ICTlogy

Lead: Helen Margetts

What is the impact of the internet on public policy? How does it affect governments’ capacity to influence societal behaviour? One way of tackling this question is to break policy down into four constituent elements – the four ‘tools’ of government policy identified by Christopher Hood and Helen Margetts in their new book The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, building on Hood’s 1983 classic):
• nodality
• authority
• treasure
• organisation
The internet and other digital technologies have potential to impact government’s use of all of these tools, both through the use of such technologies by government itself and through societal trends in internet use, to which governments must respond. New webmetric techniques offer new potential for measuring the extent to which governments use the tools, particularly nodality. This approach can be used to explore general trends, such as the potential for the ‘sharpening’ of government’s tools through the use of technology to ‘group-target’ treatments (Hood and Margetts, 2007). Some authors have also hypothesised impacts specific to particular tools, such as increasing competition for nodality in the digital age (see Escher et al, 2006). Governments that respond to this competition will be well placed to maximise the potential of technological developments. Rapidly increasing use of so-called ‘Web 2.0’ applications, for example, could offer new potential for public policy change and for citizens to move into the ‘front-office’ of public policy design.

NATO: constituent elements of public policy

• Nodality: the property of being at the centre of social and informational networks; being visible/connected in social and informational networks
• Authority: the possession of legal or official power to demand, forbid, guarantee, adjudicate; legally able to command or prohibit
• Treasure: the possession of a stock of money or exchangeable goods; able to exchange using money or other goods
• Organisation: the possession of a stock of people with whatever skills they may have (soldiers, workers, bureaucrats), land, buildings, materials, computers and equipment, somehow arranged; the ability to act directly

Detectors are all the instruments government uses for taking in information.
Effectors are all the tools government can use to try to make an impact on the world outside

Power: resource-based accounts

What do actors use to get other actors do what they want?

• information
• reputation
• money
• legitimate authority
• organisational capital

Nodality in the digital age

• + new potential
• + group targeted nodality is easier/cheaper
• – greater competition for nodality
• – search engines are gatekeepers

Experiments to test the “competitiveness” of government web sitesw: 56% answered with information from governmental sources in an open search, a minority from direct.gov.uk

Nodality in the digital age

Detectors doubling up as effectors

New tools?

• New nodality – new competition
• Narrow-cast government: rise in group-targeted treatments across all tools
• tools run up agains individuals who: do not fit into digitally identifiable groups; circumvent
• government digitally (e.g. false digital identities); choose no to /can’t play digital game

minimizing trouble, vexation, oppression on citizens

• economizing on governmental effort – bringing citizens into front-office – “co-creation”

Measuring nodality

• Visibility: is the site found?
• Accessibility: are users directed to relevant information on site?
• Navigability: can users find their way around the site
• Extroversion: does the site point outwards to other sources
• Competitiveness: does the site compete with other sites

My reflections

• If search engines are gatekeepers: are RSS feeds “gatekeys”? not thrilling to subscribe toa govt. RSS feed ;) but might keep some gates open… and segmentation could be highly increased
• Detectors doubling up as effectors: that’s a very interesting issue, as Web 2.0 technologies can have citizens act like governments, the like of prosumers (the raise of the govzen (government+citizen?)
• local blogs (properly aggregated), wikis to explain in “plain English” regulations and what steps have people followed to achieve some administrative procedure, fora, etc.
• maybe government information should not be in the middle of the citizenry life (nodality in a web 1.0 point of view) but, as it happens in the political blogosphere, just be the source font of information that the social network will then talk about and debate. In political debate in the blogosphere, The New York times is highly relevant, but it is not actually “nodal”, as people do not think of The New York times as the source of political debate. What about web 2.0 nodality? Detectors doubling up as effectors, but being this detectors/effectors not the government direct tools. Should presence on the Web be only measured by the institutional website impact? What about Government and procedure related tags?
• Helen Margetts answers to these reflections stating (and I agree) that most Governments are really uncomfortable with the idea of losing some kind of power, of control, even if some others might even be eager to foster it. From her explanations, I wonder whether e-Democracy is easier to implant than e-Government, which somehow can be interpreted as it is easier to listen than to explain and engage.

