Abstract
In recent years, citizen involvement has been increasingly recognised as a source of complementary insights to expert-based foresight. This article analyses citizen visions on desirable and sustainable futures gathered in three recent European involvement projects and reviews how the methodology of topic modelling can be applied to identify commonalities in the visions and how the identified topics are distributed across the citizen involvement projects. A common topic addressing a European citizen desire for wide-ranging societal development with an emphasis on education was identified in the modelling. In addition, three specific topics that correspond to the foci of each involvement project were evident: ‘local production’, ‘cultural variety’ and ‘concerned collectives’. Hence, the results indicate that there are further opportunities for further citizen involvement activities and that specifically focused open-ended envisioning events can contribute to unique sets of citizen-induced topics for the future. These results are particularly useful for the institutionalisation of citizen involvement in foresight studies.
Highlights
Citizen involvement has in recent years become an increasingly accepted procedure in foresight studies
The European Union has recognised the potential benefits of citizen involvement in foresight and offered opportunities for citizens across Europe to articulate their visions on desirable and sustainable futures in three forward-looking projects (Civisti 2009, Casi 2015 and Cimulact 2015–2016)
We present the settings and key features of the three examined citizen involvement projects, followed with a description of the application of topic modelling of the citizen visions
Summary
Citizen involvement has in recent years become an increasingly accepted procedure in foresight studies. The practice of involving citizens has aimed to complement expert-based foresight (see [1] on the potential of participatory foresight, [2] on focus on experts and [3–5] for examples of expert-based studies). The European Union has recognised the potential benefits of citizen involvement in foresight and offered opportunities for citizens across Europe to articulate their visions on desirable and sustainable futures in three forward-looking projects (Civisti 2009, Casi 2015 and Cimulact 2015–2016). In turn, have used these visions as a first step to identify citizen-induced agendas for European research and innovation. These visions provide a unique opportunity to examine European citizen sentiments and values concerning the
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
