Online Democratic Deliberation in a Time of Information Abundance

September 14, 2007 at 11:17 pm · Filed under collaboration, communuity informatics, deliberation, design, digital humanities, gemeinschaft, governance, humanities computing, political communication, politics, social media, software, web2.0

This article of mine recently appeared in the journal, Fast Capitalism.

The intensified use of the Internet by civil society groups and governments for political purposes has left many questions unexplained�especially in terms of the Internet’s effects upon deliberative democratic processes. The Internet was first imagined as a means to revitalize deliberative processes. However, poor design and lack of usability research meant that many ambitions went largely unrealized. With a new wave of Internet technologies, ‘deliberative design’ has become even more important to stem what many claim is a trend towards political fragmentation and disaggregation. In a time of ‘information abundance’ mounting political communication online may also undermine collectivist, deliberative democratic processes, distinct from the ambition to renew these processes. There is therefore a pressing need to design Internet technologies that serve deliberative democracy, rather than unwittingly undermine it (link)

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What is e-Framework?

August 29, 2007 at 8:27 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, e-science, education, governance, humanities computing, web2.0

The e-Framework for Education and Research is an initiative by the UK�s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Australia�s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). The primary goal of the e-Framework is to facilitate technical interoperability within and across education and research through improved strategic planning and implementation processes (link)

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Ten Major Issues in Providing a Repository Service in Australian Universities

May 18, 2007 at 6:51 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, education, governance, humanities computing, social media, web2.0

By mid 2006, all Australian universities had established, or were partway to establishing, institutional repository services. The development of institutional repository services can often be related to the open access movement, which seeks to make valued research outputs openly available by encouraging academics to place their publications into repositories, enhancing their availability and bypassing the high cost of journal subscriptions. However, many universities have extended the functionality of their repository services for other purposes, such as giving scholars the opportunity to develop their own research portfolio, providing a means of improving research reporting, establishing an electronic publishing service, or giving access to collections of images or other research outputs. The potential for development seems endless (link).

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UK Government Restrictions on Street Photography

February 27, 2007 at 1:51 am · Filed under governance, political communication, politics, social media, software, technology, web2.0

(the software for No 10 was developed by MySociety.org)

Signing up to ask the Prime Minister to Stop proposed restrictions
regarding photography in public places

The UK Govt are about to propose restrictions on photography in
public places which could make street photography and documentary
photography against the law. There's a petition on the Downing St
website against the Government's proposals to restrict the use of
photography in public areas. Sign up to the petition now. (thanks to Nettime for the link)

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Photography/

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E Government in Britain

February 18, 2007 at 3:20 am · Filed under deliberation, governance, politics, web2.0

E Government is an established field and practice in the UK. The Guardian Online has an entire section devoted to e-government and its recent controversies (link).

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Lovink interview with Ken Jordan on Nettime

December 3, 2006 at 9:31 pm · Filed under governance, politics, social media, web2.0

This interview with Ken Jordan of the Aumented Social Network initiative by Geert Lovink is really good. In fact; it is excellent. And I thought that Lovink was a libertarian! It is on the list Nettime (2004) and is about a model for a Augmented Social Network that facilitates qualty online deliberation partly through ‘interoperability’ between groups.

See: Planetwork

And the Augmented Social Network

And here is some information on the 2004 Planetwork Conference.

And there are some comments on the Blog Media Company, Corante’s, ‘many‘ site.

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What is America Speaks?

November 15, 2006 at 12:15 pm · Filed under governance, political communication, web2.0

One of the most sophisticated projects that I have come across in the field of online political communication in the government sector. They have an excellent guide called: “Public Deliberation: A Managers Guide to Citizen Engagement” (link .pdf) Plus a number of other highly innovative initiatives that you can view on their web site (thanks to Lars Hasselblad Torres for the link)

AmericaSpeaks formed the Democracy Lab for Research and Innovation to advance the fields of citizen engagement and deliberative democracy by supporting activities that:

* Build knowledge around best practices
* Develop and test new ways to engage citizens
* Increase collaboration within the field

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International net domains ‘risky’

October 31, 2006 at 2:33 pm · Filed under governance, internet, web2.0

The global inter-operability of the internet needs to be preserved, Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the net, has told a global gathering in Athens (from BBC).

