Online Citizen Research Articles

The digital turn in postcolonial urbanism: Smart citizenship in the making of India's 100 smart cities

The smart city as a “digital turn” in critical urban geography has gone largely unnoticed in postcolonial urbanism. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining the emergence of new forms of postcolonial citizenship at the intersection of digital and urban publics. In particular, I investigate the production of a “smart citizen” in India's 100 smart cities challenge – a state‐run inter‐urban competition that seeks to transform 100 existing cities through ICT‐driven urbanism. By examining the publicly available documents and online citizen consultations as well as observations of stakeholder workshops in four of the proposed smart cities, I illustrate how a global technocratic imaginary of “smart citizenship” exists alongside its vernacular translation of a “chatur citizen” – a politically engaged citizen rooted in multiple publics and spatialities. This takes place through three key processes – enumerations, performances and breaches. Enumerations are coercions by the state of an urban population that has so far been largely hidden from analogue technologies of governance and governmentality. Articulations are the performances of smart citizenship across digital and material domains that ironically extend historic social inequalities from the urban to the digital realm. Finally, breaches are the ruptures of the impenetrable technocratic walls around the global smart city, which provides a window into alternative and possible futures of postcolonial citizenship in India. Through these three processes, I argue that subaltern citizenship in the postcolony exists not in opposition, but across urban and digital citizenships. I conclude by offering the potential of a future postcolonial citizen who opens up entangled performances of compliance and connivance, authority and insecurity, visibility and indiscernibility across political, social, urban and digital publics.

Tracking Nemo: Help Scientists Understand Zebrafish Behavior.

The advent of automated tracking software has significantly reduced the time required to record movement trajectories, thereby facilitating behavioral studies of zebrafish. However, results are substantially influenced by tracking errors, such as loss and misidentification of individuals. In this study, we present the development of an online citizen science platform, Tracking Nemo, to improve data accuracy on swimming trajectories of zebrafish groups. As an online extension of software for tracking the position of zebrafish from video recordings, Tracking Nemo offers volunteers the opportunity to contribute to science by manually correcting tracked trajectory data from their personal computers. Researchers can upload their videos that require human intervention for correcting and validating the data. Citizen scientists can monitor their contributions through a leaderboard system, which is designed to strengthen participant retention and contribution by tapping into intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Tracking Nemo is expected to help scientists improve data accuracy through the involvement of citizen scientists, who, in turn, engage in an authentic research activity and learn more about the behavior of zebrafish.

Getting it Right or Being Top Rank: Games in Citizen Science

The use of games in citizen science is growing, but can create tension as gaming and science can be seen as incompatible areas of activity. For example, the motivations for winning a game and scientific pursuit of knowledge may be seen as contrary. Over a one-year period, we conducted a virtual ethnographic study of the public forums of two online citizen science projects, Foldit and Galazy Zoo, the first a project in which gaming is an explicit design feature and the second in which it is not. The aim was to provide a nuanced view of how participants topicalize and respond to tensions between gaming and science. Thematic analysis of discussion forum posts suggests that participants in the two projects respond differently to the tension. By unpacking participant responses to the tension between games and science, our study highlights that citizen science projects using games are not just about fun. To enroll and retain volunteers, these projects also must recognize and manage the implicit normative scientific ideals that participants bring with them to a project. We further conclude that ideals of science embraced by citizen scientists appear to influence the reasons why they participate, either emphasizing equality, like in Galazy Zoo, or meritocracy, like in Foldit.

