Keyboard Participation: An Analysis of 'g0v' For Collaborative Participation by the Open Source Community
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This was presented by Ting-Yu Cheng from the National Taiwan University at the Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC@Taipei) in Taipei on 12th September 2017. You can find out more information about the conference here: http://civictechfest.org/agenda Abstract: The new, digital native generation turns naturally to technology to participate in society. 'Keyboard participation' can take various forms, from virtual conversations to real-life civic engagement. Established in 2012, g0v is a distributed, civic hacker community in Taiwan. Its members collaborate to translate the once dull, obscure, and scattered materials held by the authorities into easily accessible and visual information, bridging the information gap between the government and citizens — or more, enlightening and empowering citizens to oversee the government. Ting-Yu’s study observes how the Open Source culture propagated by g0v has lowered the threshold for citizens to participate in public affairs, particularly noting that when the organisation’s technology collaborates with civil society, the cross-border exchange creates a brand new culture of citizen participation.
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Keyboard Participation: An Analysis of 'g0v' For Collaborative Participation by the Open Source Community
- 3. Representative democracy Representative democracy
- 6. Me: OMG, everything sounds like magic!
- 8. Successful fusion in community Plausible promise Effective tools Acceptable bargain
- 10. Effective tools
- 13. Civic engagement in virtual community Open source and crowdsourcing ICTs and civic engagement
- 14. Civic engagement in virtual community Open source and crowdsourcing ICTs and civic engagement
- 15. Civic engagement in virtual community Open source and crowdsourcing ICTs and civic engagement
- 16. Civic engagement in virtual community Open source and crowdsourcing ICTs and civic engagement
- 17. Sharing Cooperation Collective action From: Here Comes Everybody / Clay Shirky
- 21. Sharing Cooperation Collective action Acquisition of ample information Supporters join in Objection Neutral conversation Acceptation Community Citizens
Editor's Notes
- Hello, everyone. I am Ting Yu. You can also call me Claire. My topic today is “Keyboard Participation: An Analysis of 'g0v' For Collaborative Participation by the Open Source Community”.
- I am a graduate student. My major is political science. Three years ago, I decide to do a research of civic engagement in g0v for my master thesis. It’s an intriguing topic. This is a field barely explored, which means it’s a challenge for me. I hope the research of mine can well explain what happens in g0v.
- Democracy means people are the masters of country. However, in reality, due to time constraints, social complexity, geographical and other costs, most countries implement "representative democracy". Thanks to advances in Information and Communication Technology, direct democracy becomes possible. In Arab spring, occupy wall street and sunflower movement, we’ve seen the digitally native generation employs technology to participate in the dynamic society in the form of communities. They engage in ” keyboard participation” in various ways from virtual conversation to real power of civic engagement. Established in 2012, g0v(pronounced as gov-zero) is a distributed, civic hacking community which produces many projects related to public issues and invents civic tech to promote citizen engage in politics. In my research, I explore the operation model of citizen engagement in g0v community and the impacts of open source culture and technology. Today, I want to share my observation with you. I am going to introduce how does g0v, this open source community collaborate to engage in politics?
- My first encounter with g0v was in g0v summit 2014. Our teacher organized us to write a book of the practice of new media in sunflower movement. My assignment was g0v so I have to investigate and interview it.
- I was so confused that time. How could an organization exit without hierarchy? Since g0v has done so many things in sunflower movement, I was shocked to find out there is no representative or leader in community. Also, scared by geek words. Open source culture was strange but intriguing.
- After our class publish the book, I was determined to do a research of how g0v accomplishes these civic engagement projects for my master thesis. Thus, my adventure in g0v began. This was difficult for a muggle like me in the beginning, since there are lots of geek words in hackers’ conversation
- It’s an network analysis of followers of open source community. As you can see, g0v is one of the most vigor community in the world. How does g0v thrive?
- According to Clay shirky, a successful community based on three key elements.
- The promise gave from community must be sounds plausible, not too difficult to realize. Back in 2012 before g0v was established, citizen were discontent of politics. With slogan” code for better society”, g0v portrays a vision of people pursue. g0v’s first project transform budget data into an interactive website and infographics. The once dull and difficult-understanding data become easily understand. People can find out where their tax was spent. That made people think they have the ability to change sth. With civic tech, they can comprehend public issues well than before, and even comment or initiate their opinion. G0v gave people the vision of open government and demonstrate how to do it. With collaboration tools and well divided missions, g0v make it easily for people to contribute. Anyone is welcomed in g0v. In g0v, if one complains” why nobody does this?”, participants would answer you” You are nobody”. You, can be the first one to do this, you and everyone are capable of make things change.