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Dialogue Needed for Internet’s Future

October 30, 2006 at 6:57 pm · Filed under governance, internet, web2.0

The Internet Governance Forum, set up by the United Nations as a multi-stakeholder space for dialogue, will meet for the first time on 30 October in Athens (from BBC).

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Warning Over ‘broken up’ net

October 30, 2006 at 6:55 pm · Filed under governance, internet, web2.0

The internet could one day be broken up into separate networks around the world, a leading light in the development of the net has warned (from BBC)

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Internet Governance Forum Opens on Monday

October 29, 2006 at 8:01 pm · Filed under events, governance, internet, politics, web2.0

Q&A: Internet Governance Forum

The first United Nations’ Internet Governance Forum opens in Athens on Monday with thousands of delegates attending to discuss the future of the net.

Q. What is the Internet Governance Forum?

The IGF was set up by the United Nations as a forum for stakeholders in the internet to discuss its future.

Stakeholders can be anyone and any organisation - from national governments, commercial organisations, charitable bodies to individual interested parties. It was formed out of the World Summit for the Information Society meetings, the last of which was held in Tunis in last year. The first IGF will be held in Athens from 30 October to 5 November. (from BBC link)

Technorati : governance, internet, new media, web2.0
Del.icio.us : governance, internet, new media, web2.0
43 Things : governance, internet, new media, web2.0

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4) Morning Coffee with Craig: What is Globalisation?

October 27, 2006 at 7:48 pm · Filed under governance, politics, video diary, web2.0

Today I give a very brief overview of that monumental term ‘globalisation’. As you probably know, there are protests against a certain type of globalisation (neo-liberalism) being planned in Melbourne for the meeting of the G20 group.

Also, here is a site that I made way back in August, 2000 about globalisation. There are some good articles on it, although the newspaper artciles are no longer available (broken links and excuse the nasty advertising that comes with these free hosts).

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Community Engagement and ICT

October 12, 2006 at 4:00 pm · Filed under education, governance, pedagogy

For those interested in ICTs and Community Engagement, I have transcribed a list of useful sites from that wonderful publication “Towards Whole of Community Engagement: A Practical Toolkit” by Heather J Aslin and Valarie A Brown. Although none of these links particularly concern ICTs, the methodologies and approaches used in them could be appled to innovation with ICTs in a community setting (including political innovation or ‘innovation’ in the formation of social or cultural capital).
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What is the Internet Governance Forum?

September 8, 2006 at 4:20 pm · Filed under governance, internet, politics

One of the initiatives to come out of the final Tunis round of the two-round UN sponsored World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) last year was the set up of an ongoing international dialogue called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). They have their first meeting in Greece next month. Here is the forums mandate:

The mandate of the IGF is set out in Paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda:

72. We ask the UN Secretary-General, in an open and inclusive process, to convene, by the second quarter of 2006, a meeting of the new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue�called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).The mandate of the Forum is to:

1. Discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet;

2. Facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body;

3. Interface with appropriate inter-governmental organizations and other institutions on matters under their purview;

4. Facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, and in this regard make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities;

5. Advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of the Internet in the developing world;

6. Strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in existing and/or future Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from developing countries;

7. Identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations;

8. Contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries, drawing fully on local sources of knowledge and expertise;

9. Promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes;

10. Discuss, inter alia, issues relating to critical Internet resources;

11. Help to find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet, of particular concern to everyday users;

12. Publish its proceedings (link)

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What is the Digital Opportunity Index?

September 7, 2006 at 1:04 pm · Filed under governance, internet

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has identified the need to measure the advances made in breaching the digital divide and in promoting the broad development goals included in the United Nations Millennium Declaration through increased access and use of ICTs. To this end, the WSIS Plan of Action prioritizes evaluation and tracking of countries� progress in adopting ICTs.

TheDigital Opportunity Index (DOI) was endorsed in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, adopted during the Tunis Phase of WSIS. Accordingly to para 117 of the Agenda, which encourages the further development of indicators in a �collaborative, cost-effective and non-duplicative fashion�, the DOP mobilized and coordinated efforts for further developing the DOI as a tool for better measurement of the digital divide, as a part of the ongoing work on the WSIS implementation. The Index was developed in close collaboration with the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (link).

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