ICTlogy

Together with other people, I am working in a project that includes a sort of catalogue of online participation tools. In three senses:

• What different tools are out there (e.g. blogs)
• Which and how have they been used (e.g. Howard Dean’s blog)
• How can we depict and/or categorize them (e.g. top-down communication, possibility to gather feedback through comments, text-based, Internet based, etc.)

What I am here presenting is the alfa-über-draft version of the preliminary and potential taxonomy that we might be using to categorize online participation tools. And I am openly (and sincerely and earnestly and humbly) asking for comments and examples:

1. Comments on the taxonomy
2. Examples of kinds of online participation tools (e.g. maps)
3. Examples of actual cases of usage of online participation tools (e.g. Ushahidi in Kenya)

Needless to say that the final taxonomy, and list of tools and collection of practices will be shared here. Thank you very much.

A taxonomy of online participation tools

General Description

Name of tool

General category (do we accept more than one category per tool? e.g. Is Twitter nanoblogging and a social networking site? Should we speak about Twitter or about nanoblogging (which would include Yammer, WordPress’s P2, etc.)?

• Forum, Blog, Wiki, Map, Social Networking Site, Photo, Video, Documents, etc.

Kind of Content

• Text
• Multimedia (Photo, Video, Audio…)
• Application/database (e.g. Ushahidi, FixMyStreet)

Examples of tools

Examples of usage / cases

Field of participation

Directionality: qualitative

• Unidirectional (e.g. web page)
• Asymmetric Bidirectional (e.g. blog+comments)
• Symmetric Bidirectional (e.g. forum)

Directionality: quantitative

• One to one
• One to many
• Many to many
• Hybrid (some of the above in the same tool, e.g. Facebook)

Direction (will depend on specific case?)

• Top-down
• Bottom-up
• Both

Participation: level (inspired in, among others, Arnstein, 1969)

• Information: unidirectional exchange of information (Arnstein 1-3)
• Management / consultation / debate: bidirectional exchange of information (Arnstein 4-5)
• Relationship: the exchange of information ends up in specific results (Arnstein 6)
• Desicion: results are binding or have a direct impact (Arnstein 7-8)

Participation: scope

• Government
• Citizenry / grassroots
• Parties / political organizations

Participation: goal

• Accountability, transparency, monitoring
• Propaganda, political message
• Report, complaint, petition

Field of technology

Cost

• Free
• Freemium
• Paid service
• Own development

Hosting

• Online Service (e.g. Google applications)
• (self-)hosted application (e.g. LimeSurvey)
• Both (e.g. WordPress)

Difficulty / skills (too subjective?)

• Basic
• Advanced
• Expert

Platform

• Internet
• Mobile phone
• Other (e.g. digital TV)
• Crossmedia

Notes from the research seminar Organizations and Political Participation in the Age of Digital Media held at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, on January 18th, 2010.

Collective Action within Organizations in the Age of Digital Media
Bruce Bimber

This seminar is based on a project by Bruce Bimber, Cynthia Stohl and Andrew Flanagin.

We find new ways to organize people around causes, like Immigration Reform on Facebook. The question is: under what circumstances do we need these new ways of organization, and under which do we need traditional ways of organization (i.e. around institutions and gathering in brick and mortar buildings). What does it mean to be a traditional organization? What does it mean to be a member of a traditional organization in a digital environment?

What does organization-based collective action look like today in the US? People in the US belong to 1.98 organizations on average (twice the average in Europe, 5 times the average in Spain). Thus, we cannot (only) look at memberships, as “everyone” is a member of an organization.

Literature on participation tells who is more likely — depending on personal attributes — to participate in an organization, but not which organization is more likely to be more popular or have more members. So, we should focus on organization-specific attributes:

• Goal agreement: people will participate more in organizations whose goals are more in line with theirs
• Value agreement: people will participate more in organizations whose values are more in line with theirs
• Civic & social motivation: reasons why you join a community (complaint, meet kindred souls, etc.)

On the other hand, we can also find literature on the impact of digital media on participation. But, again, over time the Internet will be less likely to discriminate behaviour as time and frequency of being online, or digital skills become generalized across socio-economic statuses.