Review of six Japanese online citizen science projects with main indicators to encourage citizen motivation

Review of six Japanese online citizen science projects with main indicators to encourage citizen motivation

Networking, Exclusion and Negotiated Visibility: Feminist and Anti-Racist Social Media Debaters’ Endurance Strategies

Since the rise of the Internet, there has been a growing interest in research on its implications for democracy and participation. This article contributes to the research on online citizen political participation with a bottom-up, grassroots perspective that focuses on non-professional and individual actors. Through interviews with 15 young Swedish bloggers and social media debaters involved in feminist, anti-racist and leftist politics, the present article explores the conditions for citizen participation, as well as the benefits and impediments to being a blogger and social media debater. The conclusion is that while engaged citizens focused on feminism and anti-racism have many negative experiences, strategies enabled by social media use give them access to a support system that is fundamental to their endurance. The challenges for feminists and women online seem to be the same as those present at the beginning of the 1990s, but strategies for coping and resisting are now enabled by new tools. The participants in this study depend on their network for collaboration, safety, dissemination of content, support, and a sense of community, which is facilitated by the use of information and communication technologies for collaboration and dissemination.

Sistem Forum Diskusi Online Warga RW 02 Kelurahan Jati Kecamatan Pulogadung Jakarta Timur

Online Discussion Forum System Citizens need to be built as a medium of information exchange and news. With the Online Citizens Discussion Forum System, information and news are faster delivered to citizens wherever and whenever, so it is expected to improve the quality in service for the citizens themselves. To design the Online Discussion Forum System, the author uses PHP programming language with MYSQL database and XAMPP webserver. The system development model used is RAD model with Business Modeling stage, Data Modeling, Process Modeling, Application Generation, Testing and Turnover. The system design tools using UML (Unified Modeling Language) include Use Case Diagram and Activity Diagram. The results obtained from this study are the users of RW 02 residents can interact directly with the Chair RW 02 online and can exchange information online anytime and anywhere with all residents RW 02.

EGovernance frameworks for successful citizen use of online services: A Danish-Japanese comparative analysis

The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) by the public sector is often highlighted as a key tool for the transformation of public sector service delivery. Recent literature reviews have highlighted the limited understanding of the role played by governance, inter-governmental decision making and cooperation when introducing ICT solutions and online services to citizens. As part of a larger qualitative, multi-country comparison, this article compares the Danish and Japanese approaches to electronic governance (eGovernance) and inter-governmental cooperation to answer the question: Does a strong governance model and high level of intergovernmental action lead to the successful supply and use of online citizen services? The analysis finds that the two cases support academic arguments in favour of a strong eGovernance model and a high level of inter-governmental cooperation and decision making. The article finds that a political- or public sector-driven and motivated public sector modernisation, a consensus seeking and an inter-governmental approach to eGovernment, trust between actors, and the role of formal and informal are important determinants for success, as illustrated by the continued strength of the Danish governance and joint-governmental cooperation model over the more fragmented Japanese approach. Still, both countries would benefit from a more holistic approach to service delivery, process, and organisational reengineering in order to progress further.The analysis finds that the two cases support academic arguments in favour of a strong eGovernance model and a high level of inter-governmental cooperation and decision making. The article finds that a political- or public sector-driven and motivated public sector modernisation, a consensus seeking and an inter-governmental approach to eGovernment, trust between actors, and the role of formal and informal are important determinants for success, as illustrated by the continued strength of the Danish governance and joint-governmental cooperation model over the more fragmented Japanese approach. Still, both countries would benefit from a more holistic approach to service delivery, process, and organisational reengineering in order to progress further.

Research on the Dilemmas of the Modes of Contemporary Chinese Citizen’s Online Political Participation

The dilemma of the modes of the contemporary Chinese citizen's online political participation is mainly reflected in the conflict between the plural interaction mode and the group polarization behavior. The mode of plural interaction is the essential requirement of citizen's online political participation, and the "group polarization" behavior is the extreme way of citizen's online political participation. The Echo wall of Internet users interaction, creating a kind of "group polarization" phenomenon, "intergroup Homogeneity" and "out-group heterogeneity", lead to network public opinion "group polarization"; the thoughts on interactive between reality and network, aggravate the "group polarization" effect; asynchronous and real-time by the online information communication, to promote the "group polarization" all of these phenomena, which is conflict with the pluralism of participant, the diversity demands of the rights and interests, the modes of participation, the interactive information exchange that the inherent requirement of the citizens` political participation. This is to promote the interaction between the government and the citizens, and to improve the citizen's online political participation.

