We kindly invite you to submit a paper to this year*s CeDEM – Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government. The conference will be held in Krems, Austria, 22-23 May 2013. The submission deadline has been extended to 5 February 2013.

In 2013, the CeDEM13 will focus on E-Democracy and Open Government in the context of human rights and freedom in a digital society and covers the following topics: E-Democracy, E Participation, Government 2.0, Social Media and Public Administration, E Politics and E Campaigning, European Citizen Initiative, Participatory Budgeting, Bottom Up Movements, Open Data, Open Innovation, Open Science and Open Access.

Keynotes at the CeDEM13 will include John Carlo Bertot from the University of Maryland, Karine Nahon from the University of Washington, Beth Noveck from the New York Law School and former United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, and Tiago Peixoto from the World Bank, Washington.

Conference website: www.donau-uni.ac.at/cedem

Submission site: www.cedem-conference.org/cedem13

Follow us on Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/CeDEMfacebook

I have already written to those whose email address I have, so anybody else please note the following two times:

Hangout I: 27/9 at 15.00

Hangout II: 28/9 at 11.00

All times are CET. Please add me to a Google+ circle so that I am able to find you quickly and can invite you to the hangout.

I look forward to catching up with you!

Topic:
The Internet was always connected to a vision of a participatory society. There is the idea that the new medium would produce politically better informed citizens and that that would lead to greater citizen participation. However, skeptics believe that the barriers between the individual and the political public sphere are not technical but social in nature and therefore cannot be repealed by online technologies. Today we are still somewhat between the highly technical deterministic and technical indifferent position. With the social web new opportunities developed and they are used by civil society organizations as well as by political parties and by governments and administrations – from e-petitions to adhocracy, from wikis to open data. What works? Who participates? How can people be mobilized online? What impact do the new online tools have on political communication, on political decision-making and on the political system itself. That is the subject of this conference. We will look at the political online participation from different perspectives, from the civil society side, bottomup, and from the sides of politics, top-down. The conference will not only focus on and discuss scientific results but will also try to build a bridge between science and practice in order to share knowledge and experience. Therefore scientists and representatives from civil society organizations, parties, administrations etc. are invited.
Conference language is German, translation cannot be provided.

More Infos

Photo by karikas on Flickr.com

The PEP-NET Summit 2012 will take place on 14th May 2012 at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. We are looking forward to an interactive event with plenty of space for networking and discussion. Anybody who is interested in eParticipation, at all levels of experience, is invitedto attend.

With an audience of European eparticipation enthusiasts, local engaged citizens, and representatives of the City of Hamburg, the PEP-NET Summit will again be a bustling marketplace of ideas and an opportunity for participants to catch up with each other and meet new people.

The first PEP-NET Summit took place on 23rd September 2010. We heard speeches from Cisco’s Paul Johnston, Andrea di Maio from Gartner, and Anke Domscheit-Berg amongst others. The summit was moderated by Richard Wilson and speakers from across Europe had the chance to present their projects and ideas in small, informal “presentation corners”.

Please block the date in your diary and register via amiando.com/pep-net. There is no entrance fee and places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

We look forward to welcoming you to Hamburg!

Target groups: Authorities in national and local level involved in e-democracy and e-governance, persons from immigrant and multicultural non-governmental organisations as well as researchers and others in related fields interested in e-democracy and inclusion of immigrants in participatory decision-making.

Aim of the International Joint Workshop: Creating a discussion forum and a dialogue between authorities, NGO actors and immigrant societies on immigrant inclusion by e-participation.

There will be cross-border exchange of best results as experienced in practice, in projects or in research. The sessions will all have participatory elements such as discussions, collaboration, brainstorms and debates and will utilize participatory tools and methods. E-participation will be also possible, the links will appear later.

The event is free of charge, but make sure you register by the 21st of October 2011, since the venue only has a limited amount of seats.

Keynote speakers, Presentations, Abstracts and Biographys
The keynote speakers and their preliminary topics are:

Nico Carpentier, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, UK
“Mediated participation. ‘New’ technologies’ claims to increased participation, novelty and uniqueness”

Edward Andersson, Deputy Director of Involve, UK, Expert on methods of participatory decision making
“Engaging for the long term -Successful strategies and examples”

Auksė Balcytiené, Professor, Department of Public Communications, Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
“Diasporic groups online – alternative discourses”

Gavan Titley, Dr, Lecturer in Media Studies, Centre for Media Studies, National University of Ireland Maynooth and Vice-Chair of the ‘Diaspora, Migration and Media’ section of European Communication Research Association – ECREA Centre for Media Studies
“Racialized media literacies: online networks, public discourse and the new ‘new racism’ in Europe.”