Last, traditionally organizations have been classified in discrete categories: civic associations vs. interest groups, centralized/bureaucratic vs. decentralised/horizontal vs. networks, online vs. not-online. Our perspective is different: interaction is impersonal vs. personal, engagement with goals and activities of the organization is institutional vs. entrepreneurial. Combination of these:

• Entrepreneurial + Impersonal
• Entrepreneurial + Personal: e.g. support group, where members decide what to do and on a very personal basis
• Institutional + Personal: e.g. institutions that open chat groups, send personal mail
• Institutional + Impersonal: e.g. World Wildlife Fund, where the institution mainly tells their members what to do

Amnesty International spreads over all categories (skewed towards Institutional + Impersonal), like Greenpeace (more centred than Amnesty International).

To test the hypothesis, surveys run on three organizations, different amongst them in their typology: American Legion, People’s Lobby and The Voters.

Dependent variables: participation in pursuit of group goals via writing, volunteering, donating; identification with the group.
Independent variables: standard predictors of participation, controls for level of participation in other activities, interaction and engagement, organization-specific attributes, technology use.

A first result, though very week, is that being on an entrepreneurial+personal organization makes you more participative in comparison with being in other organizations. Civic and social motivation is also a good explanation for people being more participative. But, in general, results are not very strong (R² below 0.4 for participation, below 0.5. for identification).

Regarding the relationship between engagement and interaction, the extent of within-group variation in interaction and engagement is comparable to that of across-group variation.

The predictors of participation in collective action vary by quadrant across collective action space.

• Entrepreneurial + Impersonal organizations have individualists: people hard to predict, motivated people but with no specific profile
• Entrepreneurial + Personal organizations hold embeddeds, people with high motivation and faithful to the organization, and with high(er) levels of education
• Institutional + Personal organizations have traditionalists, people with high motivation and that are faithful to the organization
• Institutional + Impersonal collect instrumentalists, lowest level of trust with the organization and the values, and the members are involved in many activities for several and different reasons

Summary

• The four quadrants of collective action space are associated with four reasonably distinct collective action types
• Civic and social motivation is the most important predictor
• People’s involvement in other civic activities translates into contributions to collective action mainly for individualists
• Technology use is associated consistently with participation for all four types
• Technology use matters chiefly when it is tied to the organization itself, rather than in the form of general computer skills or time online
• Membership looks somewhat different for different people, as a function of interaction and engagement
• What matters about organiztions is how hey facilitate interaction and engagement, not just their objective structure
• People are less similar than commonly assumed, while organizations are more similar, but to see this we need to look at both together.

Discussion

Q: Can people have different profiles depending on the organization they’re in? Bimber: (we don’t have time series but, so we don’t know, but) it is probable that this happens and, indeed, that people change profile over time. Nevertheless, we do not know and it can be true that what really happens is that people have a specific way of doing things.

Ana Sofía Cardenal: how is motivation measured? Isn’t it “suspicious” that motivation always comes so strong? Bimber: motivation is measured in different ways so to avoid cheating. But there might be some degree of endogenous relationships between variables. But people have different reasons for joining in and these reasons matter.

Michael Jensen: How do we cope with people being that different and nevertheless joining “similar” organizations? Bimber: More dynamic organizations engage in conversations with their members and adapt to their needs/requirements, so there is a feedback that redefines the organization. But still, technology is only a context, there is no core technology.

Derrick de Kerckhove: how are the four categories related with people’s lifestyles? Bimber: It would be interesting to know how an individual evolves through categories as his own personal lifestyle varies.

See also

For a paper I am preparing about Politics 2.0 in Spain — and that has already produced a definition of Politics 2.0 — I had to gather quite a good bunch of literature. There is quite some information about online politics, some about politics 2.0, but very few about Politics 2.0, especially academic literature about Politics 2.0 in Spain, which is scarce. Thus, writing that paper has required some interesting academic juggling.

Below I’ve listed the bibliography that so far I’m using to structure and back my paper. Beyond the bibliography that follows, three events helped much in collecting insights, ideas and find many interesting references. My gratitude to the speakers at these events:

• 5th Internet, Law and Politics Conference: The Pros and Cons of Social Networking Sites
• Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement?
• 4th Internet, Law and Politics Congress: Towards citizenship 2.0?

Tag cloud of the bibliography

A bibliography on Spanish online politics and Politics 2.0

In 2005, Tim O’Reilly published a seminal article — What Is Web 2.0 — in which he provided a definition for the term Web 2.0, which had gained a huge momentum during the previous year since the first edition of the Web 2.0 Conference in October 2004.

