1,721,036 research outputs found
Guidelines for Designing Deliberative Digital Habitats: Learning from e-Participation for Open Data Initiatives
No full textThis paper discusses issues in designing deliberative digital habitats. It identifies three dimensions that define them: the gemeinschaft dimension, the gesellschaft dimension, and the technology dimension, the latter with four different spaces. While not a how-to manual, this conceptual framework, rooted in both existing literature and field experimentation, should prove helpful to digital democracy designers, either for public institutions or grassroots movements. As a contribution to the growing body of scholarship on online deliberation, it organizes critical issues so that they will not be overlooked. Examples from field cases illustrate such issues
Natures and roles for community networks in the information society
No full textThis paper draws on the authors more than 10 years of involvement in the action research experience of the Milan Community Network. It discusses the roles that community networks play in the Information Society: starting from a neat characterization of “online community”, community networks are presented as ICT learning communities, as local online communities and as complementary to Digital Cities. Finally, critical insights into institutional aspects of community networks are considered from the perspective of their sustainability
A two dimensional space to frame participatory initiatives and platforms
Full text linkThe economic crisis is arousing social and political turbulence worldwide. In Italy this couples with a deep crisis of democratic legitimacy and an increasing demand for more participation in the public sphere. These dynamics met the opportunities offered by the web-based software tools for gathering ideas, and selecting them in a collaborative way through a more or less structured deliberative process. A significant number of online participation initiatives were therefore launched by different promoters: public institutions, political parties and their candidates during electoral campaigns, emerging social movements. These initiatives either run quite well established software or test new dedicated tools. This paper proposes a two-dimensional space for classifying these initiatives: one axis represents the “degree” of citizens’ engagement; the other one, the “ownership” of the initiative. This framework has been recently presented in several occasions in Italy, including an invited lecture at a group of Senate officers. Almost always, the audience remarkably appreciated it as it allowed them to recognize similarities and differences among the various initiatives and the various tools. The question we want to discuss at the workshop is whether it holds also a scientific interest and relevance, toward a more rigorous evaluation of online participatio
L'"arcobaleno dei diritti della cittadinanza digitale" alla prova
Full text linkWe live in a society shaped by information and communication technologies, a continuous interplay
between what happens in the physical world and what happens online. This inevitably extends the citizenship
concept which becomes digital, where rights and obligations are properly declined to meet technology opportunities.
These opportunities, however, challenge the very idea of citizenship and the exercise of underlying rights. The
authors, along with Leonardo Sonnante, proposed a layerization called “The rainbow of digital citizenship rights”
[De Cindio et al., 2012] to slice all aspects of digital citizenship in conceptual levels. The framework consists of abstraction layers spanning from basic network access up to the highest “right to active involvement in policy-making.”
This article describes the framework first application. The authors, with their students (“Digital Citizenship and Technocivism” course) used it to analyze the “Public consultation on the fundamental principles of the Internet”
promoted by the italian Ministry of Education
From online to offline participation and viceversa : a software platform for new political practices
Full text linkParticipatory Budgeting (PB) is a way for citizens to decide directly over the public expenditures. Every year people choose priorities and vote for concrete projects, rather than representatives and long-term political programs. This participatory process fits with the idea-based forms of online participation, but in PB they have to be “embedded” into a democratic process where the collaborative ideas are more likely to be financed than the individualistic ones. PBs can generate more social cohesion, foster citizens to live "smarter" and perhaps promote a more civic use of the web. Indeed, it also shapes the design of the web platform which supports the offline process. In this paper we present this original interaction between offline and online democracy, resulting from the enactment of the PB in four different local communities, and we outline the functionalities of a dedicated software. We finally discuss first outcomes of these early experiences, and draw some directions for future work
The Role of Community Networks in Shaping the Network Society: Enabling People to Develop their Own Projects
No full textA survey of basic net models and modular net classes
No full textThe paper surveys those net classes which can be called to some extent `modular' and the basic net models used as a framework in their definition. In particular the first part introduces condition event systems, elementary net systems place transition systems and 1-safe systems, adhering as much as possible to the original definitions, with the few modifications consolidated in the literature. It discusses and compares the basic net models by considering how each one of them deals with some fundamental properties of a net model, such as simplicity, pureness, backward and forward reachability, liveness, contact-freeness. The second part surveys the main classes of modular nets defined in the literature, showing that most of them share some basic features, since they typically refer to a common idea of building the overall net by composing the nets modelling its sequential components by means of state machines. The differences are considered from the perspective of the specific goal and field of interest of the various authors, and the technical apparatus associated with the various net classes is briefly referred to and illustrated by example
Design issues for building deliberative digital habitats
No full textThis paper discusses some issues that it is worth considering in the design of deliberative digital habitats. It identifies four spaces characterizing these habitats and proposes three dimensions to be considered when designing them: the gemeinschaft dimension, the gesellschaft dimension and the technological dimension. The aim is to help public institutions as well as grassroots movements to pay the due attention to these critical issues which are often overlooked
Interplay between the Actual and the Virtual in the Milan Community Network Experience
No full textInternational audienceThis chapter presents the story and reflects on the implications of the Opening The Information Society (OTIS) Project undertaken by the Sheffield First partnership between 1999 and 2001. The OTIS project sought to help Sheffield gain an understanding of its information architecture and how it could evolve; to promote information exchange as a critical success factor for partnership working; and to demonstrate how information production, exchange and use could be used to unleash the power of knowledge already present at community level. Informal body supported the development of an application for European Regional Development Funds which formally located the project within Sheffield First. The solution piloted by OTIS was to set up a series of user-groups, each reflecting a particular perspective. By the time OTIS neared the end of its formal funding, its approach, based on developing the existing interests and concerns of stakeholders, had led to much greater interest and awareness of the issues it sought to address
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