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How do we encourage greater public inclusion in Internet governance debates?

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by David Sutcliffe

The Internet is neither purely public nor private, but combines public and private networks, platforms, and interests. Given its complexity and global importance, there is clearly a public interest in how it is governed.

by David Sutcliffe

Reading of the NetMundial outcome document, by mikiwoz (Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Internet is neither purely public nor private, but combines public and private networks, platforms, and interests. Given its complexity and global importance, there is clearly a public interest in how it is governed, and role of the public in Internet governance debates is a critical issue for policymaking. The current dominant mechanism for public inclusion is the multistakeholder approach, i.e. one that includes governments, industry and civil society in governance debates. Despite at times being used as a shorthand for public inclusion, multistakeholder governance is implemented in many different ways and has faced criticism, with some arguing that multistakeholder discussions serve as a cover for the growth of state dominance over the Web, and enables oligarchic domination of discourses that are ostensibly open and democratic. In her Policy & Internet article “Searching for the Public in Internet Governance: Examining Infrastructures of Participation at NETmundial”, Sarah Myers West examines the role of the public in Internet governance debates, with reference to public inclusion at the 2014 Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETmundial). NETmundial emerged at a point when public legitimacy was a particular concern for the Internet governance community, so finding ways to include the rapidly growing, and increasingly diverse group of stakeholders in the governance debate was especially important for the meeting’s success. This is particularly significant as the Internet governance community faces problems of increasing complexity and diversity of views. The growth of the Internet has made the public central to Internet governance—but introduces problems around the growing number of stakeholders speaking different languages, with different technical backgrounds, and different perspectives on the future of the Internet. However, the article suggests that rather than attempting to unify behind a single institution or achieve public consensus through a single, deliberative forum, the NETmundial example suggests that the Internet community may further fragment into multiple publics, further redistributing into a more networked and “agonistic” model. This…

Reading of the NetMundial outcome document, by mikiwoz (Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Economics, Interviews, Politics & Government

Should citizens be allowed to vote on public budgets?

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by David Sutcliffe

Considered to be a successful example of empowered democratic governance, participatory budgeting has spread among many cities in Brazil.

by David Sutcliffe

Image: a youth occupation of Belo Horizonte to present and discuss different forms of occupation of urban space, by upsilon (Flickr CC BY-SA).

There is a general understanding that public decision-making could generate greater legitimacy for political decisions, greater trust in government action and a stronger sense of representation. One way of listening to citizens’ demands and improving their trust in politics is the creation of online communication channels whereby issues, problems, demands, and suggestions can be addressed. One example, participatory budgeting, is the process by which ordinary citizens are given the opportunity to make decisions regarding a municipal budget, by suggesting, discussing, and nominating projects that can be carried out within it. Considered to be a successful example of empowered democratic governance, participatory budgeting has spread among many cities in Brazil, and after being recommended by the World Bank and UN-Habitat, also implemented in various cities worldwide. The Policy & Internet article “Do Citizens Trust Electronic Participatory Budgeting? Public Expression in Online Forums as an Evaluation Method in Belo Horizonte” by Samuel A. R. Barros and Rafael C. Sampaio examines the feelings, emotions, narratives, and perceptions of political effectiveness and political representation shared in these forums. They discuss how online messages and feelings expressed through these channels can be used to assess public policies, as well as examining some of the consequences of ignoring them. Recognised as one of the most successful e-democracy experiences in Brazil, Belo Horizonte’s electronic participatory budgeting platform was created in 2006 to allow citizens to deliberate and vote in online forums provided by the city hall. The initiative involved around 174,000 participants in 2006 and 124,000 in 2008. However, only 25,000 participants took part in the 2011 edition, indicating significant loss of confidence in the process. It is a useful case to assess the reasons for success and failure of e-participation initiatives. There is some consensus in the literature on participants’ need to feel that their contributions will be taken into consideration by those who promote initiatives and, ideally, that these contributions will have effects and practical…

Image: a youth occupation of Belo Horizonte to present and discuss different forms of occupation of urban space, by upsilon (Flickr CC BY-SA).

Governance & Security, Interviews

Governments Want Citizens to Transact Online: And This Is How to Nudge Them There

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by Peter John

Peter John and Toby Blume design and report a randomised control trial that encouraged users of a disability parking scheme to renew online.

by Peter John

A randomised control trial that “nudged” users of a disability parking scheme to renew online showed a six percentage point increase in online renewals. Image: Wendell (Flickr).