The concept gathered both technological and philosophical (in the sense of behaviours and attitudes) issues. At the technological level, it dealt about the importance of the web as a delivery (of content and services) platform by excellence; data as the core component of all kind of communications and interchanges; software as a service and not a product, then becoming more important access to software than its “physical” purchase; predominance to RSS and associated procedures for the exchange of content; or (while keeping the importance of the web as a platform) the need to create technologies that were portable across devices. At the philosophical level, and both cause and consequence of the technological advances, the spread (and enabling) of a contribution and participation culture by the society at large (and not only by institutions or organized associations); the acknowledgement that anyone could actually contribute with their knowledge and opinion (the “wisdom of crowds”); the raise of a culture of mixing, assembling and aggregating content; and the will to have rich user experiences when interacting online (vs. A passive, unidirectional, monotonous approach which had been common ground in the previous years).

Besides the “formal” definition of the Web 2.0, it has more often been described through some tools and the new and characteristic ways of using them: the blog and the nanoblog, the wiki, social bookmarking, photo and video sharing websites, tagging and “folksonomies”, syndication and aggregation, etc.

After this philosophical approach – boosted by the technological advancements – many have adapted some of the core definitions to many aspects of life. Thus, for instance, Education 2.0 often referred to as a shift from unidirectional lecturing towards a more participatory approach of learning, based in collaboratively creating learning materials, an intensive usage of web 2.0 tools, or openness and sharing of the process of learning, just to name a few. And along with Education, we can find debates around Research 2.0, Culture 2.0, Government 2.0, Journalism 2.0, Enterprise 2.0… and Politics 2.0.

But, quite often, we do not find specific definitions for such concepts, taking for granted that the reader will be able to do the translation from the Web 2.0 to the Whatever 2.0. I here provide my own definition of Politics 2.0, which I needed for a paper I am preparing about Politics 2.0 in Spain:

• Ideas: not closed and packaged propaganda. Ideas that can be spread, shared and transformed by members of the party and partisans, sympathizers and supporter, and the society at large;
• Open data: ideas are backed by incredible amounts of data and information made openly available to the general public, and most time provided with open licenses that allow their reuse and remix;
• Participation: of all and every kind of people and institutions, blurring the edges of the “structures” and permeating the walls of institutions, making communication more horizontal and plural;
• Loss of control of the emission of the message, that now can be transferred outside of mainstream media and diffused on a peer-to-peer and many-to-many basis by means of web 2.0 tools;
• Loss of control of the creation itself of the message: being data and participation available, web 2.0 tools at anyone’s reach, and with minimum digital competences, the message can even be created and spread bottom up;
• Acknowledgement, hence, of the citizen as some who can be trusted (and used) as a one-man think-tank and a one-man communication-media;
• Reversely, possibility to reach each and every opinion, target personal individuals with customized messages, by means of rich data and web 2.0 tools, thus accessing a long tail of voters that are far from the median voter;
• Construction of an ideology, building of a discourse, setting up goals, campaigning and government become a continuum that feedbacks in real time.

I admit that this is neither a usual or a formal description, nor a comprehensive set of characteristics. I believe, though, that it could serve in providing a fair framework to contextualize and explain what’s happening at the intersection of Politics and the Web 2.0.

PS: dedico aquesta entrada al José Antonio Donaire, l’Ernest Benach, el Carlos Guadián, i el Ricard Espelt, en qui no he deixat de pensar mentre l’escrivia.

Notes from the research seminar Deliberative democracy: religion in the public sphere. Deliberative obligations of the democratic citizenry, by Cristina Lafont held at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, on December 17th, 2009.

Deliberative democracy: religion in the public sphere. Deliberative obligations of the democratic citizenry
Cristina Lafont

Which has to be the role of Religion in the public sphere? Which one actually is? Which should it be?

Specially in a deliberative democracy, the fact that people have religious believes makes even more important exactly knowing what are the challenges for democracy of this issue.

The deliberative democracy is a fragile balance between the right to debate whatever subject under some few but strong coercive rules.

Jürgen Habermas: a process of deliberation has to be able to be justified and without coercion. Public deliberation has to include all information available; equality, symmetry and reciprocity to all contributions, independently of their source; absence of (external) coercion; communicative equality; and participants have to be sincere, critic, have no hidden goals, and be responsible for their own opinions.