Readings

Student research seminar: Karen McCullagh

It is often said that we have a righ to a private life, yet what this means remains unclear. This presentation reports 3 Phases of research:
1) How does the concept of private data interplay with the concept of sensitive data?
2) In the blog era what is private data? Is the technology changing perceptions and expectations?
3) Would a definition of private data be useful? How should it be defined?

The principle of sensitivity holds that the processing of certain types of data should be subjet to more stringent controls

• Test sensitivity ratings of seven categories of data recognized in the Directive (UK) as sensitive
• Test perceptions of sensitivity of eight not legally recognized categories of sensitive data which emerged in interviews with data protection and privacy experts: employment history, education qualifications, membership of political party/organization, clickstream data, personal contact detaisl, genetic information, biometric information, financial data

It’s curious to notice that most respondents — and even more bloggers — find most non recognized categories of sensitive data as being more sensitive than most recognized ones.

There are important lacks of categories both in the recognized and the non-recognized ones, such as gender or race that are very likely to be perceived as highly sensitive by some people

Related to bloggers, 24.8% posted personal information on their blogs all the time. Among those that did not post personal information, this personal information was about personally identifying information, information regarding others, emotions, sex/relationships, arguments, financial information, work, health information, illegal activities, political beliefs, religious believes, etc. About this issue, John Kelly states that for this issues, it is usual to find specific blogs (second blogs) dedicated precisely to this purpose.

Some people maintain both a (paper) diary and a public blog, being the main reason to keep private the most private issues (i.e. emotions) on their diary, and let the most trivial ones be public on the blog.

Proposed definition of private data

• Work on the boundaries of what is private and what is not
• Disclosing issues, definition of disclosing contexts
• Right to disclose should not be compulsory
• Maybe the focus should be put not on data collection, but on the backend (uses)
• Is private data, personal data and sensitive data overlapping concepts?

Conclusions

• there are new (non-recognized) categories of sensitive data emerging
• grading data according sensitivity is fraught with difference, as it requires a casuistic form of regulation
• Privacy in the blogosphere is a dynamic, dialectic process of negotiation conditions by people’s expectations
• this negotiation is dependent on people controlling the information and the context

My reflections

• Will there be a compared Law analysis across countries (i.e. in Europe)?
• Could there be a bias on the perception of recognized categories as less sensitive just because you’re already confident that they are recognized as sensitive ones?

More info

• American Civil Liberties Union Surveillance Campaing (Pizza Palace)
• What Is Private Data?, by Daithí Mac Síthigh

Student research seminar: Fred Stutzman

In this talk I will seek feedback on the potential framework of my dissertation. I am interested in the role social technologies play in the management of real-world social networks, particularly in the management of real world social networks in periods of transition.

What happens with online identity with (so much) Web 2.0 services, subscriptions, etc. How do we create digital identity? What does it mean to have a digital identity? How do we manage it?

How do Microformats play with online identity?

All along your trip through social networks, you can take with you some content, people, resources and leave behind the other ones. Across your transition through platforms… where’s the meeting point? the focal point?

This transition: is a personal strategy, or just follow the flow? What are the characteristics of this behavior?

How do you keep social capital? And… what happens if you ever take with you your social capital (i.e. friends), is this negative (you don’t let yourself evolve, mature)?

My reflections

• Can identity be tied to what you do, such as an e-Portfolio, as well as what’s your network of people?
• John Clippinger makes a very interesting point in saying that, at the beginnings of the Internet, everybody wanted to be anything (except themselves), and now the problem is to try and succeed in keeping a consistent digital identity

More info

• Fred Stutzman’s Vitae
• ClaimID
• Rossi, P. G., Pascucci, G., Giannandrea, L. & Paciaroni, M. (2006). “L’e-Portfolio Come Strumento per la Costruzione dell’Identità”. In Informations, Savoirs, Décisions, Médiations, (25), art.348. La Garde: Université du Sud Toulon-Var.
• DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Neuman, W. R. & Robinson, J. P. (2001). “Social Implications of the Internet”. In Annual Review of Sociology, 2001, 27, 307-336. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews.
• Identity Parade, by Daithí Mac Síthigh

Leads: Judith Donath, John Clippinger

Identity, by Judith Donath

Individual identity vs. social identity

Facets of identity, identity signals, identity deception

Intimacy vs. Prestige

Individual Identity, by John Clippinger

Software called Higgins to analyze how identity is used on the internet.