In an era when most transactions occur online, it’s natural for public authorities to want the vast bulk of their contacts with citizens to occur through the Internet. But they also face a minority for whom paper and face-to-face interactions are still preferred or needed—leading to fears that efforts to move services online “by default” might reinforce or even encourage exclusion. Notwithstanding these fears, it might be possible to “nudge” citizens from long-held habits by making online submission advantageous and other routes of use more difficult. Behavioural public policy has been strongly advocated in recent years as a low-cost means to shift citizen behaviour, and has been used to reform many standard administrative processes in government. But how can we design non-obtrusive nudges to make users shift channels without them losing access to services? In their new Policy & Internet article “Nudges That Promote Channel Shift: A Randomised Evaluation of Messages to Encourage Citizens to Renew Benefits Online” Peter John and Toby Blume design and report a randomised control trial that encouraged users of a disability parking scheme to renew online. They found that by simplifying messages and adding incentives (i.e. signalling the collective benefit of moving online) users were encouraged to switch from paper to online channels by about six percentage points. As a result of the intervention and ongoing efforts by the Council, virtually all the parking scheme users now renew online. The finding that it’s possible to appeal to citizens’ willingness to act for collective benefit is encouraging. The results also support the more general literature that shows that citizens’ use of online services is based on trust and confidence with public services and that interventions should go with the grain of citizen preferences and norms. We caught up with Peter John to discuss his findings, and the role of behavioural public policy in government: Ed.: Is it fair to say that the real innovation of behavioural…

A randomised control trial that “nudged” users of a disability parking scheme to renew online showed a six percentage point increase in online renewals. Image: Wendell (Flickr).

Interviews

Internet Filtering: And Why It Doesn’t Really Help Protect Teens

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by David Sutcliffe

Striking the right balance between protecting adolescents and respecting their rights to freedom of expression and information presents a formidable challenge.

by David Sutcliffe

There is equivocal to strong evidence that household-level Internet filtering does not reduce the chance of adolescents having recent aversive online experiences. Image: Paul Walsh / Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Young British teens (between 12-15 years) spend nearly 19 hours a week online, raising concerns for parents, educators, and politicians about the possible negative experiences they may have online. Schools and libraries have long used Internet-filtering technologies as a means of mitigating adolescents’ experiences online, and major ISPs in Britain now filter new household connections by default. However, a new article by Andrew Przybylski and Victoria Nash, “Internet Filtering Technology and Aversive Online Experiences in Adolescents”, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, finds equivocal to strong evidence that household-level Internet filtering does not reduce the chance of adolescents having recent aversive online experiences. The authors analysed data from 1030 in-home interviews conducted with early adolescents as part of Ofcom’s Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes Report. The Internet is now a central fixture of modern life, and the positives and negatives of online Internet use need to be balanced by caregivers. Internet filters have been adopted as a tool for limiting the negatives; however, evidence of their effectiveness is dubious. They are expensive to develop and maintain, and also carry significant informational costs: even sophisticated filters over-block, which is onerous for those seeking information about sexual health, relationships, or identity, and might have a disproportionate effect on vulnerable groups. Striking the right balance between protecting adolescents and respecting their rights to freedom of expression and information presents a formidable challenge. In conducting their study to address this uncertainty, the authors found convincing evidence that Internet filters were not effective at shielding early adolescents from aversive experiences online. Given this finding, they propose that evidence derived from a randomised controlled trial and registered research designs are needed to determine how far Internet-filtering technology supports or thwarts young people online. Only then will parents and policymakers be able to make an informed decision as to whether their widespread use justifies their costs. We caught up with Andy and Vicki to discuss…

There is equivocal to strong evidence that household-level Internet filtering does not reduce the chance of adolescents having recent aversive online experiences. Image: Paul Walsh / Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Interviews, Wellbeing

Tackling Digital Inequality: Why We Have to Think Bigger

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by Huw Davies

While the UK government has financed technological infrastructure and invested in schemes to address digital inequalities, the outcomes of these schemes are rarely uniformly positive or transformative for the people involved.

by Huw Davies

Outcomes of the many schemes financed by the government to address digital inequalities are rarely uniformly positive or transformative for the people involved. Image: iPad by Sean MacEntee (Flickr).