E‐GOVERNANCE AND E‐PARTICIPATION VIA ONLINE CITIZEN BUDGETS AND ELECTRONIC LOBBYING: Promises and Challenges

Proponents of e‐government, e‐governance, and e‐participation are particularly excited about the inclusive and empowering nature of some of their recent platforms. Critics nevertheless remain skeptical about how empowering these technologies really are and to what extent they fruitfully contribute to direct democratic processes. This essay reviews online initiatives in two areas (citizen budgets and facilitating citizen lobbying practices) intended to enhance e‐participation and e‐government strategies in the United States and beyond. I suggest that although clear progress has been made in the innovation of e‐governance and information and communication technologies with websites like LobbyForMe and online citizen's budget initiatives, a long road lies ahead before any notable milestone can be acknowledged in respect to full‐blown e‐democracy.

From stars to cells – harnessing the power of the crowd for research

Modern research techniques allow more data to be generated than can be easily analyzed by the scientists who produce it. An original solution to this problem is to recruit volunteers to help with data analysis through online citizen science projects such as the Zooniverse.

The expansion and contraction of the journalistic field and American online citizen journalism, 2000–2012

While previous research has considered patterns of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the journalistic field, existing literature has largely ignored the factors that contribute to the growth and contraction of the field. Using citizen journalism (CJ) as a case study, we examine how four forces – organizational population dynamics, technological innovations, exogenous political events, and endogenous disruptions elsewhere in the field – shaped the growth of CJ over time and, consequently, the journalistic field. Using a snowball sampling method, we collected a “near-population” of U.S.-based, English-language CJ sites (n=1829) to measure yearly density and rates of foundings and mortalities. The population of CJ sites increased through most of the period, foundings declined after a spike in 2005, and mortalities rose dramatically after 2010. The results provide evidence that organizational population and technological change affected the size of the population of CJ sites, while political upheaval and disruptions within professional journalism held less sway.

Where is Online Citizen Journalism Going? : Focused On the Protests Erupted in Seoul, 2016 and the Citizens of S.Korea and Japan

Where is Online Citizen Journalism Going? : Focused On the Protests Erupted in Seoul, 2016 and the Citizens of S.Korea and Japan

Where is Online Citizen Journalism Going? : Focused On the Protests Erupted in Seoul, 2016 and the Citizens of S.Korea and Japan

Where is Online Citizen Journalism Going? : Focused On the Protests Erupted in Seoul, 2016 and the Citizens of S.Korea and Japan

Exploring Engagement Characteristics and Behaviours of Environmental Volunteers

Environmental volunteering and environmental citizen science projects both have a pivotal role in civic participation. However, one of the common challenges is recruiting and retaining an adequate level of participant engagement to ensure the sustainability of these projects. Thus, understanding patterns of participation is fundamental to both types of projects. This study uses and builds on existing quantitative approaches used to characterise the nature of volunteer engagement in online citizen science projects, to see whether similar participatory patterns exist in offline environmental volunteering projects. The study uses activity records of environmental volunteers from a UK environmental charity “The Conservation Volunteers,” and focuses on three characteristics linked to engagement: longevity, frequency, and distance travelled. Findings show differences in engagement patterns and contributor activity between the three UK regions of Greater London, Greater Manchester, and Yorkshire. Cluster analysis revealed three main types of volunteer engagement profiles which are similar in scale across all regions, namely participants can be grouped into “One-Session,” “Short-Term,” and “Long-Term” volunteer. Of these, the “One-Session” volunteer accounted for the largest group of volunteers.