Your immune system does not know who you are… but who you are not.

Important terms of art

• identification: tied to the biological personal (biometric)
• authentication: tied to an accepted identifier (SSL)
• verification: tied to a third party

principle of minimum disclosure: no need to bring more info than just the absolutely necessary to identify you, with user control upon minimum disclosure

My reflections

• Recovering Prof. García Albero reflections about cybercrime, I wonder if there is not a social identity but an identity of the social, an identity of the collective and if it does play a role in one’s actions, as society in the physical world play in i.e. criminals, following García Albero’s line of thought. In case there is, what is and how does it frame one’s acting. In case there’s not, is there a problem?
• Both speakers provide thoughtful insight to these questions, explaining that there has been tested that, effectively, one’s behavior does change in front of a screen. Sometimes, the absence of a human being let’s the person relax and act more sincerely (he/she does not have to “perform” any role in front of the other/s). Sometimes, the absence of other human beings (or living beings in general, such as animals) relaxes the person but not in the sense of “performing” but in the sense of blurring one’s ties to ethics and moral. I.e. it’s easier to shoot an animal remotely that to do it in the flesh (and, my opinion, it’s easier to press the “red button” than to drop the bomb personally from Enola Gay)

Readings

More info

• The Higgins Project website
• Peña-López, I. (2007). “The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access”. In Knowledge for Management Journal, 3(1). Amsterdam: KM4Dev Community.
• OII Day 3, by Alla Zollers

Leads: John Kelly, Jake Shapiro*

The blogosphere is an emerging online global community of enormous proportions. Blog search engines find blogs and posts for you, ranked by the blogger’s authority. But what is “authority,” really? Authority about what, and among whom? The blogosphere is a complex social network, in which people who share interests, affiliations, values and ideologies are more densely connected. This network can be mapped, to understand the emergent structure of who is online, what they care about, and where they get their information. The methods are hard-core statistical network science, the results are often subtle, qualitative insights into politics, culture and ideas. We take a closer look at the English language blogosphere, and a quick tour of others as well.

(*) though scheduled, Jake Shapiro could not come

Words found within five words of “security” in blogposts: Bush, energy, agency, border, immigration, internatl, vital, illegal, enforcement, Palestinian, documents, vital, basic, sensitive, archive, documents, fence, Islamic

Categorization of political blogs according to inbound and outbound links:

• Partisans: get and send links to the same “side”
• Watchdog: get the ideas of the “other” side and bring them to their “side”
• Lightning dog: contrary to the watchdog
• Anomaly: contrary to Partisans

In English language, blogs are mainly driven by USA politics, being technology a (surprisingly) rather minor issue (among biggest issues, of course).

Blogroll seems not to be a very accurate measure of a blogger’s network, as it is too static. Linking is a more actual, live measure of what they care about. Actually, blog measuring sites (Technorati, BlogPulse, etc.) do take this into account more than blogroll. Attentive Clusters are people linking to similar things (of course, crosslinking too).

Looking at outlinks from the blogosphere, The New York Times is the most linked and by difference (on aggregate terms), which supposes both an interest on formal brainfood and also a rol in highest traditional media information diffusion by blogs. And media lead the outlinks taking out blogs. Technology and so — remember: no blogs, now, only non-blog sites — go on second place getting links from blogs.

The intelligentsia looks more one to each other — regardless of what “side” they’re in — in linking patterns than they do with other bloggers from their “side”: they’ll link to news media, to scientific reviews, to “intellectual” blogs and sites on politics, etc. Each one with its own flavor, but their core is quite similar across political color.

The real interesting things in the blogosphere happen heither on the A-list bloggers — real hubs that congregate huge amounts of links — nor on the long tail of the power distribution, populated with micronetworks of very particular interests. Between these two extremes, among the few thousands to the few hundreds of links exchanged, analysis of networking patterns within the blogosphere begins to make sense.

My reflections

• How are links normalized in a blog? repeated links in same post don’t count? do they?What about comments? John Kelly just answers that comments are not counted in the analysis, even if they might bring some interesting light about networking between blogs.
• I share Ralph Schroeder‘s concerns about whether link measuring is a good method to arise some conclusions about how the blogosphere connects to each other and non-blogs media, as linking policies may vary a lot among different bloggers.

