Citizen Voice Research Articles

The Economic Crisis and Vulnerability in the Spanish Cities: Urban Governance Challenges

The consequences of the socio-urban economic crisis and so-called post-crisis policies (or austerity) are transforming daily life in Spanish cities. There are impoverishment processes, increased vulnerability and social segregation, which translates into a new spatial order. The first public responses to the crisis were dominated by the impulse of neoliberal policies, which aggravated the socio-urban inequalities. In response to this scenario, certain social movements were erected in influential political opposition media and have become the voice of the upset citizens in recent years. Some of these platforms ran in the municipal elections of 2015 under different political banners. The electoral turnaround has been remarkable. A significant number of large cities are governed by these new parties or movements, including Madrid and Barcelona. Although an analysis in perspective is necessary, drastic changes in models of urban governance are anticipated. In this context, the article has a double objective. On the one hand, to study the socio-urban consequences of the crisis and post-crisis urban policies in terms of vulnerability and social exclusion and on the other hand, to analyse the governance strategies driven by new political collectives in the context of the crisis. The territories of study are the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, headers of the Spanish urban system which are also governed by political parties from civic platforms.

Exit and the Epistemic Quality of Voice

AbstractDebates over the relationship between exit and voice in politics have focused on the quantity of citizen voice and its effectiveness in influencing public decisions. The epistemic quality of voice, on the other hand, has received much less attention. This article uses rational choice theory to argue that public sector exit options can lead to more informed and less biased expressions of voice. Whereas voters have weak incentives to gather and process information, exit options provide sharper epistemic incentives to produce knowledge which can spill over into voting decisions. Exit can thus improve democratic competence.

How Systemic Inquiry Releases Citizen Knowledge to Reform Schools: Community Scorecard Case Studies

Despite the relevance of systemic practice for repairing broken public systems, documented instances where it empowers marginalised groups en masse to be action researchers are rare. Public school systems that fail to educate millions of pupils are ripe for systemic inquiry. Using evidence, this article identifies conditions under which such inquiry fosters school system accountability and increases pupil learning. By tracing the emergence of a type of community scorecard practice called Citizen Voice and Action (CV&A), it explains how and why marginalised groups use CV&A’s systems-enhanced participatory research to engage with and reform unresponsive public systems. It also shows how soft systems thinking and further action research enhanced scorecard methodology. Brief case studies of CV&A use in Ugandan primary schools illustrate and explain how communities reform schools by using CV&A to systematically foster accountability. Discussion identifies how processes free them to create and use systemic knowledge. This theorising helps explain conditions under which systemic inquiry into school and other public systems is being generalised and scaled up.

When Does the State Listen?

In this article, we look at four cases of key historical policies in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania to examine how states engage with citizen voices. The policies all took place in contexts of political change and major junctures of democratisation. We identify three kinds of moments when the state listens: hearing moments, when it engages with citizen voices but does not change the way it acts; consultation moments, when it engages with citizen voices through two-way dialogue, resulting in one-sided action; and concertation moments, when coalitions between reform-minded officials and politicians and organised citizen voices engage in two-way dialogue and action for accountable governance. Concertation moments occurred when there was a shared sense of urgency and a common goal across state and non-state actors, and despite different understandings of accountable governance. But concertation moments are also laborious and temporary, part of larger, ever-changing policy processes, and often states revert to consultation or hearing.

When Does ICT-Enabled Citizen Voice Lead to Government Responsiveness?

This article reviews evidence on the use of 23 information and communications technology (ICT) platforms to project citizen voice to improve public service delivery. This meta-analysis focuses on empirical studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen uptake ('yelp') and the degree to which public service providers respond to expressions of citizen voice ('teeth'). The conceptual framework distinguishes two roles played by ICT-enabled citizen voice: informing upwards accountability, and bolstering downwards accountability through either individual user feedback or collective civic action. This distinction between the ways in which ICT platforms mediate the relationship between citizens and service providers allows for a precise analytical focus on how different dimensions of such platforms contribute to public sector responsiveness. These cases suggest that while ICT platforms have been relevant in increasing policymakers' and senior managers' capacity to respond, most of them have yet to influence their willingness to do so.

