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 KARIN HANSSON, THOMAS LUDWIG, TANJA AITAMURTO

Capitalizing Relationships: Modes of Participation in Crowdsourcing

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While crowds online are increasingly used for data gathering and problem solving, the relationships and structures within these processes remain largely unexamined. For understanding the usage of crowdsourcing and to design appropriate technologies and processes, it is important to understand how different tools support relationships in these contexts. Based on an extensive literature review of existing crowdsourcing tools and practices, we contribute with the development of a typology of alienation in crowdsourcing by using Marx’s theory of alienation. The theory serves as a lens to compare and contrast a number of currently available tools for crowdsourcing, focusing on how relationships between participants are supported and capitalized within the tool. We show how different types of crowdsourcing practices can be described in terms of alienation where the producer, the producers, the consumers, and products are connected in different modes of participation. This systematical application of Marx theory of alienation provides a way to compare the technical support for social relationships in a number of platforms used for crowdsourcing.

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 TANJA AITAMURTO & JORGE SALDIVAR

Motivating Participation in Crowdsourced Policymaking: The Interplay of Epistemic and Interactive Aspects

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In this paper, published in Proceedings of ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW ’18), we examine the changes in motivation factors in crowdsourced policymaking. By drawing on longitudinal data from a crowdsourced law reform, we show that people participated because they wanted to improve the law, learn, and solve problems. When crowdsourcing reached a saturation point, the motivation factors weakened and the crowd disengaged. Learning was the only factor that did not weaken. The participants learned while interacting with others, and the more actively the participants commented, the more likely they stayed engaged. Crowdsourced policymaking should thus be designed to support both epistemic and interactive aspects. While the crowd’s motives were rooted in self-interest, their knowledge perspective showed common-good orientation, implying that rather than being dichotomous, motivation factors move on a continuum. The design of crowdsourced policymaking should support the dynamic nature of the process and the motivation factors driving it.

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KAIPING CHEN & TANJA AITAMURTO

Barriers for Crowd’s Impact in Crowdsourced Policymaking: Civic Data Overload and Filter Hierarchy

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While crowdsourcing is an increasingly common method of open-government practices to strengthen participatory democracy, its impact on governance is unclear. Using data from a crowdsourced city-plan update by the City of Palo Alto, California, this article examines the impact of a crowd’s input on policy changes. We used an enacted policy change to quantify government’s response to crowd suggestions, whether crowd suggestions are adopted in the policy changes or not. While the city responded to less than half of the crowd’s suggestions, the likelihood of its doing so increased by 51.42 percentage points when the crowd’s ideas were amplified by a citizen advisory committee (CAC), a panel of residents working with the city in the policy update. We also found that the government is more likely to respond to crowd suggestions that are perceived as actionable. These two factors—CAC and the perceived data quality—constitute a filter which the crowd’s suggestions have to pass to make into the policy. This filter created a hierarchy in the participatory practice. Although crowdsourcing intends to create equality and inclusiveness in policymaking, our findings reveal that the civic data overload and the filter hierarchy complicate the adoption of crowdsourcing as a democratic innovation in governance.

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TANJA AITAMURTO & ANITA VARMA

The Constructive Role of Journalism

Contentious metadiscourse on constructive journalism and solutions journalism

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This paper examines the normative role of constructive journalism—also called “solutions journalism”—by analyzing metajournalistic discourse about solutions-focused journalism. The findings show that constructive and solutions journalism are defined similarly: they profess traditional Anglo-Saxon journalistic norms and practices, even as they shift focus from problems to solutions. The metajournalistic discourse indicates a tension over the normative roles of journalism. Constructive journalism justifies its existence by the intensified need to solve vexing social issues. At the same time, proponents of constructive journalism regularly distance themselves from advocating for social good and claim to objectively cover solutions without endorsing them. This strategic rhetoric signals an attempt to draw a sharp line between constructive journalism and advocacy, and to situate constructive journalism within the boundaries of a traditional monitorial role of journalism. Metadiscourse about constructive journalism reveals reluctance to acknowledge and articulate its normative constructive role that seeks to help society.