Numerous academic studies have highlighted the significant differences in the ways that young people access, use and engage with the Internet and the implications it has in their lives. While the majority of young people have some form of access to the Internet, for some their connections are sporadic, dependent on credit on their phones, an available library, or Wi-Fi open to the public. Qualitative data in a variety of countries has shown such limited forms of access can create difficulties for these young people as an Internet connection becomes essential for socialising, accessing public services, saving money, and learning at school. While the UK government has financed technological infrastructure and invested in schemes to address digital inequalities, the outcomes of these schemes are rarely uniformly positive or transformative for the people involved. This gap between expectation and reality demands theoretical attention; with more attention placed on the cultural, political and economic contexts of the digitally excluded, and the various attempts to “include” them. Focusing on a two-year digital inclusion scheme for 30 teenagers and their families initiated by a local council in England, a qualitative study by Huw C. Davies, Rebecca Eynon, and Sarah Wilkin analyses why, despite the good intentions of the scheme’s stakeholders, it fell short of its ambitions. It also explains how the neoliberal systems of governance that are increasingly shaping the cultures and behaviours of Internet service providers and schools—that incentivise action that is counterproductive to addressing digital inequality and practices—cannot solve the problems they create. We caught up with the authors to discuss the study’s findings: Ed.: It was estimated that around 10% of 13 year olds in the study area lacked dependable access to the Internet, and had no laptop or PC at home. How does this impact educational outcomes? Huw: It’s impossible to disaggregate technology from everything else that can affect a young person’s progress through school. However, one school in our…

Outcomes of the many schemes financed by the government to address digital inequalities are rarely uniformly positive or transformative for the people involved. Image: iPad by Sean MacEntee (Flickr).

Ethics, Interviews, Wellbeing

Exploring the world of digital detoxing

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by David Sutcliffe

Advocates of “digital detoxing” view digital communication as eroding our ability to concentrate, to empathise, and to have meaningful conversations.

by David Sutcliffe

The new (old) inbox. Camp Grounded tries to build up attendees’ confidence to be silly and playful, with their identities less tied to their work persona—in a backlash against Silicon Valley’s intense work ethic. Photo by Pumpernickle.

As our social interactions become increasingly entangled with the online world, there are some who insist on the benefits of disconnecting entirely from digital technology. These advocates of “digital detoxing” view digital communication as eroding our ability to concentrate, to empathise, and to have meaningful conversations. A 2016 survey by OnePoll found that 40% of respondents felt they had “not truly experienced valuable moments such as a child’s first steps or graduation” because “technology got in the way”, and OfCom’s 2016 survey showed that 15 million British Internet users (representing a third of those online), have already tried a digital detox. In recent years, America has sought to pathologise a perceived over-use of digital technology as “Internet addiction”. While the term is not recognised by the DSM, the idea is commonly used in media rhetoric and forms an important backdrop to digital detoxing. The article Disconnect to reconnect: The food/technology metaphor in digital detoxing (First Monday) by Theodora Sutton presents a short ethnography of the digital detoxing community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her informants attend an annual four-day digital detox and summer camp for adults in the Californian forest called Camp Grounded. She attended two Camp Grounded sessions in 2014, and followed up with semi-structured interviews with eight detoxers. We caught up with Theodora to examine the implications of the study and to learn more about her PhD research, which focuses on the same field site. Ed.: In your forthcoming article you say that Camp Grounded attendees used food metaphors (and words like “snacking” and “nutrition”) to understand their own use of technology and behaviour. How useful is this as an analogy? Theodora: The food/technology analogy is an incredibly neat way to talk about something we think of as immaterial in a more tangible way. We know that our digital world relies on physical connections, but we forget that all the time. Another thing it does in lending a dietary…

The new (old) inbox. Camp Grounded tries to build up attendees’ confidence to be silly and playful, with their identities less tied to their work persona—in a backlash against Silicon Valley’s intense work ethic. Photo by Pumpernickle.

Interviews, Social Data Science, Wellbeing

Estimating the Local Geographies of Digital Inequality in Britain: London and the South East Show Highest Internet Use—But Why?

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by David Sutcliffe

Britain has one of the largest Internet economies in the developed world, and the Internet contributes an estimated 8.3 percent to Britain’s GDP.

by David Sutcliffe

Despite the huge importance of the Internet in everyday life, we know surprisingly little about the geography of Internet use and participation at sub-national scales. A new article on Local Geographies of Digital Inequality by Grant Blank, Mark Graham, and Claudio Calvino published in Social Science Computer Review proposes a novel method to calculate the local geographies of Internet usage, employing Britain as an initial case study. In the first attempt to estimate Internet use at any small-scale level, they combine data from a sample survey, the 2013 Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS), with the 2011 UK census, employing small area estimation to estimate Internet use in small geographies in Britain. (Read the paper for more on this method, and discussion of why there has been little work on the geography of digital inequality.) There are two major reasons to suspect that geographic differences in Internet use may be important: apparent regional differences and the urban-rural divide. The authors do indeed find a regional difference: the area with least Internet use is in the North East, followed by central Wales; the highest is in London and the South East. But interestingly, geographic differences become non-significant after controlling for demographic variables (age, education, income etc.). That is, demographics matter more than simply where you live, in terms of the likelihood that you’re an Internet user. Britain has one of the largest Internet economies in the developed world, and the Internet contributes an estimated 8.3 percent to Britain’s GDP. By reducing a range of geographic frictions and allowing access to new customers, markets and ideas it strongly supports domestic job and income growth. There are also personal benefits to Internet use. However, these advantages are denied to people who are not online, leading to a stream of research on the so-called digital divide. We caught up with Grant Blank to discuss the policy implications of this marked disparity in (estimated) Internet use across…

