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)”.

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)”.

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)”.

Organization after Social Media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open access book by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter :”Organized networks are an alternative to the social media logic of weak links and their secretive economy of data mining. They put an end to freestyle friends, seeking forms of empowerment beyond the brief moment of joyful networking. This speculative manual calls for nothing less than social technologies based on enduring time. Analyzing contemporary practices of organization through networks as new institutional forms, organized networks provide an alternative to political parties, trade unions, NGOs, and traditional social movements. Dominant social media deliver remarkably little to advance decision-making within digital communication infrastructures. The world cries for action, not likes.

Organization after Social Media explores a range of social settings from arts and design, cultural politics, visual culture and creative industries, disorientated education and the crisis of pedagogy to media theory and activism. Lovink and Rossiter devise strategies of commitment to help claw ourselves out of the toxic morass of platform suffocation….(More)”.

Essentials of the Right of Access to Public Information: An Introduction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Blanke, Hermann-Josef and Perlingeiro, Ricardo in the book “The Right of Access to Public Information : An International Comparative Legal Survey”: “The first freedom of information law was enacted in Sweden back in 1766 as the “Freedom of the Press and the Right of Access to Public Records Act”. It sets an example even today. However, the “triumph” of the freedom of information did not take place until much later. Many western legal systems arose from the American Freedom of Information Act, which was signed into law by President L.B. Johnson in 1966. This Act obliges all administrative authorities to provide information to citizens and imposes any necessary limitations. In an exemplary manner, it standardizes the objective of administrative control to protect citizens from government interference with their fundamental rights. Over 100 countries around the world have meanwhile implemented some form of freedom of information legislation. The importance of the right of access to information as an aspect of transparency and a condition for the rule of law and democracy is now also becoming apparent in international treaties at a regional level. This article provides an overview on the crucial elements and the guiding legal principles of transparency legislation, also by tracing back the lines of development of national and international case-law….(More)”.

Data Protection and e-Privacy: From Spam and Cookies to Big Data, Machine Learning and Profiling

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Lilian Edwards in L Edwards ed Law, Policy and the Internet (Hart , 2018): “In this chapter, I examine in detail how data subjects are tracked, profiled and targeted by their activities on line and, increasingly, in the “offline” world as well. Tracking is part of both commercial and state surveillance, but in this chapter I concentrate on the former. The European law relating to spam, cookies, online behavioural advertising (OBA), machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is examined in detail, using both the GDPR and the forthcoming draft ePrivacy Regulation. The chapter concludes by examining both code and law solutions which might find a way forward to protect user privacy and still enable innovation, by looking to paradigms not based around consent, and less likely to rely on a “transparency fallacy”. Particular attention is drawn to the new work around Personal Data Containers (PDCs) and distributed ML analytics….(More)”.

Civic Tech: Making Technology Work for People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Andrew Schrock: “The term “Civic Tech” has gained international recognition as a way to unite communities and government through technology design. But what does it mean for our shared future? In this book, Andrew Schrock cuts through the hype by telling stories of the people and ideas driving the movement. He argues that Civic Tech emerged in response to inequality and persistent social problems. The collaborative approaches and early successes of “techies” may not be easy solutions, but they exemplify a powerful political alternative. Civic Tech draws our attention to the challenges of public ownership and democratizing technology design—vital goals for the years ahead….(More)”.

The Open Revolution: Rewriting the rules of the information age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Rufus Pollock: “Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain—it’s about ownership. Because, in a digital age, who owns information controls the future.

In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows how today’s “Closed” digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality, to unaffordable medicines, to the power of a handful of tech monopolies to control how we think and vote. He proposes a solution that charts a path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable future for all….(More)”.

The Participation Gap: Social Status and Political Inequality

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Russell Dalton: “The dilemma of democracy arises from two contrasting trends. More people in the established democracies are participating in civil society activity, contacting government officials, protesting, and using online activism and other creative forms of participation. At the same time, the importance of social status as an influence on political activity is increasing. The democratic principle of the equality of voice is eroding. The politically rich are getting richer-and the politically needy have less voice.

This book assembles an unprecedented set of international public opinion surveys to identify the individual, institutional, and political factors that produce these trends. New forms of activity place greater demands on participants, raising the importance of social status skills and resources. Civil society activity further widens the participation gap. New norms of citizenship shift how people participate. And generational change and new online forms of activism accentuate this process. Effective and representative government requires a participatory citizenry and equal voice, and participation trends are undermining these outcomes.

The Participation Gap both documents the growing participation gap in contemporary democracies and suggests ways that we can better achieve their theoretical ideal of a participatory citizenry and equal voice….(More)”.