Municipalities increasingly seek to include citizens in decision-making processes regarding local issues, such as urban planning. This paper presents a case study on using Virtual Reality (VR) in a process of civic participation in the redesign of a public park. The municipality included citizens in intensive co-design activities to create three designs for the park and engaged the neighbourhood community in co-decision, in the form of a ballot. Through the civic participatory process, we studied the effectiveness of using VR technology to engage the community in participating in the co-decision process. The three designs were presented using highly realistic 360˚ visualisations and the effects on engagement were compared between various devices: VR headsets, smartphones, tablets, and computers. Viewing the designs in 2D paper plans was also included in the comparison. The study included over 1300 respondents that participated in the ballot. A statistical analysis of the collected data shows that participants viewing the 360˚ rendered images with VR technology expressed a significantly higher engagement in the co-decision process than those using their computer at home or viewing 2D paper plans. The paper describes the complete participatory design process and the impact of the e-governance used on the target group as well as on the actors organizing the e-governance process. We discuss how the use of new technology and active presence of a voting-support team inspired citizens to participate in the co-creation process and how the investment in this procedure helped the local authorities to generate support for the plans and strengthen its relationship with the community. The use of realistic visualisations that can be easily assessed by citizens through user-friendly technology, enabled a large and diverse audience to participate. This resulted in greater visibility of municipal efforts to enhance the living environment of citizens and is therefore an important step in increased civic engagement in municipal policy-making and implementation.
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Information literacy is essential for the operation of a civic society in which all people may participate (Catts & Lau, 2008). The aim of the Fact Checking Factory (FCF) is to accomplish cooperation between students and local citizens. We aim to create an agenda for local decision-makers with the project objectives of fact-checking local news. http://ecil2018.ilconf.org/#
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The purpose of this literature study was to obtain an overview of previous civic literacy projects and their characteristics as primarily described in educational science literature. Eighteen academic articles on civic literacy projects in higher education were studied in detail and coded using the qualitative data analysis instrument, Atlas.ti. The codes and quotations compiled were then divided in various categories and represented in a two-axis model. The definitions of ‘civic literacy’ found in the literature varied from an interest in social issues and a critical attitude to a more activist attitude (axis number 1). The analysis of the literature showed that, especially in more recent years, more students than citizens have benefited from civic literacy projects in higher education (axis number 2). The visualization of the findings in the two-axis model helps to place civic literacy projects in a broader frame. The final authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13472-3_9
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Lower levels of news use are generally understood to be associated with less political engagement among citizens. But while some people simply have a low preference for news, others avoid the news intentionally. So far little is known about the relationship between active news avoidance and civic engagement in society, a void this study has set out to fill. Based on a four-wave general population panel survey in the Netherlands, conducted between April and July 2020 (N = 1,084) during a crisis situation, this research-in-brief investigates the development of news avoidance and pro-social civic engagement over time. Results suggest that higher news topic avoidance results in higher levels of civic engagement. The study discusses different explanations for why less news can mean more engagement.
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This paper focuses on the topical and problematic area of social innovations. The aim of this paper is to develop an original approach to the allocation of social innovations, taking into account characteristics such as the degree of state participation, the scope of application, the type of initiations as well as the degree of novelty, which will be elaborated on further in this article. In order to achieve this goal, the forty-two most successful social innovations were identified and systematized. The results of this study demonstrated that 73.5% of social innovations are privately funded, most of them operating on an international level with a high degree of novelty. Moreover, 81% of all social innovations are civic initiatives. Social innovations play an important role in the growth of both developed and less developed countries alike as highlighted in our extensive analysis
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European civic integration programmes claim to provide newcomers with necessary tools for successful participation. Simultaneously, these programmes have been criticised for being restrictive, market-driven and for working towards an implicit goal of limiting migration. Authors have questioned how these programmes discursively construct an offensive image of the Other and how colonial histories are reproduced in the constructions seen today. The Dutch civic integration programme is considered a leading example of a restrictive programme within Europe. Research has critically questioned the discourses within its policies, yet limited research has moved beyond policy to focus on discourse in texts in practice. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of texts used in the civic integration programme and demonstrates that they participate in multiple discursive constructions: the construction of the Dutch nation-state and its citizens as inherently modern, the construction of the Other as Unmodern and thus a threat, and the construction of the hierarchical relationship between the two. The civic integration programme has been left out of discussions on decolonisation to date, contributing to it remaining a core practice of othering. This study applies post-colonial theories to understand the impacts of current discourse, and forwards possibilities for consideration of decolonised alternatives.
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HCI and design research has turned toward exploring methods, technologies, processes for societal impact, and do so by intervening in the real world and designing for, with and by people and existing citizen initiatives. A key issue faced is enabling efforts to continue beyond the project or grant timeline. For this reason, there is a growing need to create a forum where researchers and practitioners can share their approaches to shed light on opportunities and challenges of supporting lasting civic initiatives moving forward. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in how to make civic initiatives have lasting impact: either by supporting and sustaining such initiatives or by focusing on how their outcomes increase people's capacity to act on their ideas and wishes.
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Parental involvement is a crucial force in children’s development, learning and success at school and in life [1]. Participation, defined by the World Health Organization as ‘a person’s involvement in life situations’ [2] for children means involvement in everyday activities, such as recreational, leisure, school and household activities [3]. Several authors use the term social participation emphasising the importance of engagement in social situations [4, 5]. Children’s participation in daily life is vital for healthy development, social and physical competencies, social-emotional well-being, sense of meaning and purpose in life [6]. Through participation in different social contexts, children gather the knowledge and skills needed to interact, play, work, and live with other people [4, 7, 8]. Unfortunately, research shows that children with a physical disability are at risk of lower participation in everyday activities [9]; they participate less frequently in almost all activities compared with children without physical disabilities [10, 11], have fewer friends and often feel socially isolated [12-14]. Parents, in particular, positively influence the participation of their children with a physical disability at school, at home and in the community [15]. They undertake many actions to improve their child’s participation in daily life [15, 16]. However, little information is available about what parents of children with a physical disability do to enable their child’s participation, what they come across and what kind of needs they have. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate parents’ actions, challenges, and needs while enhancing the participation of their school-aged child with a physical disability. In order to achieve this aim, two steps have been made. In the first step, the literature has been examined to explore the topic of this thesis (actions, challenges and needs) and to clarify definitions for the concepts of participation and social participation. Second, for the purposes of giving breadth and depth of understanding of the topic of this thesis a mixed methods approach using three different empirical research methods [17-19], was applied to gather information from parents regarding their actions, challenges and needs.
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By using information technology, local governments can develop alternative forms of citizen engagement. Civic crowdfunding campaigns supported by online platforms enable citizens to participate financially in social projects and can be matched with government funding. As such, an alternative for subsidies seems to be developing. In this paper, we assess empirically the success of civic crowdfunding campaigns in the Netherlands by using data collected during 2018 from 269 civic crowdfunding projects and local demographic data from the neighborhoods of these projects. The factors—the use of match-funding, the target amount of money, and the theme of the project, as well as the age structure, the province, and the degree of urbanization of the neighborhood of the civic crowdfunding project—turn out to be empirically related to the success of a civic crowdfunding campaign.
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Sowijs deed onderzoek naar verschillende strategieën voor burgerparticipatie via sociale media. Hoe moet je Twitteren om mensen te betrekken en gebruik je dan wel of geen hashtags. Lees het in dit whitepaper!
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