Civic Networks Research Articles

Black Code: Censorship, Surveillance, and the Militarisation of Cyberspace

Conventional wisdom holds that the Internet's material properties are biased towards openness, and provide the foundation for a global commons of information increasingly beneficial to citizens worldwide. However, pressures from the security and commercial sectors to regulate and control the Internet are beginning to alter its basic material architecture in ways that may undermine not only the activities of global civic networks, but also the long-term prospects for an open global communications environment. As Internet censorship and surveillance becomes more widespread, and as states begin to militarise cyberspace, a radically different environment for global communications is emerging. However, these changes are not uncontested. While not having the influence over Internet security and design issues that security and corporate actors do, a growing number of civil society actors are merging with politically minded computer scientists and engineers to form policy networks and develop `hacktivist' technologies designed to support self-expression, privacy, and security for global civic networks. For the Internet and other information and communication technologies to support a global commons of information the success of this movement over the long term will be critical.

Designing Virtual Citizens: Some Scottish Experiments with Electronic Democracy

GENERAL: PROBLEMS AND QUESTIONS Western democracy: Is it disintegrating? There is a widespread assumption that public participation in social and political affairs is declining, at least in the Western world. This decline is declared to be evident in two main areas. The first is the arena of democratic politics. The second covers the myriad unofficial associations which go to make up civic networks, sometimes defined as 'civil society' and often stated to be the locus of so-called 'social capital* - a society's resources of capacity for solidarity, joint action and mutual support. Two factors - either or both - are usually blamed for this decline. One is the general (but not universal) increase in personal wealth and resources. The other is the growing 'privatisation' of personal life - not least through new techniques of communication - which is supposed to be rendering traditional face-to-face association superfluous. There are laments for the alleged passing-away of the 'active citizen'. He or she is defined as somebody prepared as a matter of course to engage with others in public or social activity, intended to defend a community, to fight against perceived injustice or to bring about reform and change. This engagement can happen at any level from that of a housing scheme to the global environment.

Trust and community building in the Doñana (Spain) toxic spill disaster

Appeals to public participation and, more generally, to a wider involvement of civic networks in the management of environmental conflicts are becoming more common after the difficulties that both the Market and the State appear to have in regulating these conflicts. The concern of this paper is with how central elements in civic society, such as interpersonal trust and community-building mechanisms, are influenced by environmental catastrophes. The case of the toxic spill disaster in Doñana, Spain, is presented in order to examine whether this accident had any effect on interpersonal trust and the mobilization of civic networks in the area. From the analysis, it can be concluded that involvement of civic networks in the management of these situations depends on the magnitude (real or perceived) of the disaster but also on the performance of public institutions regarding the event.

Information communications technology and local development

This paper takes into consideration the existing links between local, economic development and the communications potential embedded in civic networks and local information systems. Through a thorough empirical survey of services (comprising administrative and social care services, possibility of access, IT literacy, discussion forums and equality of access) set up in Italy, and carried out using qualitative and quantitative methods, civic networks have been analysed as a way of improving administrative services and public communication and also as an opportunity to create new forms of communication between citizens, administration, economic actors and non-profit associations. What is highlighted here is how the confrontation and cooperation of social interests may not only improve the potential of local government, but also promote a process of socialization which could lead to the revitalization of declining civil and political participation. In particular, my analysis concerns the experiences of three Italian regions (Piedmont, Emilia Romagna and Lombardy) which offer different models of economic, social and political development. Civic networks, here, have evolved along different lines and served different purposes, determined by social and administrative regional environments.

Website applications in urbanism and architecture

In the context of rapid technology development, followed by Internet spreading worldwide, the amount of information related to urbanism and architecture has remarkably increased. This paper lists a website selection with the aim to present the state of Internet based information sources on urbanism and architecture. The idea is to help colleagues cope with numerous available on-line contents. The websites are, according to their contents, classified into following categories: associations and institutions, international documents, urban planning and design, information and communication technologies in urbanism, on-line available magazines and books, civic networks, architectural design, famous architects and best examples.

Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: India and Beyond

Scholars have worked either on civil society or on ethnic conflict, but no systematic attempt has yet been made to connect the two. In an attempt to explore the possible links, this article makes two interconnected arguments. First,interethnicandintraethnicnetworks of civic engagement play very different roles in ethnic conflict. Because they build bridges and manage tensions, interethnic networks are agents of peace. But if communities are organized only along intraethnic lines and the interconnections with other communities are very weak (or do not exist), ethnic violence is then quite likely. Second, civic networks, both intra- and interethnic, can also be broken down into two other types:associational forms of engagementandeveryday forms of engagement. This distinction is based on whether civic interaction is formal or not. Both forms of engagement, if robust, promote peace: contrariwise, their absence or weakness opens up space for ethnic violence. Of the two, however, the associational forms turn out to be sturdier than everyday engagement, especially when confronted with attempts by politicians to polarize the people along ethnic lines. Both arguments have significance for theories of ethnic conflict and social capital.

