participatory design – Page 2

Empowerment is not simply a Goal, but Civic Technology still needs it as one

10 November 201914 August 2023Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

2019. Graeff, E. “Empowerment is not simply a Goal, but Civic Technology still needs it as one.” CSCW 2019 Workshop on Design and the Politics of Collaboration: A Grassroots Perspective.

Download Paper

graeff-cscw2019-workshop_submission Download

Link to Paper on Workshop Website

Participants

Abstract

The use of technology platforms for civic engagement is transforming the practices and experience of democracy, as well as the processes of political empowerment and civic education. This demands that such technology be designed more consciously to support citizen empowerment and civic learning. I have developed new metrics and methods to evaluate technology platforms in terms of citizen empowerment in order to replace more common metrics that merely look at a technology’s efficiency. This can help establish citizen empowerment as a design goal for civic technology. However, empowerment is not a goal, it is a process and experience. True empowerment will require that the creation of technology be a collaboration of stakeholders, wherein power and agency throughout the design process are shared. Still, I believe that articulating a goal of and metrics for empowerment can be a helpful milestone to making civic technology in empowering ways.

Everyone Should Be Involved in Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Digital Surveillance Technology

30 April 201921 July 2020Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2019. ‘Everyone Should Be Involved in Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Digital Surveillance Technology.’ In Levinson, M & Fay, J, eds., Democratic Discord in Schools: Cases and Commentaries in Educational Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Link to Proof of my Chapter

https://www.academia.edu/43683257/Everyone_Should_Be_Involved_in_Designing_Implementing_and_Evaluating_Digital_Surveillance_Technology

Link to Book

https://www.hepg.org/hep-home/books/democratic-discord-in-schools

Excerpt

Although digital surveillance technologies may seem to be purely technical innovations, how technology is designed always also involves political choices. Technology design embodies the values of its designers and those who commission the design, as well as the values embedded in the underlying structures it often abstracts and amplifies. When digital surveillance technologies are used in schools without being subject to appropriate political discussion and contestation, they threaten democratic education in several ways. First, they impose a set of policies that affect the rights of students and parents without consulting them in their design and implementation. Second, they may chill legitimate student inquiry or even criminalize students who are researching topics or personal questions deemed taboo or dangerous according to administrators. Building on participatory design and “popular technology” principles, I thus recommend that schools involve students, parents, teachers, and administrators in collective deliberation about the design, scope, and use of digital surveillance technologies.

Designing for Monitorial Citizenship

26 April 201715 December 2018Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Presentation Recording

Slides

https://www.slideshare.net/erhardtgraeff/designing-for-monitorial-citizenship-april-26-2017-tictec-2017

Abstract

High levels of mistrust in governments and politicians around the world, connected to anti-elitist sentiments among both liberal and conservative citizens, has signaled a need for effective strategies and technologies that support monitorial citizenship.

“Monitorial citizenship is a form of civic engagement in which people independently track issues or communities of interest in order to be prepared to take action when necessary. Common activities of the monitorial citizen include collecting information, sharing stories and insights, co-ordinating with networks of other civic actors, and pursuing accountability for institutions and individuals and their perceived responsibilities” (Graeff forthcoming).

With the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election, in particular, we are seeing increased interest in monitorial practices from both citizens and technologists, who have responded by developing new digital tools.

But because many projects recreate the design features of existing tools, there is a significant and immediate need to know what does and does not work.

Prior technologies for monitorial citizenship have been documented under names like sousveillance (Mann 2002), social monitoring (Fung et al. 2013), and accountability technologies (Offenhuber & Schechtner 2013), and they have been deployed for a range of endeavours from activism to participatory governance to disaster response (Madianou, et al. 2016).

This paper is a qualitative meta-analysis of the existing literature and additional original case studies, organising monitorial citizenship tools into thematic groups by their theories of change and design features. Based on the success of prior work, Erhardt proposes a set of design principles for tools supporting civic activities such as accountability, critique and solidarity, and insurrectionism, alongside recommendations for deployment.

Making Drones Civic

12 June 2015Erhardt Graeff

Link to Conference Paper

graeff-matias_makingdronescivic_isa2015

Abstract

Can drones be fully accepted as civic technologies? Are there values embodied by drones that undermine their ability to perform in a civic capacity? What design principles might make drones more civic? Where does responsibility lie between civil society actors, drone designers, and policymakers in pursuing this goal while balancing privacy, security, and innovation? Although drones have several proposed civic use cases, particularly involving practices described as monitorial citizenship, drones are different from other civic technologies. Civic technologies are about shifting power away from corrupt actors and toward virtuous actors. And a motivating concept and ethic for civic technologies, whether used for interacting with governments or against them, is participatory practice. If we aspire to a definition of civic action that is fundamentally participatory and we hope for our civic technologies to embody that value of participatory practice, we must investigate whether drones can be fully accepted as civic technologies. This paper will address these questions and issues, problematizing the use of drones for civic purposes by defining a set of values and design principles for civic technologies and by showing where drones may play a role, situating contemporary cases among relevant political and ethical questions.