Life in the Zooniverse: Working with Citizen Science

It has become accepted orthodoxy in Literature and Science studies that relations between the two domains are a “two way street,” and that literature and culture do not meekly reflect the new findings of their dominant partner, science, but are actively engaged in a dynamic, reciprocal set of relations with scientific practice and the development of scientific ideas. It is an attractive position (and one to which I have always subscribed), but such reciprocity is decidedly easier to track in historical context, before the consolidation of structures of institutional and professional science, than in the current period. The call for the AHRC “Science in Culture” large grants scheme was thus challenging: applicants were asked not merely to analyse reciprocal relations between science and culture, but to work directly with scientists, and to develop new insights and new methodologies for both sides. A tall order! Over the years I have participated in numerous workshops and conferences with scientists, trying to discover common ground, but never engaged directly in collaborative research. Originally Gowan Dawson and I had been envisaging a strictly historical project, addressing all those thousands of scientific and medical journals which lie mouldering in library basements (and are still largely untouched by digitisation). As historians we are familiar with the “big names”, those journals like the Lancet, the BMJ or Nature which have survived into the present day, and whose dominance in the historical record is now reaffirmed by the digitisation of back numbers, making it easier for scholars to work with them. But what about all those local natural history journals, or medical or public health journals which have faded from historical memory? Our aim, in working with these journals, was to uncover the networks which operated within Victorian science and medicine, and to rewrite in the process the metropolitan and professional focus of much historiography. Yet, such work would not involve any interaction with contemporary science. I had become aware, however, of the emerging phenomenon of “citizen science,” particularly as supported by Zooniverse, the online citizen science platform run by Chris Lintott in the Dept of Astro-Physics at the University of Oxford. It was clear that there were interesting parallels between, for example, the armies of people who participated in the development of natural history in the nineteenth century, and the “citizens” who now go online to help analyse scientific data, whether of astronomical phenomena, cancer cells, or the behaviour of wildlife. In the resulting AHRC project, “Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries,” based at the Universities of Oxford and Leicester, and run in conjunction with our partners the Natural History Museum, London, the Royal Society, and the Royal College of Surgeons, England, we uncover forgotten histories of large-scale participation in science, and the role of journals in helping to create and consolidate these communities. We also bring such historical knowledge to bear on current practice, exploring ways in which earlier models of scientific communication and community building can help to inform the rapidly changing world of science in the digital age. In addition, the project has also created its own citizen science projects: Science Gossip and Orchid Observers.

Planet Four: Terrains – Discovery of araneiforms outside of the South Polar layered deposits

We present the results of a systematic mapping of seasonally sculpted terrains on the South Polar region of Mars with the Planet Four: Terrains (P4T) online citizen science project. P4T enlists members of the general public to visually identify features in the publicly released Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera (CTX) images. In particular, P4T volunteers are asked to identify: (1) araneiforms (including features with a central pit and radiating channels known as ‘spiders’); (2) erosional depressions, troughs, mesas, ridges, and quasi-circular pits characteristic of the South Polar Residual Cap (SPRC) which we collectively refer to as ‘Swiss cheese terrain’, and (3) craters. In this work we present the distributions of our high confidence classic spider araneiforms and Swiss cheese terrain identifications in 90 CTX images covering 11% of the South polar regions at latitudes ≤ −75° N. We find no locations within our high confidence spider sample that also have confident Swiss cheese terrain identifications. Previously spiders were reported as being confined to the South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD). Our work has provided the first identification of spiders at locations outside of the SPLD, confirmed with high resolution HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) imaging. We find araneiforms on the Amazonian and Hesperian polar units and the Early Noachian highland units, with 75% of the identified araneiform locations in our high confidence sample residing on the SPLD. With our current coverage, we cannot confirm whether these are the only geologic units conducive to araneiform formation on the Martian South Polar region. Our results are consistent with the current CO2 jet formation scenario with the process exploiting weaknesses in the surface below the seasonal CO2 ice sheet to carve araneiform channels into the regolith over many seasons. These new regions serve as additional probes of the conditions required for channel creation in the CO2 jet process.