Book Reviews

International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchVolume 24, Issue 3 p. 713-727 Book Reviews First published: 28 June 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00274AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Books reviewed: Mike Douglass and John Friedmann, (eds.) Cities for citizens: planning and the rise of civil society in a global age Eric C. Schneider, Vampires, dragons and Egyptian kings: youth gangs in post-war New York Erhard Berner, Defending a place in the city: localities and the struggle for urban land in Metro Manila Ali Madanipour, Tehran: the making of a metropolis Linda Tuhiwai-Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples Nicholas Low and Brendan Glee, Justice, society and nature: an exploration of political ecology Rosa Tsagarousianou, Damian Tambiniand and Cathy Bryan, (eds.) Cyberdemocracy: technology, cities and civic networks Maf Smith, John Whitelegg and Nick Williams, Greening the built environment Michael V. McGinnis, Bioregionalism Andrew Leyshon, David Matless and George Revill, (eds.) The place of music Volume24, Issue3September 2000Pages 713-727 RelatedInformation

New Media and Democracy

This article describes and evaluates civic networks in Europe and the USA. These are seen as attempts to use new media technology, particularly the internet, to improve participation in local democratic processes. Various aspects of democratic communication are examined, including information access, preference measurement, deliberation and group mobilization. A wide variety of city-based experiments are described, which have all faced problems of low take-up and problems of inequality of access. It is argued that new media will have a significant and positive impact upon the processes of democratic communication within the appropriate regulatory and economic context, particularly regarding access to communications technologies.

Second-Generation Civic America: Education, Citizenship, and the Children of Immigrants

Second-Generation Civic America: Education, Citizenship, and Children of Immigrants The onset of recurrent mass immigration forced United States to deal with a new problem the preservation of ability of people of dissimilar origins to act together under dissimilar conditions. Public institutions and ethnic groups faced challenge of creating forms of social capital that would facilitate crossing of boundaries for social and civic participation. Putnam has described complex of networking, norms, and mutual social trust bringing together different groups in pursuit of common social and civic objectives as bridging social capital.' Both public schools and settlement houses of Progressive era directed creative forces for organizing social and civic networks to overcome group divisions. These institutions were, in part, a reaction to putative weakness of bridging social capital in immigrant communities in an attempt to advance public spiritedness and commitment to public interest. Progressiveera educators and settlement workers, responding to perception that nation had become a society of myriad sub-communities isolated and alienated from each other, identified a second-generation problem: Deprived of both upbringing in their ancestral homeland and assimilation into their host society, children of immigrants existed in a transnational

Civic Networks, Legitimacy and the Policy Process

In ethnically divided developing countries, avenues permitting popular participation in the policy process seem essential if the state is to be viewed as legitimate. Frequently, however, mechanisms intended to build legitimacy by providing for popular participation fail to achieve this target. This article analyzes the policy process in Mauritius, and argues that it combines characteristics of both policy networks and civil society. We term this form of popular consultation on policy a “civic network,” and we present research which suggests that it has been successful in building legitimacy. By comparing this civic network with other forms of popular participation, we are able to identify the characteristics which seem to make it more effective. The effects of popular participation on the policy capacity of a state are more mixed, but in the case of Mauritius, we conclude that by increasing legitimacy, the civic network also increased state policy capacity.

Alachua free‐net: Looking for the First Amendment at one outpost on the information highway*

Many communities are developing civic computer networks to provide citizens with free access to local information resources and the Internet. However, most networks restrict both commercial speech and any language deemed “objectionable.”; Whether such broad discretionary power violates the First Amendment depends on whether the networks are state actors. An examination of one such network, Alachua Free‐Net, reveals a close symbiotic relationship between the network and several local government entities. Symbiotic relationships between the state and a private party in other contexts have been held by the courts to constitute state action. Thus, Alachua Free‐Net appears to be a state actor and must conform its speech restrictions to the requirements of the First Amendment. Moreover, whether state actors or not, civic computer networks such as Alachua Free‐Net should commit themselves to providing full First Amendment freedoms to their users.

Civic networking in the United States: A report by Columbia University students

During the 1994 spring semester, twelve students, enrolled in Columbia University′s graduate program in public policy and administration and explored the new phenomenon of civic networking for a workshop in applied public policy analysis. Each workshop is required to be sponsored by a governmental client, which in this case was the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The commission was interested in ascertaining the range of activities sponsored by the networks and in determining their involvement or lack of involvement with local public libraries. Participating in this project were representatives of twenty‐four civic networks, who answered telephone queries covering a range of topics dealing with network services, users, goals, funding, governance, technical design, social benefits, government information provision, evaluation, and definition. This paper summarizes the findings of the students′ investigation.

How to Study Community Power: The Pluralist Alternative

POLITICAL SCIENTISTS ARE BEGINNING TO VIEW certain major contributions to the study of community politics less favorably than one would have expected after hearing the fanfare surrounding the original acceptance of these works.1 Often billed as studies of "community power structure," these works have been produced mostly by sociologists, whose orientation has been to study the politics of American communities as a subsidiary aspect of social structure. "The political organization of Jonesville," writes one