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TANJA AITAMURTO, SHUO ZHOU, SUKOLSAK SAKSHUWONG, JORGE SALDIVAR, YASAMIN SADEGHIN, AMY TRAN

Normative paradoxes in 360° journalism: Contested accuracy and objectivity

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This paper examines the sense of presence, attitude change, perspective-taking, and usability of a split-sphere, first-person perspective 360 degree video about gender inequality, in which people can choose to watch the narrative from the male or female character's perspective. Sixty-seven participants were randomly assigned to watch (1) the video in 360 degree split-view in a head-mounted display, (2) the same film as 180 degree in a HMD, or (3) a flat control version of the video on a laptop. The 360 degree split-sphere increased the viewers' feeling of personal responsibility for resolving gender inequality, desire to rewatch the video, fear of missing out, and feeling of missing the full story. The 180 degree video created the strongest sense of presence, embodiment, and understanding of the character. However, people with greater egocentric projection onto the male character felt less responsible for resolving gender inequality, particularly in the 360 degree split-view.

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TANJA AITAMURTO

Normative paradoxes in 360° journalism: Contested accuracy and objectivity

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In visual journalism, the adoption of new technologies often leads to renegotiation of normative boundaries, and the case of 360° video is no exception. Two normative paradoxes emerge in journalists’ attempts to deploy 360° video to provide emotionally engaging and factually relevant content. The first paradox is that the 360° view is considered to provide a more accurate representation of events, but the viewer’s freedom to choose the field of view can lead to a less accurate picture of the story. The second paradox is that, by manipulating authentic imagery in the pursuit of more accurate and objective reporting, journalists compromise on traditional notions of accuracy and objectivity. These paradoxes push visual journalism away from the “as is” and toward the “as if,” detaching visual journalism from its naturalistic claims. This leads to increasingly blurred boundaries between journalism and other communication practices such as advertising and propaganda.

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November 26.

Three Levers to Promote Digital Democracy: Legal Way, People Way, Hacker Way – Amélie Banzet in Finland

kuplatbanzet

Monday Noveber 26.11. 3 pm
Porthania Lehtisali (Yliopistonkatu 3), 2nd floor

In Finland Banzet will be presenting Etalab’s work and talking about e.g the digital republic law which includes open data by default and accountability of algorithm (“legal way”); how they work with their ecosystem (“people way”) and how tools can lead to changes (“hacker way”).

Amélie Banzet, head of Etalab in the French PMO will visit Finland on 26.11. as part of the BIBU (Tackling Biases and Bubbles of Participation) research program's Democracy Accelerator. Etalab is part of the French Prime Minister’s Office where it carries out radically innovative projects to improve public policy thanks to digital culture, tools and data.

Banzet has worked on Government transformation for several years, and in particular on the use of civic tech and digital resources to improve transparency and citizen participation in public action.

In Finland Banzet will be presenting Etalab’s work and talking about e.g the digital republic law which includes open data by default and accountability of algorithm (“legal way”); how they work with their ecosystem (“people way”) and how tools can lead to changes (“hacker way”).

BIBU’s Democracy Accelerator, a platform and community for democracy innovators in Finland will also be presented and discussed in the event.

Program

14.45 Coffee and afternoon snack are served
15.00 Welcome!
Amélie Banzet’s keynote: Three Levers to Promote Digital Democracy: Legal way, People Way, Hacker way.
16.00 Discussion
16.30 Democracy Accelerator: Platform and community for democracy developers - how can it serve me, how can I be part of it?
17.00 Event ends

Please, register here.

Psst..! We also have a Facebook event

Twitter:

@BIBUresearch

Facebook:
BIBUresearch

Evästeseloste

Julia Jousilahti
Democracy Accelerator’s coordinator
julia.jousilahti@demoshelsinki.fi
040 722 4931