Jovens e contextos quotidianos de consumo e apropriação de notícias

This article analyzes the social circulation of news in the private sphere, using a sample of thirty-two Portuguese young people who were interviewed because they had some form of civic participation of different types and intensities. Through the consumption of news and political information, five profiles were identified: informed citizens, uninformed citizens, emergent consumers of information, the relevance of the self-centered and online citizens. These profiles revealed the significance of the social and civic capitals, the importance of daily life and family environments in the habits of news consumption and an important connection of family with political news.

EButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Consevation.

Data collection, storage, analysis, visualization, and dissemination are changing rapidly due to advances in new technologies driven by computer science and universal access to the internet. These technologies and web connections place human observers front and center in citizen science-driven research and are critical in generating new discoveries and innovation in such fields as astronomy, biodiversity, and meteorology. Research projects utilizing a citizen science approach address scientific problems at regional, continental, and even global scales otherwise impossible for a single lab or even a small collection of academic researchers. Here we describe eButterfly an integrative checklist-based butterfly monitoring and database web-platform that leverages the skills and knowledge of recreational butterfly enthusiasts to create a globally accessible unified database of butterfly observations across North America. Citizen scientists, conservationists, policy makers, and scientists are using eButterfly data to better understand the biological patterns of butterfly species diversity and how environmental conditions shape these patterns in space and time. eButterfly in collaboration with thousands of butterfly enthusiasts has created a near real-time butterfly data resource producing tens of thousands of observations per year open to all to share and explore.

Protocol for implementing the concept of citizen scientists for HealthWise Wales: a national population study

ABSTRACT
 ObjectivesHealthWise Wales is a national cohort study, aiming to recruit 260,000 people, over 16, living in, or accessing health services in Wales, within 5 years. The aims are; to create a cohort with longitudinal follow up data on behavioural and environmental exposures, using data linkage to healthcare datasets and outcomes; create a register of potential research participants; actively engage the public in research, inviting them to identify priorities. Research areas of importance include impact of social inequalities on health and well-being; effect of environment/neighbourhood on health; maintenance of health and well-being in the working age population and later life. Successful recruitment relies on public engagement strategies, engaging community members to engage others in their immediate community, and using local people to collect data and act as citizen scientists.
 ApproachInvolving People Network members were invited to take part in an advisory group to discuss the possibility of members of the public acting as citizen scientists for HealthWise Wales. An advisory group was established in North and South Wales to inform this protocol. Researchers, through meetings and communication, directed members to other citizen scientist projects and 3rd sector groups that have utilised similar methods. The advisory group also considered online citizen scientist projects.
 ResultsMembers of the group agreed that the term champion was more appropriate than citizen scientist. Levels of commitment and the role were discussed and members concluded that overall they thought it was a good idea. They stressed training would be necessary, as well as concise and clear messaging to allow HWW champions to talk confidently about the project. They felt it was important champions decide their own level of commitment and involvement. Two levels of champions were agreed: the first level where people will commit to finding out more about the project by either attending a training session or watching an online video; and the second where they pledge to engage members from their existing networks and communities through events, clubs and activities which they might already participate in.
 ConclusionThe concept of HealthWise Champion is agreeable to members of the public but appropriate training and support will need to be provided. Materials will be developed in conjunction with the advisory group members to ensure that HealthWise Wales Champions are able to clearly and confidently disseminate the more difficult elements of the study to others e.g data linkage. An evaluation will be available by July.

An Evidence-Based Approach to the Use of Social Media to Promote Political Literacy among Youth in the Sultanate of Oman

This paper presents the findings of a review of literature to understand the issues facing the Sultanate of Oman in this area, and to identify international examples of best practice in the use of social media to promote political literacy among young people. Evidence-based recommendations for the Government of the Sultanate of Oman are developed, which include the provision of social media literacy training at school and university level, as well as the establishment of an online citizen engagement portal. By adopting international best practice in the use of social media to promote political literacy and citizen engagement among young people, it is believed that the Sultanate of Oman can provide a model for other Middle Eastern Arab states, helping to reduce the potential for political conflict in these countries and promoting participatory approaches to policy-making which reflect the growing demands of young citizens.