Social Middleware for Civic Engagement

Abstract

Civic engagement refers to any collective action towards the identification and solving of public issues. Current civic technologies are traditional Web-or mobile-based platforms that make difficult, or just impossible, the participation of citizens via different communication technologies. Moreover, connected objects sensing physical-world data can nourish participatory processes by providing physical evidence to citizens; however, leveraging these data is not direct and still a time-consuming process for civic technologies developers. This paper introduces the concept of social middleware for civic engagement. Social middleware allows citizens to engage in participatory processessupported by civic technologies-via their favorite communication tools, and to interact not only with other citizens but also with relevant connected objects and software platforms. The mission of social middleware goes beyond the connection of all these heterogeneous entities. It aims at easing the implementation of distributed applications oriented toward civic engagement by featuring dedicated built-in services.

Social Participation Network: Linking Things, Services and People to Support Participatory Processes

“…One key feature of the participatory OSNS is to provide interoperability across the heterogeneous cyber entities, including the diverse online communication services people use (from email to popular OSNSes). We have previously introduced the social middleware solution to address such interoperability requirements [2]. In particular, social middleware leverages the Universal Social Network Bus [3] which mediates interaction across online communication technologies to overcome the platform lock-in.…”