E-democracy and values in information systems design

In this paper I demonstrate the utility of a Values in Design (VID) perspective for the assessment, the design and development of e-democracy tools. In the first part, I give some background information on Values in Design and Value-Sensitive Design and their relevance in the context of e-democracy. In part 2, I analyze three different e-democracy tools from a VID-perspective. The paper ends with some conclusions concerning the merits of VID for e-democracy as well as some considerations concerning the dual tasks of philosophers in assessing and promoting value-sensitive technology design

Opportunity of a Lifetime 2.0: Multigenerational Family Philanthropy

More than ever before, giving families are working to involve multiple generations in their philanthropy.According to the National Center for Family Philanthropy's Trends in Family Philanthropy Study, nearly 3 in 5 U.S. family foundations engage younger family members in the foundation — and more than 40 percent say they expect to add to or increase the number of younger-generation family members on their boards in the near future.This issue brief was written with this emergent trend in mind and to help families understand how to best involve multiple generations in their work.In it, you'll find information about:why you should involve the entire family in your giving,strategies for incorporating younger generations into your foundation's work,common challenges and expert approaches,tips for on boarding new generations into your foundation, andsuggestions for next generation family members who are getting involved in their families' philanthropy.As the title of this paper suggests, this passages paper is the second edition of "Opportunity of a Lifetime." The original paper, "Opportunity of a Lifetime: Young Adults in Family Philanthropy," written by Alison Goldberg (herself a Gen X family philanthropist) was published in 2002. A lot has changed in 15 years, so we decided to take another look at the best practices, technology, benefits, challenges, and opportunities for next generation engagement. This paper builds on and updates the work of the original to offer new voices and insights

Agent-based Social Psychology: from Neurocognitive Processes to Social Data

Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information that is correlated to political affiliation. Here we characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model whose inter individual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions are in qualitative agreement with experimental neuroscience data. The main conclusion derived connects the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies and statistics of the sets of moral foundations and suggests that this connection arises from interactions between agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data on conformity and learning processes, presents statistical signatures consistent with moral judgment patterns of conservatives and liberals as obtained by survey studies of social psychology.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 C codes, to appear in Advances in Complex System

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

Master\u27s Project: Strengths, Engagement and Voices: A Story of Community

This project focused on the rural town of Cambridge, VT and the perceptions, ideas, and efforts of some of its members to create a sustainable and thriving environment for the entire community. The project built on previous community engagement efforts and utlized community engagement practices that centered on relationships and focused on community conversations by sharing stories, identifying community strengths and needs, and creating a social network to support positive change. The project also included my participation in a local government appointed Community Engagement Team. Over the course of a year, these efforts yielded insights about community engagement processes and practices while supporting Cambridge community members to identify a variety of challenges and opportunities to create a more vibrant and sustainable community