Community Networks as lead users in online public services design.

Computer professionals are used to conceive people who use the applications they develop as users, or, in the best case, as consumers. People are owner of a fundamental sovereignty right which allows them to play an active role in designing the computer-based systems shaping their working and social life. This role cannot be played in isolation: a community which converges over a shared understanding is a precious asset for designing computer-based systems and online services. The net makes this change feasible, and both the private and the public sector can effectively exploit these new perspectives

A DEEP STUDY ON THE CONCEPT OF DIGITAL ETHICS

From internet governance to teleworking, from digital exclusion to privacy and computer crimes, there are various issues that can be listed as a part of what Digital Ethics - the “ethics of computer era” - is and involves. Before analyzing some of these issues of great importance and relevance nowadays, we need to ask if there is a common factor, a “unifying principle”, for Digital Ethics

Development informatics research and the challenges in representing the voice of developing country researchers: A South African view

Indigenous or local researchers from developing countries have not made a leading contribution to development informatics (DI) or information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) research. This is noteworthy since these researchers should be in a prominent position to contribute to the discourse, where context knowledge is regarded as vital. Furthermore, a dependence on foreign scholarly direction can create a gap between research and reality in a way that affects the success of ICT programmes in African countries. Extant literature highlights this problem, but most studies stop short of considering the causes and proposing how to amplify the voice of developing country researchers. This paper documents the ICT4D/DI research discourse that took place during four seminal academic events in South Africa during the period 2012 to 2015. Those discussions are presented and analysed here to contribute to the wider discourse on ICT research and practice in developing countries, with the aim of enhancing the research contribution of developing countries. An interpretivist, involved researcher analysis of the workshop reports is conducted to gain an improved understanding of the South African ICT4D/DI researcher’s challenges to proportional participation. While this study takes a South African perspective, many of the findings could apply to researchers in other developing countries.CA2016www.wits.ac.za/linkcentre/aji

Toward E-Public Engagement: A Review of Public Participation for Government Governance

The e-public engagement plays more and more important roles in public decision-making process. It’s essential to understand the current status, gaps, and future research directions for e-government platform design, particularly for the approaches to improve the interactive engagement with public opinions. This paper is a first attempt to review a series of literature on e-public engagement from an historical perspective by revisiting a series of concepts including the public sphere, the public engagement, the e-public sphere, and the e-public engagement. The concept of public engagement is thus clarified and the public needs framework is presented to clarify the need to re-design e-government platform contents to engage citizens in a more interactive approach. The review results of this paper suggest that a theoretical framework focusing on e-public engagement shall be investigated by future researchers

e-Governance: Supporting pragmatic direct deliberative action through online communities of interest

Authors often report on the limited success of e-Government initiatives in developing nations. Top down, national strategies are developed to target improved government services, but maintain hierarchical, citizen-state conceptions of governance through representative democracy. An alternative conception, direct deliberative democracy, frames the potential role of the internet in governance differently. Web based platforms might support locally animated deliberations, which target pragmatic outcomes, while the resulting social networks afford collective learning through connections across traditional boundaries. This paper presents an investigation of direct deliberative governance as it occurs in online 'communities of interest', and is based on research with such a community in southern Africa. We investigate contributions to the online governance process and develop an action typology distinguishing between degrees of 'agency freedom'. Network analytic techniques are then used to understand how acts of varying degree are expressed in terms of the structure of a social network. The aim, more broadly, is to understand how the environment shapes acts of direct deliberative governance, and, in turn, how the acts shape the evolution and effectiveness of the community. The preliminary results suggest design considerations for online governance communities, and highlight their role to not only provide deliberative space, but to mediate social network connections

Effects of Changes in Production on Stability of Mayonnaise

The main aim in this study is to investigate the stability and quality of mayonnaise products with special emphasis on how the changes in production affect the stability and quality of mayonnaise products. The main focus is to analyze the mayonnaise samples with selected analysis to understand effects on the changes in production. Mayonnaises are produced by Saarioinen Oy in Huittinen. Mayonnaises are analyzed fresh and after 2-week incubation in 37 °C. The analysis used in this work study the oxidation products: peroxide value, anisidine value and the acid value, chemical structure of fatty acids: gas chromatography, physical structure of the samples: rheology measurements: viscosity, thixotropic and oscillatory measurements. To support the analysis and measurements sensory evaluations are carried out to link the instrumental analyses to sensory changes. The main results in this study is that the changes in production did not affect the mayonnaises much. The biggest difference between the samples were the oxidation level of the incubated samples compared to fresh samples. The oxidation level in incubated samples after the changes in production were lower than in the mayonnaises made before the production changes. In conclusion the mayonnaises can be produced with different techniques to achieve the nearly same quality mayonnaise

