Three weeks of civic tech research includes findings on NGOs digital vulnerabilities, why civic tech tools fail in the field and questions about whether there's any point to democracy. Plus, my skeptic's take on the Skeptic's Guide to Open Government.
Findings: tech and elections Comparative research indicates that SMS is the most effective messaging platform for voter mobilization, while Brazilian research shows a that e-voting has had dramatic effects on both mobilization and enfranchisement. Meanwhile, a US survey suggests that competent poll-workers boost voter confidence that votes would be counted. Well, yeah. A global poll by the pew...
Briefly: European governments are making decisions behind closed doors, according to research by Access Info. A survey on citizen uptake of a reporting platform (Linz, Austria, n=773) finds mixed results on motivations for participation, but community disconnectedness and previous reporting experience seem strong predictors. A natural experiment with @openstreetmap data suggests that data...
These findings raise questions about whether the boundaries between dutiful and actualizing norms—and non-electoral and electoral participation, respectively—are still relevant in the contemporary media environment. That’s from a new paper in Political Studies, based on an analysis of US survey data (N = 2200), whose findings contradict established theories about how media use interacts...
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...
The title of a new PAR article from @fsjoberg,@jon_mellon and@participatory implies that it does, but deserves some caveats.
Papers & Findings What makes multi stakeholder initiatives for transparency effective? In the case of EITI, it seems to be treating civil society as equal partners and ensuring that they bring relevant technical skills to the table. This according to doctoral research that also outlines common “pathways to proactive transparency reform.” Would be great to see research testing...
Papers & Findings A large scale citizen survey conducted in 36 Chinese cities found strong correlation between government transparency and citizen perceptions of public service equity. Perceptions of trust are equally important in open data initiatives, but a forthcoming article in Sociology argues that “open government initiatives routinely prize visibility over intelligibility and...
So not even MethodicalSnark can resist the US presidential elections (as christened by John Oliver). New York Times ran a piece this week entitled How One 19-Year-Old Illinois Man Is Distorting National Polling Averages. Our Trump-supporting friend in Illinois is a surprisingly big part of the reason. In some polls, he’s weighted as much as 30 times more than the average respondent, and as much...
Papers and Findings Nordic Open Access to Research Data. A new research paper reiterates important conditions for effective open access, and offers 3 recommendations for Nordic research communities that take advantage of their countries’ size and position. A psychology study in Zimbabwe suggests that for political activism in repressive political contexts, psychological resilience in the...