Randi Marselis, Associate Professor, Institute for Literature, Culture and Media, University of Southern Denmark
“Web-magazines, cultural memory and transnational belongings”

Andoni Alonso, Professor, Universidad de Extremadura, Spain
”Diasporas, the Web 2.0 and how the Commons are in Danger”

The presentations will be published here after the workshop when possible:

Presentations

Abstracts

Andoni Alonso
Abstract: The notion of Web 2.0 brings many different issues that should be discussed. One of the most interesting is how these electronic social networks can generate an added value in terms of content and shared knowledge. The question is to show how diasporans are also generating such content and how it can be privatized through companies such as FaceBook. Starting point would be to consider how all that on-line knowledge can be treated as a commons, because it is put on line, shared and improved by particulars. So diasporans can be deprived from their physical as well as their electronic homeland.

Randi Marselis
Abstract: Social media on the internet have potential to strengthen transnational belongings amongst ethnic minority groups. However, young people of minority background often prefer to set up websites in the language of their country of settlement. This presentation focuses on journalistic Web-magazines run by Dutch Moluccan and Danish Kurdish youths. In what way do such Web-magazines give room for the cultural memory of migration? And how do belongings to a transnational community intersect with social and political engagement in the country of settlement?

Keywords: Websites, cultural memory, transnationalism, Dutch Moluccan youth, Danish Kurdish youth

Nico Carpentier
Abstract: New media discourses are often engulfed by a variety of claims that emphasize their specificity. We can find the formulation of strong claims of novelty and uniqueness, in combination with processes of forgetfulness in relation to the societal roles of old media technologies. This presentation starts with a discussion on (new) audience theory, mapping and structuring the diversity of audience articulations with a focus on two of its main dimensions: the active/passive and the interaction/participation dimension. This mapping will then be used to problematize and critique the strong claims of novelty and uniqueness that ’new’ participatory technologies have generated. Moreover, this theoretical mapping will also show that audience theory turns out to be quite stable in its capacity to facilitate the understanding of the diversity of relations between humans and media technology. Three claims are scrutinized: the shift from one-to-many to many-to-many communication; the rearticulation of the audience into the ‘producer’; and the convergence of top-down business with bottom-up production and consumption practices. Each of these claims is critically evaluated, in combination with a case study discussion that shows the complexities and contradictions of these claims. These three case studies are the BBC’s Video Nation project in the UK, a reception study of nine films on the Belgian online video-sharing platform 16plus, and formal participatory (alternative and community media) organizations.

Edward Andersson
Abstract: This workshop will look at the practice of e-participation with a particular focus on achieving long term engagement. It will draw on practical examples from numerous countries as well as a two and a half year research project exploring the individual motivations for participation in three sites in England.
Different approaches and rationales for participation will be explored, as well as differences between online engagement and face to face engagement. Some engaging approaches (both online and face to face) will be demonstrated; allowing participant interaction.

Biographys

Andoni Alonso, got his degree at the Universidad de Navarre and his PH. D. at the Basque Country University. Visiting researcher at the Penn State University and Visiting Professor at Nevada University at Reno, Reno. He has taught at the Universidad de Extremadura and presently is associate professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He won the 5th Award Prize by the Epson Institute of Techno-Ethics with the book La Quinta columna digital. His field of interest has been the informational society and its ethical, political and aesthetical implication in books like La nueva ciudad de Dios, Siruela, Madrid, 2002 and Carta al homo cibernéticus, Edaf, Madrid 2003. Recently has published the following books: Diasporas in the New Media Age (Nevada University Press, 2010), Knowledge Communities (CBS Reno, 2011) and Autoridad Expandida, Naturaleza Común y saber profano (Universidad de Quilmes).

Randi Marselis (PhD) is an associate professor at Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests are on ethnic relations and the media in multiethnic societies with special focus on Denmark and the Netherlands. The aim of her current research is to examine the role of the Web in the remediation of migration memories. This project is part of a collective project: Changing Borderlines: Mediatization and Cultural citizenship (2008-2011; supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research, Culture and Communication). She has for the past years been an active participant in the NordForsk-funded network on migration and media, MigraNord, and she will continue her collaboration with other Nordic researchers within this field through the newly established NordForsk-network TheoryNord.