But not only procedures have to be acceptable, but also the contents of the debate.

John Rawls tries to provide an answer this last question. Thus, contents have to be dealing with the public good (vs. the private). So, what happens with religion, normally out of the public sphere? According to Rawls, Religion has to be left outside, with some exceptions, e.g. values gathered in modern constitutions, basic justice, etc.

But some incompatibilities arise when some citizens might not accept coercive solutions that come from public values but not accepted in their own set of comprehensive beliefs. Indeed, the rawlsian thought could even exclude persons themselves from the public deliberation. Or ask them to forget about their beliefs when entering a deliberative process. Or give priority to public interests over personal beliefs.

Habermas “solves” this by dividing the agora in two: the informal deliberation, where citizens can bring in all kind of beliefs, and the institutional deliberation (parliaments, etc.) where these personal beliefs should be left aside or be translated into “secular” principles (e.g. the ones gathered in constitutions).

Habermas’s solution also has some problems, like treating secular citizens differently from religious ones, sometimes leaving them aside of this “translation” of their principles, for not being as explicit as the religious ones.

Lafont offers come comments. Instead of trying to translate them into general or public reasons, an interesting approach would be to take seriously religious proposals and assume they can be right. Thus, they should be debated as proposals of general or public reasons proposals. And hence be prepared to accept them or refute them, based on grounded arguments. The debate should, then, be more about the compatibility of specific beliefs with the common and acknowledged beliefs (again, e.g. the Constitution) and not whether these beliefs are right or wrong or better than others.

[a debate follows, too complex and rich to collect here]

Notes from Asian Telecentre Forum 2009 / eAsia 2009 held in the BMICH, Colombo, Sri Lanka, on December 2-4th, 2009. More notes on this event: easia2009.

Closing Session of the Telecentre Forum
Chairs: Sriyan de Silva Wijeratne, Microsoft Sri Lanka

Florencio Ceballos, telecentre.org, International Development Research Centre

One of the convictions behind telecentre.org was that telecentre operators should be trained as social entrepreneurs, instead of hiring people to perform especific tasks.

Providing services – like Drishtee does – was another of the main things that became clear from the very beginning. Knowing, thus, that many countries were approaching last mile issues with public access to the Internet, based on entrepreneurs and services addressed to the comunity, fostered the creation of a global network where all these initiatives could be shared and learn one from another one.

Sheriff el-Tokali

The UNDP began a telecentre network with 3 telecentres in Egypt. A thing that has been learnt since is that telecentres cannot survive outside of a network. A network makes possible sharing services amongts member telecentres of the network or even amongst networks; share strategies and policies, etc. On the other hand, the addition of new telecentres is easy, as they benefit from the experience of the already established telecentres.

But telecentre sustainability does not only rely on sharing services, but in creating new ones. Amongst these services, e-Government services are, arguably, the best option nowadays.

Lessons & good practices learnt from the Philippines Telecentre Experience
Tess Camba, National Computing Centre, Philippines

1. Institutionalizing a national policy: it is worth expliciting and embedding a telecentre policy in the general policy of the government.
2. Organizing one network: the network, a multistakeholder one, is useful to raise awareness, to represent the different interests of the stakeholders.
3. Pursuing a shared vision: to have a community e-Center in everty municipality
4. Employing a multi-stakeholder partnership: engaging the government, the private sector, NGOs, academia, etc.
5. Training compentent Community e-Center managers
6. Promoting knowledge sharing: through the online platform, knowledge exchange conference, Community e-Centre managers exchange programme
7. Putting premium on content & services
8. Harnessing leaders & champions

Ravi Gupta, CSDMS

CSDMS publishes Telecentre Magazine.

There is a major challenge that telecentres face. Their portfolio of services is growing in width and complexity. But they will not survive if the do not have a social part. Telecentres have to connect the dots.

But the added problem to this is: if the governments are not e-ready, telecentres cannot supply e-government services; if the educational system is not e-ready, telecentres cannot supply digital learning services; if the health system is not e-ready, telecentres cannot supply e-health services; and so on with resellers, banks, etc.

The need for knowledge sharing will increase, not decresase, and more as connectivity raises (especially in developing countries).

Final conclusions

• The importance to document everything you do, with a writing, with a photograph, with a video… Testimonials have a strong power and, besides, they help you in keeping track of what you’ve done
• The importance to recognise your failures… and learn from them, of course