[Ci4cg-announce] Towards a Public Communication and Information Infrastructure Part II

Wed May 11 12:38:47 PDT 2016

Hello Marcus, Jean, Doug and Group...

Wow! This work is very similar to what I'm pursuing in university extension
here at Washington State University. We are currently more focused on
inferring issue position based upon stated activities or perspective taking
in social media (Twitter and Facebook). Currently, we have collected data
on "sustainable living" in Washington State (60,000 unique tweets over 10
day period). As of now it is defined more in terms of positive engagement
with "local food, farmers markets and gardening" in contrast to
conventional agri-food systems, but will expand it out to other behaviors.
We also have one on climate change and global warming too.

https://justingriffis.cartodb.com/viz/cbe274e0-0b4f-11e6-9589-0e787de82d45/public_map

However, we are also including organizational websites since they often
follow a fairly common structure that resembles formal argumentation. There
is something to be said for being able to evaluate rationality in discourse
in contrast to ideology -- something like a public "bullshit sniffer." But
it seems difficult to capture in the mundane and informal conversation.
That said, I will keep reading the articles you shared, and revisit Latour
- it has been a few years actually. Anyway, I'm amazed at what is going on
around the world, all the incredible work among the people in this group
alone is actually mind blowing. It also makes me wonder if we need a
platform, in a traditional sense, or if we need some glue to pull it all
together.

There is actually a funding call for developing a research and data
platform for social sciences and humanities
http://diggingintodata.org/about/application-materials. I think it would be
wonderful to see what this group could develop together.

As a related (maybe not so related) product, we (or I) have developed a
little alpha mobile app for place-based storytelling with the idea of
enabling a form of autoethnographic citizen science. It is available for
iOS and Android devices - https://gonative.io/share/rwkeq
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgonative.io%2Fshare%2Frwkeq&h=QAQFRwmrE>.
My hope is to be able to stitch this project in with the work we are doing
with CitySDK, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Of course this might completely contradict your vision Doug?

Look forward to your thoughts.

Best,
Justin

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 4:38 PM, Marcus Foth <m.foth at qut.edu.au> wrote:

> Dear all
>
> my esteemed colleague Prof. Jean Burgess (cc’ed) is the Director of the
> Digital Media Research Centre at QUT. I asked her to comment:
>
>
> > Thanks, Marcus!
> >
> > Yes, it sounds particularly closely related to the Issue Mapping work I
> have been doing and of course all the things going on more broadly in our
> public communication and social media analytics programs involving Axel and
> team as well – we are doing a lot in this space.
> >
> > See my paper here
> http://mappingonlinepublics.net/2015/06/03/hybrid-forum-digital-appendix/
> > And here
> https://www.academia.edu/24960334/Mapping_sociocultural_controversies_across_digital_media_platforms_One_week_of_gamergate_on_Twitter_YouTube_and_Tumblr
> > And our entire Mapping Online Publics website:
> http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
> >
> > Very interesting idea to build a usable open platform for tracking
> public debates, but the problem is if it’s also built for participation in
> debates, you’ll just end up attracting the kinds of people who are into
> open platforms for public debate, so the risk is just creating more filter
> bubbles. My idea is to recognise that people engage with controversies in a
> very mundane, everyday way and leave traces of this engagement on all kinds
> of platforms. So any tools I would build would be focused on trying to
> present the full diversity of debates back to the public, and to provide
> data and tools to allow interested members of the public to get a sense of
> the diversity of perspectives on an issue. I’m working on some prototypes
> to allow Tableau to be embedded in a rich media issue website, to allow for
> public data exploration – it’s part of my new professors’ grant project
> Public Understanding of Digital Media.
> >
> > I think it’s important to build on past work in these efforts to build
> tools. E.g., the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam
> has been active in mapping issue networks and providing public tools to do
> so for years.
> >
> > We should point them to thing that have been led out of Amsterdam and
> also by Bruno Latour for ages in the issue mapping space and controversy
> analysis area:
> >
> >
> https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090045/http://www.mappingcontroversies.net/
> > http://www.issuemapping.net/
> > https://www.issuecrawler.net/
>
>
>
>
> cheers, marcus
>
> --
> Professor Marcus Foth
>
> i/Director, QUT Design Lab
> School of Design, Creative Industries Faculty
> Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
> m.foth at qut.edu.au – @sunday9pm – www.vrolik.de
>
> CRICOS No. 00213J
>
>
> ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’16)
> Brisbane, June 4-8 – @DIS2016 – www.dis2016.org
>
> > On 11 May 2016, at 5:02 AM, Justin Smith <justingriffis at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Not really sure if any of this is relevant to your effort.
> >
> > But, have you seen this? http://opportunity.census.gov/#connect. Would
> be interesting to consider ways to integrate some of these services into an
> open platform that allows for deliberation, argument mapping and content
> sharing.
> >
> > And Doug, we are already building it! One chunk at a time.... It think
> it would be cool to know what other projects are happening that implement
> some feature set of the ideal citizen platform, and see if they come with
> some type of API. This might be a way for different groups to work
> independently on different aspects of the platform and then link it all
> together.
> >
> > A gentleman and I are working on an argument mapper type of technology
> that generates a mind-map of sorts based upon websites, facebook posts,
> tweets, etc. It generates a "framing" of issues in social media. Hopefully,
> it will produce a measure of rationality and ideology in our public
> discourse. Perhaps, a citizen platform would include something like this
> but people could respond directly to the map, provide counter arguments,
> include links to evidence and so forth.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Justin
> >
> >
> > On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 2:40 PM, Doug Schuler <
> douglas at publicsphereproject.org> wrote:
> > Thanks to everybody that sent me their ideas! I thought I'd send out the
> note that is intended to clarify what I'm looking for — although it might
> just add more confusion...  — Doug
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm currently working on a short paper — basically an editorial or op-ed
> — on the idea of an open-ended, non-profit, citizen-led public alternative
> communication and information infrastructure project. I’m not exactly sure
> what that means but I’m envisioning something that supports a variety of
> basic features that people use (search, chat, photo posting, etc. etc.) as
> well as more advanced features such as deliberation, collaboration,
> decision-making, etc. It would probably need to be built with federated,
> integrated, distributed open source modules and be governed by its users
> and developers in some sort of open public way. It would be used without
> surveillance, data harvesting, censorship. The paper won't be long and it
> certainly won't be authoritative or comprehensive; at this point I'm just
> trying to help surface the idea and get feedback.
> >
> >
> > My plan is to build the case somewhat in the paper and to suggest some
> ideas that are likely to be useful in thinking about moving forward. That's
> why I'm writing to you all.
> >
> > If you have any points or suggestions or examples that I need to know
> about as I work forward I'd love to hear them. I probably won't be able to
> incorporate everything in this initial piece but, ideally, as time goes on,
> the suggestions you make would help inform the project.
> >
> > Please send me your thoughts on this.
> >
> > Thanks!!
> >
> > — Doug
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Ci4cg-announce at scn9.scn.org
> > http://scn9.scn.org/mailman/listinfo/ci4cg-announce
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Justin G. Smith, PhD.
> > Director of WSU Extension Mason County
> > Assistant Professor - Community and Economic Development Regional
> Specialist
> >
> > WSU Extension Mason County
> > 303 N. 4th St. Shelton WA 98584
> > 360-427-9670 x 690
> > justingriffis at wsu.edu
> > https://mason.wsu.edu
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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-- 
*Justin G. Smith, PhD.*
Director of WSU Extension Mason County
Assistant Professor - Community and Economic Development Regional Specialist

WSU Extension Mason County
303 N. 4th St. Shelton WA 98584
360-427-9670 x 690
justingriffis at wsu.edu
https://mason.wsu.edu <http://mason.wsu.edu/>
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