Evidence on the drivers of participation, legitimacy in government, social accountability impacts and more in this month of links and findings civic tech research.
Last week's roundup of civic tech research had a lot of absurdity, from presidential tweets to SCIGen, plus findings on when online activism provokes responses from authoritarians and who adopts online reporting platforms first.
Last week had interesting findings on political mobilization, now with brain scans. Lots of discussions about appropriate methods for measuring government performance, improving statistics and facilitating adaptive programming. Useful resources from the Engine Room and Beautiful Rising. Oh, and Disco!.
Recent MAVC-supported research on South African urban municipal politicians is refreshingly open, and important for the very specific context it studies. But we should think carefully about how, when, and if niche research can be applied to other contexts, and that means being thoughtful in how we tweet and talk about it.
Findings The University of Vienna has a new report on far-right attacks on the press, a concept they sketch to include legal action, abuse of power and online abuse. The report describes a delicate relationship between the rise of far-right nationalism/populism and declines in the quality of European democracy. Meanwhile @datasociety‘s new report on Media Manipulation only describes the...