Turning Ideas into Proposals : A Case for Blended Participation During the Participatory Budgeting Trial in Helsinki

Balancing between online-offline stages of participatory procedures is a delicate art that may support or hinder the success of participatory democracy. Participatory budgeting (PB), in particular, is generally rooted in online platforms, but as our case study on the City of Helsinki PB trial suggests, face-to-face events are necessary to engage targeted and often less resourceful actors in the process. Based on a longer-term participant observation, covering the PB process from its early to ideation phase to the current stage of proposal development for the final vote, we argue that the process has thus far been successful in blending online-offline components, largely supported by the active support of borough liaisons who have served as navigators between the different stages. From the point of view of co-creation, different stages of the PB process (ideation, co-creation) call for different strategies of online-offline participation. Effective mobilization of marginalized actors and interactions between public servants and citizens seem to benefit from face-to-face processes, while city-wide voting and discussion can effectively occur in the online platform.Peer reviewe

‘Probing with the prototype’:using a prototype e-participation platform as a digital cultural probe to investigate youth engagement with the environment

This study describes how we used a prototype e-participation plat-form as a digital cultural probe to investigate youth motivation and engagement strategies. This is a novel way of considering digital cultural probes which can contribute to the better creation of e-participation platforms. This probe has been conducted as part of the research project STEP which aims at creating an e-participation platform to engage young European Citizens in environmental decision making. Our probe technique has given an insight into the environ-mental issues concerning young people across Europe as well as possible strat-egies for encouraging participation. How the e-participation platform can be utilised to support youth engagement through opportunities for social interac-tion and leadership is discussed. This study leads to a better understanding of how young people can co-operate with each other to provide collective intelli-gence and how this knowledge could contribute to effective e-participation of young people

Mobile Informal Language Learning: Exploring Welsh Learners’ Practices

Mobile devices have great potential in supporting language learning, through providing access to vocabulary, lessons and resources, and supporting interactions with other speakers. There may be particular advantages, however, in using such technologies for learning minority languages. Welsh is a minority UK language spoken by around 611,000 people in Wales and there is considerable interest among adults in Wales and from Welsh families in learning Welsh. However the small numbers of speakers and their uneven distribution make it difficult for learners outside Welsh speaking “hotspots” to hear and practice Welsh. Mobile learning therefore has great potential for Welsh learners by providing resources wherever the learner is and by supporting web-based learning communities. The study reported here investigates whether this potential is being exploited in practice. It employed interviews and a small survey to study the practices of Welsh learners at all levels. It was found that learners used mobile technologies widely, to access a wide range of resources, although not always on-the-move, and also that many were using courses, in particular one online course. Learners’ practices in using digital technologies for their Welsh language learning are discussed, and also the implications for both learning other minority languages and for informal mobile learning more generally

Futures in the making: Practices to anticipate 'ubiquitous computing'

Kinsley, S. 2012, The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning A, 2012, Vol. 44, Issue 7, pp. 1554 – 1569 doi:10.1068/a45168. This a post-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Environment and Planning A. Copyright © 2012 PionThis paper addresses the discourse for a proactive thinking of futurity, intimately concerned with technology, which comes to an influential fruition in the discussion and representation of ‘ubiquitous computing’. The imagination, proposal, or playing out of ubiquitous computing environments are bound up with particular ways of constructing futurity. This paper charts the techniques used in ubiquitous computing development to negotiate that futurity. In so doing, it engages with recent geographical debates around anticipation and futurity. The discussion accordingly proceeds in four parts. First, the spatial imagination engendered by the development of ubiquitous computing is explored. Second, particular techniques in ubiquitous computing research and development for anticipating future technology use, and their limits, are discussed through empirical findings. Third, anticipatory knowledge is explored as the basis for stable means of future orientation, which both generates and derives from the techniques for anticipating futures. Fourth, the importance of studying future orientation is situated in relation to the somewhat contradictory nature of anticipatory knowledges of ubicomp and related forms of spatial imagination