Nico Carpentier is Senior Lecturer at the Social Sciences Department of the University of Loughborough and Associate Professor at the Communication Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Free University of Brussels). He is also vice-president of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). His theoretical focus is on discourse theory, his research interests are situated in the relationship between media, journalism, politics and culture, especially towards social domains as war & conflict, ideology, participation and democracy. His most recent publications include the following books Discourse Theory and Cultural Analysis. Media, Arts and Literature (ed.)(2008); Democracy, journalism and technology (ed.)(2008), Communicative approaches to politics and ethics in Europe (ed.)(2009), Trans-reality television. The transgression of reality, genre, politics and audience (ed.)(2010) and Media and Participation. A Site of Ideological-Democratic Struggle (2011).

Edward Andersson is the Deputy Director of Involve, a UK based charity and think tank. He is an established expert on methods of participatory decision making. He set up peopleandparticipation.net – the UKs leading public engagement site, and has advised a number of organisations on public engagement strategies, including the Home Office, the European Commission, the OECD and numerous Local Authorities and Health Trusts. His research covers how to measure the business case for engagement, achieving efficiencies through engagement, and involving the public in developing new solutions to problems such as climate change.
He is a Professional Facilitator (Certified by the International Association of Facilitators), sits on the National Expert Panel on Local Governance for the Department for Communities and Local Government and is a board member of the international not-for profit e-Democracy.org. He is a guest lecturer at Birkbeck College at the University of London and has written thought pieces for WHO Europe and the OECD among others.

Following broad-brush claims that social networks have been used to co-ordinate the rioting and plundering, Twitter users have been quick to respond, pointing to Twitter campaigns to clean up the streets following the riots. They are right, but that isn’t the end of the matter.

It turns out that the riots were co-ordinated using Blackberry smart phones, which allow anonymous, encrypted, but social, communication. Blackberries? I tend to associate Blackberries with conservative business users but I was surprised to read a BBC article last week reporting that teenagers who own smart phones prefer them. While it may seem logical that they choose Blackberry devices because of the privacy and anonymity they offer, the article suggests that privacy is more of concern to older users.

Previous concerns about the digital divide seem a little simplistic now. Previously we thought in terms of a divide between online and offline, seeing the ultimate goal as getting the “final third” online. Doubters were confronted with research that deprived youngsters, especially from ethnic minorities, were more often online than one might expect. The logical conclusion was that public services need to engage more with the online generation, usually in the form of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Now we find that there is a whole generation we risk ignoring because of assumptions about which social media tools they use.

When I worked for Birmingham City Council, I spent some time on a project to help heal the wounds of the riots in Lozells and Handsworth in 2005. Then, the lessons learned were that false information spread by pirate radio stations inflamed the situation, reinforcing tensions between ethnic and religious groups. Encouragingly, yesterday there was a report of Sikhs and Muslims from the area standing together to fend off the looters.

Just as things are moving on there, communication habits have moved on too. Back then, pirate radio was a blind spot and monitoring established radio stations simply couldn’t give any tip-offs about the violence. Now, the blind spot is Blackberry devices and presumably a whole host of other communication channels.

So do local authorities need to start opening channels with young Blackberry users, as a Guardian journalist has done? I think in some cases they will have to, but will also have a difficult job in keeping a keen eye on the latest trends in communication.

It looks like digital just divided again.

The research applies to non-state actors, and thus cites Amnesty’s “Save The Human” website and an open-source platform called “Crabgrass”, both of which have functionality that is tailored to the needs of organising activists. But does this also have implications for government organisations such as local authorities?

I think it does, because there are types of political participation that are less often initiated by grass-roots activists but instead usually organised (or commissioned) by government. Examples include participatory budgeting, which often requires software that is specifically designed for the purpose, and online spatial planning such as our own DEMOS-Plan, which is specifically designed to replace paper-based processes by integrating interactive online maps and plans. A further advantage of working with bespoke software is that amendments can be made to reflect users’ wishes. Nevertheless, the research mentions the effectiveness of Facebook and similar social networks for publicity purposes.

So I think it’s a welcome reminder that government isn’t always reinventing the wheel if it commissions bespoke consultation software instead of using generic social networking tools, and of the role that social networks can play in encouraging political participation.

"IE6 Death Cake" by amberlrhea on Flickr

A campaign to put Microsoft’s decade-old web browser, Internet Explorer 6, out of its misery is nothing new. There has even been a petition on the UK Number 10 petitions website calling on government to upgrade to a modern browser, which was rejected, and Google dropped IE6 support for its apps more than a year ago.

The novel thing about ie6countdown.com is that the organisation behind it is, er, Microsoft. Needless to say, they call upon users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 and don’t mention the other browsers out there (such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera). Anticipating probably the main argument for retaining IE6, they dedicate a part of the website to corporate users.