ICTs Help Citizens Voice Concerns over Water – Or Do They?

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are widely seen as a new avenue for citizens to hold service providers and government to account. But if citizens live in rural Africa, Asia or Latin America, are they able and willing to report on service delivery failures? And are service providers or government officials willing to listen and respond? We explore these questions using an analysis of recent ICT reporting initiatives to improve rural water sustainability. The findings demonstrate that models where a service provider is committed to responsiveness and designs an in-house fault-reporting and maintenance system show greater responsiveness and accountability to users than crowdsourcing models where users are encouraged to report faults. This raises the question of whether ICT is transformative, or whether service improvement simply hinges on making service provision designs more accountable.

Leaving boxes behind: Civil society and water and sanitation struggles in Durban, South Africa

This article examines the complex space between the commodification and decommodification of water, showing how civil society leaves these ‘fictitious’ boxes behind in water and sanitation struggles. Drawing on Polanyi (1944), it looks at how the balance between what is commodified and what is not, can – and is – affected by the engagement between government and civil society in all its forms. In response to the local municipality implementing policy or introducing innovations, civil society in all its forms responds, and acts as a catalyst for significant policy shifts. Important changes in people’s lives can result from civil society engagement with the municipality through dialogue and negotiation alongside protest. Based on key informant interviews, primary documents, and participant observation, it maps out the various forms of this engagement in four critical areas of water and sanitation in Durban, South Africa, namely disconnections and affordable water; dry sanitation and urine diversion toilets; and participation and citizen voice. Although constrained by structural realities, there is evidence that civil society agency can ‘make a difference’ in people’s everyday lives, spurring us on to more extensive policy challenges to widen this space, while contributing to the development of counter hegemonic alternatives.

Citizens’ Perspectives on Disinvestment from Publicly Funded Pathology Tests: A Deliberative Forum

BackgroundDeliberative forums can be useful tools in policy decision making for balancing citizen voice and community values against dominant interests. ObjectiveTo describe the use of a deliberative forum to explore community perspectives on a complex health problem—disinvestment. MethodsA deliberative forum of citizens was convened in Adelaide, South Australia, to develop criteria to support disinvestment from public funding of ineffective pathology tests. The case study of potential disinvestment from vitamin B12/folate pathology testing was used to shape the debate. The forum was informed by a systematic review of B12/folate pathology test effectiveness and expert testimony. ResultsThe citizens identified seven criteria: cost of the test, potential impact on individual health/capacity to benefit, potential cost to society, public good, alternatives to testing, severity of the condition, and accuracy of the test. The participants not only saw these criteria as an interdependent network but also questioned “the authority” of policymakers to make these decisions. ConclusionsCoherence between the criteria devised by the forum and those described by an expert group was considerable, the major differences being that the citizens did not consider equity issues and the experts neglected the “cost” of social and emotional impact of disinvestment on users and the society.

Representation and Democracy: Voice of Citizens. A Local Government Perspective

Traditional representative models of democracy are ill-suited to the new decision-making systems which are spreading in English local government—particularly the emerging ‘devolution deals’ between local authorities and the UK Government (Whitehall). Rather than assuming that the public are not interested in an agenda that can be seen as dry and esoteric, or that complex issues around devolution and policy development can be resolved through a yes/no vote in a local referendum, local policy-makers need to think more creatively about how they use overview and scrutiny, and deliberative methods, to give voice to the aspirations of local people.

Streets to screens: mediating conflict through digital networks

10.15-10.30 Welcome and Introduction Holly Steel, Natalie Fenton and Brian Loader 10.30-12.00 Panel One: News Media and Public Discourse Chair: Natalie Fenton Remediation, intermediation, transmediation. The trajectories of citizen voice in convergent journalism – Lilie Chouliaraki, LSE Amateur Footage: A global study of User Generated Content in TV news output Claire Wardle, UNHCR Strategic Visions, Lived Realities: Representations of military practice in digital media Sarah Maltby, University of Sussex, and Helen Thornham, University of Leeds Infographics in #GazaUnderAttack: Data, Information and Propaganda on Twitter Eugenia Siapera, Dublin City University 12.00-13.00 Lunch

