In the context of the participation society, roles and expectations of citizens and municipalities are vastly changing. While designers explore the potentials of apps to empower citizens, municipalities are interested in data dashboards -accompanied by applications and platforms -to increase civic participation in public (space) issues. Due to diverse levels of data-literacy and expectations regarding the use of civic apps, more scrutiny is needed when it comes to claims of empowerment. This paper departs from the premise that designers often deal with disappointments in the balance of investment and participation span due to a lack of knowledge about underlying mechanisms. Relevant criteria are discussed through reflecting on two civic apps that were designed by the authors and analysing prominent existing civic apps that have citizen empowerment as their objective. By laying these out in a taxonomy the paper aims to examine why and where discrepancies occur in expectations and levels of participation.
This chapter investigates the presence of junk news on Reddit and 4chan’s /pol/ subforum, spaces often described as “alternative” owing to their lower user numbers and subcultural ethos compared to the likes of Facebook. We first delineate Dutch spheres within the two spaces over multiple years, finding a rising number of posts within Reddit’s Dutch sphere and a stagnant yet non-negligible number of Dutch posters on 4chan/pol/. We then categorise and analyse what URLs are shared to gauge the presence of junk news domains. We find that Reddit seems fairly resilient against the presence of disinformation or other forms of junk news, save for the appearance of some hyperpartisan sources and incidental malicious users. 4chan/pol/ shows a somewhat more problematic situation, returning a larger presence of (foreign) junk news sources.
Focusing on the (early) run-up to and aftermath of the 2020 U.S.
presidential elections, this study examines the extent of problematic
information in the most engaged-with content and with the most active
users in “political Twitter.” It was found that mainstream sources are
shared more often than problematic ones, but their percentage was much
higher prior to the Capitol riots of January 2021. Significantly, (hyper)
partisan sources are close to half of all sources shared, implying a robust
presence. By March 2021, though, both the share of problematic and of
(hyper)partisan sources decreased significantly, suggesting the impact
of Twitter’s deplatforming actions. Additionally, active, problematic users
(fake profiles, etc.) were found across the political spectrum, albeit more
abundantly on the conservative side.
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