Collective Action, Interviews, Politics & Government

Do Finland’s digitally crowdsourced laws show a way to resolve democracy’s “legitimacy crisis”?

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by Taneli Heikka

Discussing the digitally crowdsourced law for same-sex marriage that was passed in Finland and analysing how the campaign created practices that affect democratic citizenship.

by Taneli Heikka

There is much discussion about a perceived “legitimacy crisis” in democracy. In his article The Rise of the Mediating Citizen: Time, Space, and Citizenship in the Crowdsourcing of Finnish Legislation, Taneli Heikka (University of Jyväskylä) discusses the digitally crowdsourced law for same-sex marriage that was passed in Finland in 2014, analysing how the campaign used new digital tools and created practices that affect democratic citizenship and power making. Ed: There is much discussion about a perceived “legitimacy crisis” in democracy. For example, less than half of the Finnish electorate under 40 choose to vote. In your article you argue that Finland’s 2012 Citizens’ Initiative Act aimed to address this problem by allowing for the crowdsourcing of ideas for new legislation. How common is this idea? (And indeed, how successful?) Taneli: The idea that digital participation could counter the “legitimacy crisis” is a fairly common one. Digital utopians have nurtured that idea from the early years of the internet, and have often been disappointed. A couple of things stand out in the Finnish experiment that make it worth a closer look. First, the digital crowdsourcing system with strong digital identification is a reliable and potentially viral campaigning tool. Most civic initiative systems I have encountered rely on manual or otherwise cumbersome, and less reliable, signature collection methods. Second, in the Finnish model, initiatives that break the threshold of 50,000 names must be treated in the Parliament equally to an initiative from a group of MPs. This gives the initiative constitutional and political weight. Ed: The Act led to the passage of Finland’s first equal marriage law in 2014. In this case, online platforms were created for collecting signatures as well as drafting legislation. An NGO created a well-used platform, but it subsequently had to shut it down because it couldn’t afford the electronic signature system. Crowds are great, but not a silver bullet if something as prosaic as authentication is impossible. Where should the…

Interviews, Politics & Government

How do the mass media affect levels of trust in government?

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by Greg Porumbescu

Challenging the conventional wisdom that suggests greater exposure to mass media outlets will result in more negative perceptions of the public sector.

by Greg Porumbescu

The South Korean Government, as well as the Seoul Metropolitan Government have gone to great lengths to enhance their openness, using many different ICTs. Seoul at night by jonasginter.

Ed: You examine the influence of citizens’ use of online mass media on levels of trust in government. In brief, what did you find? Greg: As I explain in the article, there is a common belief that mass media outlets, and especially online mass media outlets, often portray government in a negative light in an effort to pique the interest of readers. This tendency of media outlets to engage in ‘bureaucracy bashing’ is thought, in turn, to detract from the public’s support for their government. The basic assumption underpinning this relationship is that the more negative information on government there is, the more negative public opinion. However, in my analyses, I found evidence of a positive indirect relationship between citizens’ use of online mass media outlets and their levels of trust in government. Interestingly, however, the more frequently citizens used online mass media outlets for information about their government, the weaker this association became. These findings challenge conventional wisdom that suggests greater exposure to mass media outlets will result in more negative perceptions of the public sector. Ed: So you find that that the particular positive or negative spin of the actual message may not be as important as the individuals’ sense that they are aware of the activities of the public sector. That’s presumably good news—both for government, and for efforts to ‘open it up’? Greg: Yes, I think it can be. However, a few important caveats apply. First, the positive relationship between online mass media use and perceptions of government tapers off as respondents made more frequent use of online mass media outlets. In the study, I interpreted this to mean that exposure to mass media had less of an influence upon those who were more aware of public affairs, and more of an influence upon those who were less aware of public affairs. Therefore, there is something of a diminishing returns aspect to this relationship. Second, this…

The South Korean Government, as well as the Seoul Metropolitan Government have gone to great lengths to enhance their openness, using many different ICTs. Seoul at night by jonasginter.

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