Hurricanes and hashtags: How the media and NGOs treat citizens’ voices online in humanitarian emergencies

Abstract Twitter, Instagram and SMS messages have entered into the defining images and texts of humanitarian disasters, theoretically allowing survivors to play a role in the framing of such crises. Yet research suggests that both mainstream media and NGOs – whose symbiotic relationships traditionally framed such stories – have cloned and absorbed such content, potentially restricting whose voices are heard. Issues around privacy and copyright are yet to be resolved in the mainstream media, while NGOs have turned to western bloggers rather than beneficiaries to mediate their message. This article draws on around 50 semi-structured interviews with those whose content was used by UK mainstream media; journalists from the main broadcast and print outlets in the UK; and members of each of the thirteen UK Disaster Emergency Committee aid agencies who responded to recent crises including the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake. It aims to answer how voices of citizens in crises are being mediated and mediatized, and what issues the use of this content raise around contextual integrity of privacy. It concludes by examining whether NGOs’ engagement online allows the voices of the marginalized to emerge.

Interrogating Practitioner Tensions for Raising Citizen Voice with Participatory Video in International Development

Abstract Within international development, strengthening the voice of citizens living in poverty is recognised as vital to reducing inequity. In support of such endeavors, participatory video (PV) is an increasingly utilised communicative method that can stimulate community engagement and amplify the voice of groups often excluded from decision-making spaces. However, implementing PV processes specifically within an international development context is an immensely complex proposal. Practitioners must take into consideration the different ways institutions may understand the use of participatory video for raising citizen voice; and how therefore the practice may be influenced, co-opted or even devalued by these institutional assumptions. To this end, this article interrogates how global PV practitioners express tension in their work. Analysis of their descriptions suggests six influential views on PV practice with the potential to diminish the value of voice from the margins.

Inclusive public participation in health: Policy, practice and theoretical contributions to promote the involvement of marginalised groups in healthcare

Migrants and ethnic minorities are under-represented in spaces created to give citizens voice in healthcare governance. Excluding minority groups from the health participatory sphere may weaken the transformative potential of public participation, (re)producing health inequities. Yet few studies have focused on what enables involvement of marginalised groups in participatory spaces. This paper addresses this issue, using the Participation Chain Model (PCM) as a conceptual framework, and drawing on a case study of user participation in a Dutch mental health advocacy project involving Cape Verdean migrants. Data collection entailed observation, documentary evidence and interviews with Cape Verdeans affected by psychosocial problems (n = 20) and institutional stakeholders (n = 30). We offer practice, policy and theoretical contributions. Practically, we highlight the importance of a proactive approach providing minorities and other marginalised groups with opportunities and incentives that attract, retain and enable them to build and release capacity through involvement. In policy terms, we suggest that both health authorities and civil society organisations have a role in creating ‘hybrid’ spaces that promote the substantive inclusion of marginalised groups in healthcare decision-making. Theoretically, we highlight shortcomings of PCM and its conceptualisation of users' resources, suggesting adaptations to improve its conceptual and practical utility.

Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?

Summary Empirical evidence of tangible impacts of social accountability initiatives is mixed. This meta-analysis reinterprets evaluations through a new lens: the distinction between tactical and strategic approaches to the promotion of citizen voice to contribute to improved public sector performance. Field experiments study bounded, tactical interventions based on optimistic assumptions about the power of information alone, both to motivate collective action and to influence the state. Enabling environments for collective action combined with bolstered state capacity to respond to citizen voice are more promising. Sandwich strategies can help ‘voice’ and ‘teeth’ to become mutually empowering, through state–society synergy.

Digital Witnessing in War Journalism: The Case of Post-Arab Spring Conflicts

The prominence of citizen voice in contemporary war and conflict reporting has been both hailed as a democratic turn that gives visibility to hitherto powerless audiences and deplored as a demotic turn that sensationalises the news and marginalises deeper understandings of conflict. Rather than taking sides in this debate, I privilege an analytical approach that conceptualises war and conflict reporting as a securitisation of news—a discursive practice by which citizen voice is used to construe conflict as a humanitarian emergency, in line with contemporary conceptions of Western warfare, and to legitimise forms of action. I subsequently look into BBC’s convergent reporting on two post-Arab Spring conflicts, Libya and Syria, so as to explore precisely how citizen voice participates in securitising the news and which discourses of action it articulates.