Developers have long complained that adding support for IE6 adds complication and cost to the process of creating websites that government employees can use. From a government employee’s perspective, IE6 is just another barrier to engaging with the outside world through the internet on top of restrictions on social media access and third-party software such as Skype. 3.5% of UK users are still hooked on IE6, as are 2.9% of German users, and 3.3% of Italian surfers. Finland and Norway lead the way with 0.9% and 0.7% respectively.

So, will this add to the pressure on governmental organisations to make the switch?

Photo by Techie Kev on Flickr.com

As reported in the Guardian, Walsall City Council is conducting a 24 hour experiment to publicise what it does. Starting at 6.00 UK time today, four Twitter streams will be pumping out updates from nuisance neighbour reports to pest control.

The Twitter accounts @walsall24_1 to @walsall24_6 have been reserved, although at the time of writing only two seem to be tweeting — presumably the rest have been reserved to prevent spoofers setting up bogus accounts (which, to my juvenile mind, seems a bit of a shame).

The experiment follows a similar campaign by Manchester Police, who tweeted over a 24 hour period recently.

For more information, see the Walsall City Council website: https://www.walsall.gov.uk/walsall24.htm.

PS: There’s a free candy floss and a goldfish if you understood the pun in the title.

A Guttenberg Keyboard, photo from eBay listing

Germany’s Defence Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has temporarily forgone his PhD following accusations that his thesis is shot through with plagiarism, including unacknowledge quotations from newspapers and other politicians. Some jokers have been selling pared-down keyboards stripped of all but the CTRL, A, C and V keys, necessary to perform the ‘select all’, ‘copy’and ‘paste’ operations; essential weapons in any plagiarist’s arsenal.

“Guttenberg Gate” or the “Googleberg Affair” has prompted a crowdsourced proofreading of his thesis by anonymous German citizens. They aren’t backward in coming forward when reporting instances of plagiarism that they have found: so far, according to the graphic on the front page, there is at least one unacknowledged quote on 68.7% of the pages.

Until now, Guttenberg was Germany’s most popular politician whom many saw as capable, charming and possessing integrity. This affair has shown that it is difficult to be one person in public and another in private because the internet allows thousands of people – whatever their motives – to organise themselves and air your dirty washing in public. Because the participants in the wiki are anonymous, there’s no telling whether they are political adversaries or simply passionate academics interested in protecting the integrity of their discipline; but it is likely to be some mixture of both.

The graphic from the Guttenplag wiki; 69% of pages contain a plagiarism

As in the UK MPs’ expenses affair, we see openness in public life resulting in citizens being disappointed when they think their representatives cannot live up to their expectations. In this case, Guttenberg stands accused of lying on oath and is liable to prosecution if it turns out that he lied about the originality of his thesis. He is also alleged to have abused his office as an MP by making enquiries through the Bundestag (German Parliament) and copying the answers into his thesis without acknowledging the source. So you may argue that he deserves to be deprived of his office.

But everyone has skeletons in their cupboard and it is inevitable that, as politics becomes more open, we will have to accept that politicians aren’t perfect and consider what we can realistically expect of them, and what we can forgive them for. Guttenberg aside, I think it would do us all good to get real about what we expect of politicians on a personal level; if openness and transparency force us to have that discussion, then I’m in.

Aside from the issues of our expectations of politicians and the line between their public and  private lives, an interesting aspect of this is the usefulness of the results. An important criterion for sustainable eParticipation is often said to be the quality of the results that it produces, meaning that there needs to be some way of aggregating citizens’ input. The GuttenPlag wiki presents the results in quite an easy-to-digest fashion that I imagine would be quite useful for the ultimate addressees, the commission at the University of Bayreuth that is assessing whether the thesis is still valid. Quite simply, there is a list of page numbers where you can click to see the alleged plagiarisms on each page with detailed information justifying the allegation. The wiki moderators will only accept plagiarism accusations that are corroborated by two people, providing a simple way of aggregating the results in a useful format. In this case, the task to be completed is very clearly defined and the format is simple but effective.

Finally, the graphic that I noted above is a good example of a point that is often made about open data; namely, that you have to be careful about being misled. At first sight, it may seem like 68.70% of the content in the thesis is a plagiarism because that’s the number of pages on which an alleged plagiarism occurs. However, on closer inspection you realise that a single plagiarism on one page means that that page is then deemed a plagiarism whether the whole page is a copy-paste job or just one sentence or phrase. Ridiculously, if Guttenberg had printed his thesis on smaller paper, he presumably could have come off better: smaller, and hence more, pages could mean that each plagiarism would make up a smaller percentage of the total (assuming it was contained on one page).