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BIBU Talk 10.4.2019

BIBU Talk and workshop: Classes in Flux – The Ambivalences of Social Class in the 21st Century

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Wednesday 10th of April, 2–5 pm
Faculty of Social Sciences, Tiedekuntasali (Unioninkatu 37) 

Has social class lost its importance with the weakening of working-class identity, or is it making a return thanks to growing inequalities?

Are we living in a class society? Social class is a key concept of social theory. Professor Mike Savage’s (London School of Economics) extensive theoretical and empirical work on social class make him a long-standing key figure in this field. This BIBU workshop builds on Professor Savage’s work and aims to establish a comparative view of social class transformations in the UK and Finland. The workshop is organized by the Tackling Biases and Bubbles in Participation consortium, which explores how economic restructuring and migration are transforming citizens and political participation.

Professor Savage’s talk will address the current transformations of social identities and classes. Has social class lost its importance with the weakening of working-class identity, or is it making a return thanks to growing inequalities? How do we understand the blurring of the working and middle classes? Can we still talk about the working class? What should we think of the middle class? Is there a particular middle-class experience, or are there divisions within the middle class and, if so, what are they? How do we understand the upper class and well-off groups in society? Finally, should we be talking about a new underclass?

Additionally, we will be analysing data from a national survey, which BIBU conducted last autumn. Ideally, our aim is to build a macro-micro link by identifying the winners and losers of economic restructuring and migration and interviewing these groups qualitatively. At the same time, we want to explore how social classes change. We are trying to understand what is happening to the working class, including, perhaps, the emergence of a marginalised workless class at the bottom of the income bracket, as well as the various experiences of the middle and upper classes. During the discussion, we will build a comparative view of the UK and Finland, countries that undoubtedly have similarities and differences with regard to social class.

Everyone is welcome to attend Mike Savage’s talk (2–3.30 pm), and all who are interested are also welcome to attend the BIBU workshop following the talk (3.30–5 pm).

Coffee served. Please, register here.

Twitter:

@BIBUresearch

Facebook:
BIBUresearch

Evästeseloste

Anu Kantola
Konsortion johtaja
anu.kantola@helsinki.fi
050 448 7273

Mirja Hämäläinen
Vuorovaikutuskoordinaattori
mirja.hamalainen@demoshelsinki.fi
050 380 5086

Isak Vento
Koordinaattori
isak.vento@helsinki.fi
050 448 8945

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BIBU Talk 1.3.2019

BIBU Talks: Median tunnetalous ja uudet solidaarisuuden muodot

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Perjantai 1.3.2019
Tiedekulma, Think Lounge (Yliopistokatu 4)

Kuinka eri tavoin media voi edesauttaa tai rajoittaa solidaarisuutta ja ymmärrystä yhteiskunnallisesta eriarvoisuudesta? Miten tunnetalous toimii uudessa algoritmisessa mediaympäristössä?

Mitä merkitystä on sillä, että kierrätämme kuvia pakolaisten kärsimyksestä somessa ja osoitamme solidaarisuutta #Metoo -kampanjassa? Professori Kaarina Nikunen ja tutkija Saara Särmä keskustelevat digitaalisen mediaympäristön vaikuttamismahdollisuuksista Nikusen kirjan julkistamistilaisuudessa perjantaina 1.3.

Kaarina Nikusen Media Solidarities: Emotions, power and justice in the digital age (Sage 2019) pureutuu siihen, kuinka eri tavoin media voi edesauttaa tai rajoittaa solidaarisuutta ja ymmärrystä yhteiskunnallisesta eriarvoisuudesta ja siihen, miten tunnetalous toimii uudessa algoritmisessa mediaympäristössä.

Kirjassa käsitellään muun muassa siirtolaisuuteen ja Euroopan pakolaisuuteen liittyvää mediatuotantoa, esimerkiksi tosi-tv:n hyväntekeväisyyttä, aktivistimediaa, some-kampanjoita ja poliittisia protesteja. Tapaukset valottavat uusien kollektiivisten tuotantojen merkitystä ja kuvittelun käytäntöjä, joissa ohjataan viha ja suuttumus kohti hoivaa ja hitaita prosesseja, esimerkiksi osana protestikutomista ja todistamisen arkistoja.

Tarjolla aamiaista, ilmoittauduthan mukaan täällä.