Effects of voice and similarity on procedural fairness and trust: A dual process model of public acceptance based on representatives’ participation

In citizen participation, a few representatives of the total citizen population participate in discussions with authorities regarding public decisions and policies. The present study examines a dual process model in which the representatives’ voice and similarity of values facilitate public acceptance through procedural fairness and trust in representatives, respectively. The results of an experiment employing a scenario method, which included participants from Japan (n = 211) and the Netherlands (n = 200), indicate that the representatives’ voice increased procedural fairness and public acceptance when the similarity of representatives was high. The effects of representatives’ voice on public acceptance via procedural fairness was supported in both nations, while other effects of representatives’ similarity on acceptance via trust were indicated only in Japan. These results suggest that the indirect voice of citizens, as conveyed by representatives, plays an important role in increasing perceptions of procedural fairness and public acceptance among citizens.

Public engagement in local government: the voice and influence of citizens in online communicative spaces

The communications and engagement strategies of local councils play an important role in contributing to the public's understanding of local democracies, and their engagement with local issues. Based on a study of the local authority in the third largest city in the UK, Leeds, this article presents an empirically based analysis of the impact of new opportunities for public engagement afforded by digital media on the Council's communication with citizens. Drawing on over 20 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with elected politicians, Council strategists, Council communications specialists, mainstream journalists, and citizen journalists, the article explores perceptions of the Council's engagement and communication with citizens from the perspective of a range of actors involved in the engagement process. The research asks what the differing motivations behind the Council's communications and engagement strategies mean for the way that digital media are and might be used in the future to enhance the role of citizens in local governance. The research suggests that while there are no grounds for expecting digital media to displace existing channels of public engagement, digital media are beginning to play an important role in defining and reconfiguring the role of citizens within local governance.

Putting the public back into public health: debates in practice around building the voice of citizens into public health evidence in England, UK

Issue/problem If we are to tackle inequalities in health successfully then it is important to understand the experiences of those groups most affected and involve them in designing and delivering interventions. Whilst this is the basis of much community-based prevention, the traditional evidence model in public health lags behind practice because it undervalues experiential and lay knowledge. Description of the problem In England, UK, the move of public health to local government has begun to open up debate about …

Beyond Ballotocracy: Citizens' Voices and the Many Faces of Unruly Politics

This article is an empirical account of how modes of capturing citizen voices from above (via elections) diverged with expressions of citizen dissidence from below (through unruly politics), leading to a disjuncture between Western policy and scholarly analyses and the situation on the ground in post‐Mubarak Egypt in the period 2011–13. The article does not suggest the abandonment of elections as a means of capturing citizen voices but unless elections are complemented with other measures that capture the changing ‘citizen pulse’ across different times and spaces, disconnects between what is happening on the ground in Egypt and international and national policy will grow, with the outcome of growing violence and loss of human lives. The article argues that attempts to methodologically capture the ‘pulse of citizens’ must be sensitive to its dynamic nature (requiring constant revision and verification) and sensitive to the highly specific contextual nature of its expression and decryption.

Beyond propaganda and the Internet: the ethics of journalism

According to Herman and Chomsky’s “propaganda model”, the information conveyed by the news media is largely determined, both with regard to the agenda-setting and the framing of the news, by the “persuasion industries”. Unlike those media, the Internet offers, at least for now, the possibility that different, alternative voices of citizens and civic and non-governmental organizations are freely heard. At the same time, the Internet challenges the monopoly of traditional news media to offer relevant, credible information. This possibility of citizens and organizations to use Internet to oppose to propaganda is, probably, one of the causes of the current crisis of journalism. The survival of journalism to this crisis lies not in forgetting its ethics but rather in the systematic and consistent reaffirmation of that ethics. Thus, ethics reveals itself as a necessary condition, even if not a sufficient one, to the pragmatic success of journalism.