Defining human-machine micro-task workflows for constitution making

This paper presents a novel task-oriented approach to crowdsource the drafting of a constitution. By considering micro-tasking as a particular form of crowdsourcing, it defines a workflow-based approach based on Onto2Flow, an ontology that models the basic concepts and roles to represent workflow-definitions. The approach is then applied to a prototype platform for constitution-making where human workers are requested to contribute to a set of tasks. The paper concludes by discussing previous approaches to participatory constitution-making and identifying areas for future work.This work is part-funded by FEDER Funds, by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the COMPETE Programme (Operational Programme for Competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980 (PTDC/EEI-SII/1386/2012). The work of Nuno Luz is supported by the doctoral grant SFRH/BD/70302/2010. The work of Marta Poblet draws from previous research within the framework of the project “Crowdsourcing: instrumentos semánticos para el desarrollo de la participación y la mediación online” (DER 2012-39492-C02-01) by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Crowdsourcing: A new tool for policy-making?

Crowdsourcing is rapidly evolving and applied in situations where ideas, labour, opinion or expertise of large groups of people are used. Crowdsourcing is now used in various policy-making initiatives; however, this use has usually focused on open collaboration platforms and specific stages of the policy process, such as agenda-setting and policy evaluations. Other forms of crowdsourcing have been neglected in policy-making, with a few exceptions. This article examines crowdsourcing as a tool for policy-making, and explores the nuances of the technology and its use and implications for different stages of the policy process. The article addresses questions surrounding the role of crowdsourcing and whether it can be considered as a policy tool or as a technological enabler and investigates the current trends and future directions of crowdsourcing. Keywords: Crowdsourcing, Public Policy, Policy Instrument, Policy Tool, Policy Process, Policy Cycle, Open Collaboration, Virtual Labour Markets, Tournaments, Competition

Modeling support for strategic API planning and analysis

APIs provide value beyond technical functionality. They enable and manage access to strategic business assets and play a key role in enabling software ecosystems. Existing work has begun to consider the strategic business value of software APIs, but such work has limited analysis capabilities and has not made use of established, structured modeling techniques from software and requirements engineering. Such modeling languages have been used for strategic analysis of ecosystems and value exchange. We believe these techniques expand analysis possibilities for APIs, and we apply them as part of a cross-company case study focused on strategic API planning and analysis. Results show that goal, value, and workflow modeling provide new, API-specific benefits that include mapping the API ecosystem, facilitating incremental API planning, understanding dynamic API-specific roles, identifying bottlenecks in API change workflows, and identifying API value

French Media: Can Crowdfunding Serve Pluralism?

International audienceThe study presented here by Loïc Ballarini, Emmanuel Marty and Nikos Smyrnaios examines the reasons which led French media organizations to conduct crowdfunding campaigns between 2013 and 2016, and places them within a larger social and historical context. The issue of the extent to which revenue sources and capital ownership affect content has indeed been brought to the fore since the early twentieth century. This is what the authors refer to as “the quest for clean money”, or the search for funding that guarantees independent news production in accordance with journalistic ethics. This quest has taken many forms throughout the twentieth century, with the most recent one being crowdfunding. Interviews with journalists reveal that while the aims are still the same, and as with previous solutions, crowdfunding also has its limits and seems to be used only by niche media or for special ventures

Life beyond clickbait journalism: a transnational study of the independent football magazine market

In a cluttered and increasingly complex environment characterized by the multiplication of platforms, a constellation of quality football print magazines has emerged as an alternative destination in sports journalism. To trace the expansion of the independent football magazine market, in-depth interviews were conducted with the editors of eight prestigious projects from seven countries: Howler (United States), Panenka and Líbero (Spain), Mundial (United Kingdom), So Foot (France), 11 Freunde (Germany), Offside (Sweden), and Ballesterer (Austria). Independent football magazines position themselves as part of a journalistic counteroffensive to the metric-driven, routinized, and complacent approach that currently shapes mainstream sports media output. In contrast to the primary orientation of sports journalism towards economic capital, their editorial philosophy is built on three core axes aimed at developing cultural capital: (1) a diverse and multifaceted football agenda that embraces unheard voices and far-reaching issues of a sociocultural, geopolitical, and economic nature; (2) the importance of dedicating time and resources to create a visually distinctive output; and (3) a deliberate emphasis on nostalgia and resistance to the seemingly endless commodification of football. As part of their creative approach, gathering and nourishing a community of readers has been fundamental to the growth and sustainability of those projects

Designing anticipatory policies through the use of ICTs

This paper seeks to achieve a better understanding of how and under what conditions current digital communication technologies can become an asset to the design of effective policies. In order to do so, we bridge two strands of reflection that have hitherto developed quite independently – i.e. policy design studies and researches on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to reform the public sector. We start from the assumption that different governmental political and technical capacities shape different spaces for action and thus different types of policy design in which policy-makers can involve citizens via ICTs in three modes: co-design; design fine-tuning; crowdsourced policy design. According to this framework, we analyse three different ‘revelatory case studies’ in which ICTs have been employed by governments while designing policies: Iceland’s recent experiment to redraft collectively its constitution; La Buona Scuola, the latest Italian public education law; and the Finnish Avoin Misteriö, a platform for crowdsourced legislation. By exploring the different modes in which ICTs have been integrated in the formulation of these three policies, we show that it is possible to disentangle different and more or less effective ways of exploiting ICTs’ networking and communicative potential for designing successful public policies