Psst..! Meillä on myös Facebook-tapahtuma

Twitter:

@BIBUresearch

Facebook:
BIBUresearch

Evästeseloste

Anu Kantola
Konsortion johtaja
anu.kantola@helsinki.fi
050 448 7273

Mirja Hämäläinen
Vuorovaikutuskoordinaattori
mirja.hamalainen@demoshelsinki.fi
050 380 5086

Isak Vento
Koordinaattori
isak.vento@helsinki.fi
050 448 8945

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BIBU esittelee ratkaisuja Ratkaisuja tieteestä -tapahtumassa 14.2.2019

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Juho Vesa, Anu Kantola, Anne Skorkjær Binderkrantz

A Stronghold of Routine Corporatism? The Involvement of Interest Groups in Policy Making in Finland

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While the Nordic countries have a tradition of integrating privileged interest groups into policy making, a number of studies have argued that this Nordic ‘routine corporatism’ has changed over the last decades. Studies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden demonstrate that interest groups are less frequently involved in committees preparing policy, that lobbying of parliament has become more important and that the position of citizen groups has strengthened. However, systematic studies of present‐day Finland are largely missing. This article therefore adds to the literature by focusing on the Finnish case. Drawing on surveys of interest groups and civil servants, the involvement of interest groups in policy making in Finland is assessed and compared with Denmark and the United Kingdom. It is found that: (1) working groups and similar bodies are still very important sites of advocacy; (2) public administration is a more important site of advocacy than parliament or government; (3) economic groups continue to enjoy a particularly privileged position; and (4) resources predict groups’ access to policy making more strongly in Finland than in Denmark or the United Kingdom. These findings imply that routine corporatism persists in Finland to a greater extent than in Denmark. The study augments the existing evidence that corporatism may have adapted to new circumstances rather than being eliminated.

Article is open access until the 28th of December 2018.

 

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BIBU Talk 18.12.

BIBU Talks: Osallistuva budjetointi tulee – Miten se palvelee demokratiaa?

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Tiistai 18.12.2018
Sofia Future Farm (Sofiankatu 4 C)

Kuten kaikissa osallisuus- ja vaikuttamismenetelmissä, on tämänkin vaikutuskanavan kohdalla huolehdittava tasavertaisuudesta.

Osallistuva budjetointi kiinnostaa kaupunkipäättäjiä. Osallistuvaan budjetointiin käytetään Helsingissä vuosittain 4,4 miljoonaa euroa. Onko se paljon vai vähän? Onko osallistuva budjetointi pöhinäpuhetta vai mielekäs keino kaupunkilaisille vaikuttaa?

Osallistuvan budjetoinnin tavoitteena on lisätä asukkaiden osallisuutta päätöksenteossa, helpottaa osallistumista ja mahdollistaa suora demokratia. Mallin ajatuksena on, että asukkaat osallistuvat kunnan talouden suunnitteluun yhdessä viranhaltijoiden kanssa. Juuri nyt helsinkiläisiltä kerätään ideoita osallistuvan budjetoinnin varojen käytöstä. Kuten kaikissa osallisuus- ja vaikuttamismenetelmissä, on tämänkin vaikutuskanavan kohdalla huolehdittava tasavertaisuudesta.

Vuoden viimeisessä BIBU Talksissa uutta vaikuttamiskanavaa myllätään nimenomaan demokratian edistämisen näkökulmasta keräämällä yhteen tutkijat, hallinnon ja poltiikan edustajat sekä yleisön.

Tilaisuudessa kuullaan tiivis alustus tutkija Titiana Ertiöltä ja alustuksen jälkeen paneelissa ovat mukana Tuusulan kunnan kehittämispäällikkö Heidi Hagman, Helsingin kunnanvaltuutettu Veronika Honkasalo sekä Helsingin osallistuvan budjetoinnin kehittämispäällikkö Kirsi Verkka. Keskustelua vetää tutkija Mikko Rask.

Ilmoittaudu mukaan täällä.

Psst..! Meillä on myös Facebook-tapahtuma

Twitter:

@BIBUresearch

Facebook:
BIBUresearch

Evästeseloste

Anu Kantola
Konsortion johtaja
anu.kantola@helsinki.fi
050 448 7273

Mirja Hämäläinen
Vuorovaikutuskoordinaattori
mirja.hamalainen@demoshelsinki.fi
050 380 5086

Isak Vento
Koordinaattori
isak.vento@helsinki.fi
050 448 8945

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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.