Designing persuasive games through competition

This case study describes a game design competition that was influenced by participatory design. We consider how successful our approach was and discuss the tensions that arose during the design and evaluation process

A General Discontent Disentangled: A Conceptual and Empirical Framework for Societal Unease

Surveys show discontent with society to be prevalent among the general public across western societies. However, this undercurrent, here called societal unease, has received little scientific attention. This article has four aims. First, it proposes a conceptual model of societal unease by integrating a broad range of interdisciplinary literature. Second, it tests this conceptual model empirically with survey data from the Netherlands. Confirmatory factor analyses confirm a latent dimension of societal unease behind attitudes about five aspects of society. Third, it shows societal unease to be highly related to societal pessimism, moderately to anomia and weakly to happiness. Finally, it explores the association of societal unease with various demographic, attitudinal and behavior characteristics

CONTEMPORARY CONDITIONS OF STRATEGIC PLANNING OF A CITY’S SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT – SELECTED ASPECTS

In the times of quick and widespread changes, innovations and new ways of city management, new approaches to planning of strategic development of urban entities are expected. Therefore there is a continuing search for possibilities of acquiring new information about the city market and ways to shape it, residents’ participation and involvement, and also creating city openness. Urban centres are not closed entities but they have strong relations with the local, domestic and global markets. There is a search for new directions and priorities in strategic planning of social and economic development, while the established goals follow consultations, workshops and meetings of various groups of urban stakeholders. The consequences of long-term implementation of a city’s image as open is, on the one hand, its recognisability, yet – on the other one – the experience of positive and negative effects of the implementation. The purpose of the study is to identify selected contemporary conditions of strategic planning of a city’s social and economic development, emphasising – in particular – the bases for creating a city’s openness, including the related opportunities and hazards. Another intention is to highlight innovative ways of collecting market information about needs and aspirations of city users, as well as to form the residents’ attitude towards their involvement in the development of their living space. The applied research methods include literature studies, benchmarking and reasoning.dobie szybkich i szerokich zmian, innowacji i nowych sposobów zarządzania miastem oczekiwane są nowe podejścia do planowania strategicznego rozwoju tych jednostek. Wobec czego po- szukuje się możliwości pozyskania nowych informacji o rynku miasta i wpływania na niego; partycypacji i zaangażowania mieszkańców oraz kreowania otwartości miasta. Ośrodki miejskie nie są zamkniętymi organami, mają one silne relacje z rynkiem lokalnym, krajowym i globalnym. W planowaniu strategicznym rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego poszukują nowych kierunków i priorytetów, a wskazane cele są następ- stwem konsultacji, warsztatów i spotkań wielu grup użytkowników miasta. Konsekwencją długookresowego wdrażania wizerunku miasta jako otwartego jest z jednej strony jego rozpoznawalność, z drugiej strony miasto odczuwa pozytywne i negatywne konsekwencje tego działania. Celem badania jest wskazanie wybra- nych współczesnych uwarunkowań planowania strategicznego rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego miasta, szczególnie podkreślając podstawy kreowania jego otwartości, w tym szanse i zagrożenia płynące z takiego działania. Dodatkowym zamierzeniem jest wskazanie innowacyjnych sposobów zbierania informacji z rynku o potrzebach i dążeniach użytkowników miasta; a także kreowanie postawy zaangażowania mieszkańców w rozwój przestrzeni, w której funkcjonują. Zastosowane metody badawcze to: studia literatury, benchmar- king, wnioskowanie

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN A CHANGING WORLD: DOES IT CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP?

One of the challenges faced by contemporary societies concerns building a more inclusive society. This objective is particularly compelling in the current historical period characterized by growing social and cultural heterogeneity in European countries and an increase of prejudice and discrimination to-ward immigrants. Global citizenship (GC) can support inclusive attitudes and immigrants\u2019 acceptance. The aim of the study was to test the role of different forms of associative experiences and civic and po-litical participation in promoting GC in the younger generations. Data were collected between October 2016 and January 2017 using paper and online questionnaires. The sample consisted of 1,732 partici-pants (60.7% females; Mage = 19.73). The questionnaire measured demographics, mobility experiences, membership in organizations, latent and manifest political participation. Based on UNESCO conceptual model (2015), GC was operationalized as follows: openness and tolerance toward migrants and refu-gees, trust in people, democratic and civic values, knowledge and political awareness, personal and collective capacity to act politically. Results showed that members of volunteer organizations scored higher in all the dimensions of GC included in the study, compared to nonmembers, while the impact of other kinds of organizational membership and participation on GC was limited. Volunteer organiza-tions proved to be a very important context for the development of GC in young generation

Creating opportunities for digital engagement and participation

Worldwide, digital media are used by laypersons for health-related purposes. Laypersons’ engagement and participation on the subject of health is the focus of this article, in which I explore how digital media create opportunities for laypersons to engage with information and participate on a health topic which has been subjected to controversy, namely HPV vaccination. The analysis is based on an inductive multidisciplinary literature review of research on digital media and HPV vaccination. In the analysis, I apply Corner’s (2011) understanding of engagement and Kelty and colleagues’ (2015) seven dimensions of participation. I find two kinds of engagement, namely using digital media as information sources and interpersonal communication, that both only satisfi es few dimensions of participation. I argue that broader participation might be unachievable on health subjects such as vaccination and other subjects that require a high degree of expertise to understand. Due to this, laypersons cannot necessarily engage or participate further

Médias d’actualité, journalistes et publics sur Twitter : vers un renouvellement des relations ? Résumé de la thèse de doctorat

This thesis focuses on the question of the renewal of relations between media actors and audiences in the context of the digital transformation of journalism and the advent of social media. It is based on a qualitative and a quantitative content analysis of tweets related to twelve francophone news threads in 2011 and 2016. The results mainly show a gap between uniform and unidirectional uses of Twitter by media actors and the diversified, personal and interactive uses of news on Twitter by audiences. Findings suggest the persistence of long-standing trends in the relations between media actors and audiences – which remain asymmetrical (and tend to become stronger in this sense) despite the possibilities of social interactions offered by the microblogging tool Twitter – and a “resistance” by media actors, especially journalists, to change institutionalized journalistic practices

Robot life: simulation and participation in the study of evolution and social behavior.

This paper explores the case of using robots to simulate evolution, in particular the case of Hamilton's Law. The uses of robots raises several questions that this paper seeks to address. The first concerns the role of the robots in biological research: do they simulate something (life, evolution, sociality) or do they participate in something? The second question concerns the physicality of the robots: what difference does embodiment make to the role of the robot in these experiments. Thirdly, how do life, embodiment and social behavior relate in contemporary biology and why is it possible for robots to illuminate this relation? These questions are provoked by a strange similarity that has not been noted before: between the problem of simulation in philosophy of science, and Deleuze's reading of Plato on the relationship of ideas, copies and simulacra

Analyzing youth digital participation: aims, actors, contexts and intensities

Participation is often used as a blanket term that is uncritically celebrated; this is particularly true in the case of youth digital participation. In this article, we propose a youth-focused analytical framework, applicable to a wide variety of youth digital participation projects, which can help facilitate a more nuanced understanding of these participatory practices. This framework analyzes the aims envisioned for youth participation, the actors and contexts of these activities, and the variable levels of participatory intensity, in order to more accurately assess the forms and outcomes of youth digital participation. We demonstrate the value of this framework by applying it to two contemporary cases of digital youth participation: an informal online community (Nerdfighters) and a formalized educational initiative (CyberPatriot). Such analyses facilitate normative assessments of youth digital participation, which enable us to better assess what participation is good for, and for whom