplay of social, technological, and environmental systems that underlies truly innovative societies; the inherent connections between new technologies, technologists, and social structure that give them meaning and make them valuable; and the significance and value of conservative social practices that lead to the frequent rejection of innovations…(More)”.

The Voltage Effect

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by John A. List: “Scale” has become a favored buzzword in the startup world. But scale isn’t just about accumulating more users or capturing more market share. It’s about whether an idea that takes hold in a small group can do the same in a much larger one—whether you’re growing a small business, rolling out a diversity and inclusion program, or delivering billions of doses of a vaccine. 

Translating an idea into widespread impact, says University of Chicago economist John A. List, depends on one thing only: whether it can achieve “high voltage”—the ability to be replicated at scale. 

In The Voltage Effect, List explains that scalable ideas share a common set of attributes, while any number of attributes can doom an unscalable idea. Drawing on his original research, as well as fascinating examples from the realms of business, policymaking, education, and public health, he identifies five measurable vital signs that a scalable idea must possess, and offers proven strategies for avoiding voltage drops and engineering voltage gains. You’ll learn:

•  How celebrity chef Jamie Oliver expanded his restaurant empire by focusing on scalable “ingredients” (until it collapsed because talent doesn’t scale)
•  Why the failure to detect false positives early on caused the Reagan-era drug-prevention program to backfire at scale
•  How governments could deliver more services to more citizens if they focused on the last dollar spent
•  How one education center leveraged positive spillovers to narrow the achievement gap across the entire community
•  Why the right set of incentives, applied at scale, can boost voter turnout, increase clean energy use, encourage patients to consistently take their prescribed medication, and more…(More)”.

Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Congressman Ro Khanna: “… offers a revolutionary roadmap to facing America’s digital divide, offering greater economic prosperity to all. In Khanna’s vision, “just as people can move to technology, technology can move to people. People need not be compelled to move from one place to another to reap the benefits offered by technological progress” (from the foreword by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics).

In the digital age, unequal access to technology and the revenue it creates is one of the most pressing issues facing the United States. There is an economic gulf between those who have struck gold in the tech industry and those left behind by the digital revolution; a geographic divide between those in the coastal tech industry and those in the heartland whose jobs have been automated; and existing inequalities in technological access—students without computers, rural workers with spotty WiFi, and plenty of workers without the luxury to work from home.

Dignity in the Digital Age tackles these challenges head-on and imagines how the digital economy can create opportunities for people all across the country without uprooting them. Congressman Ro Khanna of Silicon Valley offers a vision for democratizing digital innovation to build economically vibrant and inclusive communities. Instead of being subject to tech’s reshaping of our economy, Representative Khanna argues that we must channel those powerful forces toward creating a more healthy, equal, and democratic society.

Born into an immigrant family, Khanna understands how economic opportunity can change the course of a person’s life. Anchored by an approach Khanna refers to as “progressive capitalism,” he shows how democratizing access to tech can strengthen every sector of economy and culture. By expanding technological jobs nationwide through public and private partnerships, we can close the wealth gap in America and begin to repair the fractured, distrusting relationships that have plagued our country for far too long.

Moving deftly between storytelling, policy, and some of the country’s greatest thinkers in political philosophy and economics, Khanna presents a bold vision we can’t afford to ignore. Dignity in a Digital Age is a roadmap to how we can seek dignity for every American in an era in which technology shapes every aspect of our lives…(More)”.