Readings

More info

• Citizen Kane? No, Citizens Gilmour, Shifferes and Kelly, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• OII Day 3, by Alla Zollers

Leads: Dan Gillmor, Steve Schifferes

From Lecture to Conversation, by Dan Gillmor

“Democratized” Media

Not in the sense of voting… but participation, production, access

Lots of data, previously unreleased, previously unrecorded, now come to light because there’s someone there, in situ, to collect them and share them in the shape of text, photo, video, etc. And all this data is (almost) immediately made public… enhanced and brought to you by RSS feeds.

Indeed, data is not only collected by treated, thus becoming information. Does this make of all of us journalists? people? academics? nonprofits? corporations? Steve Jobs posts Thoughts on Music instead of conceding an interview: is the he the journalist?

It is, indeed, the best time ever to be an entrepreneur journalist Same for nonprofits (under another model, of course), such as Global Voices.

Media remixability

Multimedia mashups are becoming more and more popular due to the ease to make them (and the impressive availability of huge amounts of content, I’d dare ask).

More and more, citizens are asked to contribute with their stuff to traditional media… but people also do it by themselves, and upload their stuff on the Internet, either in their own spaces or shared spaces provided by third parties.

Actually, people had done this before. But now its easiear, ubiquous.

Problems?

• Media overload
• Who to trust
• Need for media literacy, for both producers but, specially, for consumers

Basic Principles (for Audience)

• The audience should be skeptical… but just about everything
• but adjusting a “trust quotient” for each site
• Keep reporting
• Learn media techniques, not only technologycal, but also about media power, how to use it, etc. Training about principles, practices, ethics, law…

Basic Principles (for All Journalists, Pro and Amateur)

• Throroughness
• Accuracy
• Fairness
• Independence
• Transparency

Daily Us

• Popularity is not enough
• Reputation

My reflections

• Keeping on with the question whether i.e. bloggers are journalists… they might be somewhere within the range of being zero journalists to absolute journalists. Do they really need to adhere explicit manifestos about their ethics? always? never? only if they are really close to being “real” journalists? should it be kept implicit? expliciting it is just a means to try and shape oneself’s identity as journalist?
• Keeping on with the issue of the Daily Us and reputation… will academic blogs ever count (academically, scientifically)? will some kind of reputation system (à la hacker?) override/complement traditional peer review? there actually exists some kind of peer review on blogs through comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and blogrolls (and other “citation” systems), blog/website rankings, and so?
• will everyone be a prosumer by default and his respective “trust quotient” will draw the redline between amateurs and professionals?

Downloading Democracy, by Steve Schifferes

From 2004 to 2005 people audience for elections has trippled, over all due to increased broadband use at home, but also due to increased Internet use at work (something not specially prosecuted at the UK).

Another reason is that media have really covered the “online campaigns” (the BBC making the difference with other media.

The election audience is similar to the BBC News website audience, which is known to be different to other BBC platforms: Internet users are more interested in politics and current affairs. This could be due to the bias the Internet itself induces on users: medium to high class, young profile, etc.

And the consumption of politics information the do on the Internet is huge. Indeed, young viewers use the BBC web more but also use other news sources. They really go “out” of the established media and look for other voices.

But only a minotiry were mobilised to become political activists. Surprisingly, the bias of political blogs (they approach a determinate party’s discourse) is increasing. Thus, it looks like the web is positive for political engagement

My reflections

• the web is positive for political engagement… but it looks as it is not the traditional engagement parties expect people to take
• is this engagement more focused on concrete actions, issues… on organizing smart mobs?
• As an answer to the previous point, Steve Schifferes states that, at least from now, blogs and digital media are more likely to be reactive to (a) parties’ proposals and (b) traditional media coverage and information (in the form of adherence or criticism) rather and be more proactive and the origin of actions. This does not mean they cannot (are not) being proactive, but this is not the norm

Readings

More info

• Citizen Kane? No, Citizens Gilmour, Shifferes and Kelly, by Daithí Mac Síthigh
• OII Day 3, by Alla Zollers