Clicks, Conflicts, and Civics: Rosie’s and My Research Interests
My research interests in digital civics revolve around participatory forms of urban planning. In my previous research in HCI & environmental sustainability, in particular for green mobility and domestic energy consumption. Such persuasive systems helped to raised awareness around these issues but failed to motivate effective long-term change as necessary changes were beyond their individual possibilities (e.g. more attractive cycling infrastructure). In digital civics I want to avoid this disempowering experience by working closely with communities so they can have a greater say in improving their built environment to enable more sustainable lifestyles. In my vision this was facilitated through an inclusive, engaging, deliberative, and transparent participatory urban planning platform that shifts at least some of the decision-making power from local authorities and planners to citizens.
In the last weeks I have, however, began to question many of the underlying assumptions. Participation can never be fully inclusive. I as the researcher am in a position in power as I decide who I will be working with and thus exclude others. My idea of constructive deliberation has largely gone out of the window when I concluded that instead I might embrace the idea of agonistic pluralism as a design principle – only that I have little ideas yet how this can materialise in actual design. Also, not only are communities very heterogeneous groups with conflicting interests, people in power will certainly not hand over power to citizens just like that. Should I therefore rather work with the activists or be an activist myself and undermine authority? And what if my personal ‘environmental agenda’ is not a priority for the groups I work with?
I am confused and at the same time excited to explore these questions in my MRes before refining them for my PhD project. At the moment I feel like participation is ‘what you make of it’, i.e. it is up to me how to configure participation for my own agenda, which I should be very aware of.
Rosie is interested in small activist groups and how they can transfer the strong interest and support they get online into ‘genuine’ action, i.e. how can slacktivists be turned into activists? She feels that people who support activist groups online often have good motives, but activist groups have little means to harness this good will. There are few technologies that are designed for activists by activists, as companies are generally not interested in supporting such ‘troublemaker’ groups. Rosie wants to follow a participatory design process to develop a ‘mobiliser’ technology.
I am keen to see how Rosie’s research will evolve. Her work seems highly relevant to my own interests, as I consider activist groups as central actors in participatory urban planning. I can relate to her motivation to get more people to not just click ‘like’ on Facebook but go onto the streets. In light of the discussions we had around the nature of participation, I do recommend her to reflect on what ‘genuine’ participation can be – is ‘liking’ less meaningful than marching on the street or possibly a new arena of everyday public discourse?
Related Papers
A paper I recently got recommended but haven’t read and looks very relevant to my research is: Miraftab, F. 2008. Insurgent Planning: Situating Radical Planning in the Global South. Planning Theory. 8, 1 (2008), 32–50. It “articulates the notion of insurgent planning as radical planning practices that respond to neoliberal specifics of dominance through inclusion”.
I can recommend several HCI papers on activism and slacktivism to Rosie:
[3] McCafferty, D. 2011. Activism vs. slacktivism. Commun. ACM. 54, 12 (2011), 17–19.
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