Social Media and Civic Engagement. Scott P. Robertson

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СКАЧАТЬ a multiplication in opportunities for learning about civic issues and becoming involved in activism;

      • a potential for limiting perception of the common public good as aggregates of special interests gain more of the public attention and set more of the public agenda; and

      • a potential trade-off between liberty and deliberation about the common good.

      Several researchers, in studies of use of electronic portals like BEV, found that early adopters tended to be more civic minded than those who began using civic components of the internet later (Kohut, 1999; Patterson and Kavanaugh, 2001; Kavanaugh and Patterson, 2001). They argue that increases in civic engagement and community involvement that seem to be internet related are actually a phase of technology adoption rather than a true change in behavior.

2.3 OPEN GOVERNMENT

      As early as the 1950s it was recognized that data collected by the government was useful when aggregated across silos and also that it should be available to citizens (Parks, 1957). Political turmoil in the 1970s concerning leaked government documents (the Pentagon Papers in particular) created a lively discussion about citizens’ “right to know” about information that the government collected or created (Ivester, 1977), a controversy that finds new relevance in the era of Wikileaks. Jaeger, Bertot, and Shuler (2010) argue that access to and dissemination of government data are core founding principles in the U.S., and many European countries have similarly found the right of citizens to government data to be fundamental (Gomes and Soares, 2014). The open data movement has seen successes in many countries, including the establishment of data.gov and the associated Open Government Directive promulgated by the Obama administration in the U.S., and Open Data Strategy for Europe (European Commission, 2013), a United Nations Statement on Open Government Data for Citizen Engagement (United Nations, 2013), and many others (Gomes and Soares, 2014; Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2014a).

      The significance of the open data movement for changing the relations between citizens and governments is a major research area (Bertot et al. 2014; Ubaldi, 2013; Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2014b). However, there is an argument that the e-government portal movement should give way to the open data movement (Robinson et al., 2009), turning control of data organization, presentation, and interpretation over to non-government entities, media, and interested citizens. Proponents argue that open data will lead to greater transparency, and hence to better oversight by citizens (Andersen, 2009; Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes, 2010a), greater civic participation (Francolli, 2011; Wahid, 2012), and more informed collaboration and debate (Ubaldi, 2013). McDermott (2010) outlines transparency, participation, and collaboration as the three hallmarks of open government (cf. Meijer, Curtin, and Hillebrandt, 2012).

      A counterargument is that big data is too big and unorganized to be utilized effectively by anyone without significant digital tools and expertise and that big data is easily misinterpreted either intentionally or unintentionally. The most extreme form of this argument is that there is no such thing as “raw data” (Gitelman, 2013) and that all data has gone through some interpretive lens (Davies and Frank, 2013).

      Open government and big data initiatives bump up against social media when we consider the possibility of “Social Government,” or government and public services co-designed and co-produced by citizens and government entities (Bertot, Jaeger, and Grimes, 2010; Bertot, Jaeger, and Hanse, 2012; Bertot, Jaeger, Munson, and Glaisyer, 2010; Ferro et al., 2013; Mergel, 2013a; Scherer, Wimmer, and Strykowski, 2015). Attempts at designing social government systems, or at understanding how social government might be facilitated by social media platforms, identify several steps in co-production:

      • identifying problems and needs;

      • development of ideas;

      • design of services for the public;

      • implementation and diffusion of public services; and

      • monitoring of public services.

      Social government analysis recognizes that multiple stakeholders are involved in these steps, and social media can play the role of intermediary in bringing these stakeholders together. In this view, social media can be an enabler of crowdsourced problem solving involving citizens, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and others (Chun et al., 2010; Doan, Ramakrishnan, and Halevy, 2011). Exploring inter-organizational collaboration using an open social media platform called WeChat that connects government entities, citizens, and university stakeholders, Wang, Medaglia, and Jensen (2016) found that collaboration was characterized by an ad-hoc and non-linear management of time, a sense of shared commitment to the accomplishment of tasks, serendipitous recruitment of team members based on expertise, and a transition from formal/professional to informal/private collaboration. This type of networked, collaborative government is recognized in the public administration literature as “New Public Service” (Brainard and McNutt, 2010), and is considered the most desirable way for government and citizens to interact (Bonsón et al., 2012; Grunig and Grunig, 2008).

      Linders (2012) examines the impact of social technologies on the relationship between citizens and government. He notes that social media allows for the reemergence of “coproduction” whereby citizens are seen as partners in the development, implementation, and maintenance of government services. He explores three modes of coproduction:

      • Citizen Sourcing (C2G), which involves citizens providing government with information to improve services;

      • Government as a Platform (G2C) in which the government provides data and/or infrastructure on which citizens can build services;

      • Do It Yourself Government (C2C) in which citizens band together to carry out or augment functions with which governments are traditionally tasked.

      Linders further examines these modes of coproduction in the contexts of three stages of service delivery: design, execution, and monitoring. This allows for the analysis of systems into a 3×3 typology that crosses the modes of coproduction with the stages of service. For example, citizen-sourcing projects in the design phase might involve sharing citizen opinions with the government, as with eRulemaking systems. Citizen sourcing projects in the execution phase might involve crowdsourcing, as with challenge.gov where the government posts challenges and asks the public to propose solutions. Citizen sourcing projects in the monitoring phase might involve feedback from citizens about government services, as with various FixMyStreet applications that have appeared in many cities (King and Brown, 2007; Maeda, Sekimoto, and Seto, 2016).

2.4 SMART CITIES, “CIVIC TECH,” AND URBAN INFORMATICS

      At the current time, there is an emphasis on the concept of “smart cities.” The smart cities movement is an attempt to take advantage of the information generated by multiple independent data-producing activities within an environment in order to understand otherwise invisible interconnected processes. Naphade et al. (2011) characterize a smart city as a “system of systems” in which interdependent public and private systems share information with each other, and with metasystems, to provide an integrated overview for purposes of planning, management, and operational efficiency. Smart cities often rely on data-generating sensors and monitors in addition to modeling and visualization software. For example, a traffic planner might utilize GPS data from phones in cars, camera data on highway density, weather data generated by multiple stations, social media text generated by commuters, and a myriad of other diverse information sets to generate a view of current traffic conditions, which might then be made available to users in visualizations of various kinds for multiple purposes.

      The term “civic technology” (Civic Tech) has emerged to СКАЧАТЬ