- The second element is effective tools. Suitable tools can help people organize well, reduce the cost of communication and collaborate. In g0v, participants use slack and IRC to exchange ideas. Hackpad for collaborative notes and Github to storage code. It’s all public on internet. These features facilitate citizen engagement.
- Acceptable bargain is how people interact with each other in community. In g0v, all the achievements should be open source. This give contributors guarantee that what they devoted won’t be monopolized by others in some days. Also, release early and release often is originated from open source culture. It encourages contributors share their projects There are some core participants dedicated to cultivating custom of contribution. For example, when someone says it would better if this project has new functions. Participants would ask him or she: you should try to do it! Push some into hole even have exclusive stickers in g0v. Tramp volunteers is an important skill in g0v. Participants recognize contributors’ affirmation generously. The sataisfication of accomplishment become the motiviation of next contribution.
- After grasp sth about g0v, how can I explain what happen in civic engagement in g0v? I reviewed many papers but there’s no theories can portray it well. Despite abundant researches of civic engagement, few focus on the impacts of open culture, the roles collaboration play in civic engagement and explore civil community as an unit.
- Thus, I reviewed three different fields and try to establish a model for g0v.
- According to clay shirky, action in civil community can be divided into three stages: share, cooperation and collective action. I fused it with some elements from deliberative democracy. This is the model I establish. In share stage, engagement cost the least. The premise of share is information disclosure. Government information should be released to society. Share between people reduce cost of information collection for person alone. With abundant information accessible, citizens get the chance to know issues well and deliberate policies with each other. Based on share, cooperation requires participants to compromise and follow on the consensus made by everyone in projects. Conversation is the most common form of cooperation. Participants can express and exchange opinions about public issues. Cooperative production is more complicated. Participants can launch a project based on their consensus. On this way, they can make more people aware these issues and win over people’s support and even join in. Collective action cost highest in participation. The goal of this stage is to make the change. Thus, participants are supposed to be responsible of what they do.
- Now, I will apply this model on g0v and give some examples. For share stage, g0v is devoted to open government and translate once dull, obscure and scattered materials held by authorities into easily accessible and visual information. First type is convert offline paper into digital information. For example, the record of political contribution is stored in The Control Yuan in the form of paper book. One of g0v project collaborate people to copy record and transform it into digital data. They even use infographics to help people understand easily. On this way, g0v project facilitates information circulation and help citizen supervise government. Second type is transform difficult information into visualized infographics. For example, we know budget is an important issue we should care, but it’s too difficult for us to check how much money was spent on what things. G0v project presents data in visual graphs, help citizens know every budget and debt government spent. Third type is making a platform incorporate scattered information. For example, although we are supposed to review every candidate’s political views, what they did before we vote, we barley have enough time to check everything we care. G0v projects collect political view, attendance record and vote record in Legislative Yuan of every candidate. This platform incorporate what citizens need to know before they vote.
- For cooperation stage, participants share consensus would cooperate to do the project. Collaborative tools integrate contribution from participants. Participants practice and realize their views through contribution in project. For example, the case I mentioned before, the Control Yuan one. Some volunteers visited Control Yuan, copied, scanned and uploaded data. These copies are translated into digital data by crowdsourcing. There were about ten thousand people contribute within 24 hours on first day. These projects can promote participants’ consensus, help them win over more support, and even attract more citizens join them.
- For collective action, participants are determined to make the change, they want to initiate their projects as policies. There could be three different kinds of results. Objection. Government rejects it, or intervene in projects. For example, one project establish a website based on governmental data. It’s a map for people to inquire house price. Government has its own website but it’s not user-friendly. The version of g0v is popular among people. However, government condemned this project and block participants download data by translate open data into graphics. Neutral conversation. Some g0v projects play the role of platform. People and agencies possessed different values and opinions are welcome to communicate in this open field. For example, National Development Council can present the advantage of free economic pilot zone plan on g0v project. Participants can also present the disadvantage here. Through the presentation of facts and contention, people can understand issues better and deliberate based on concrete data. Acceptation. All the projects in g0v are open source, welcome anyone fork or merge into their projects, including government. For example, meng dictionary project was accepted by Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education also agreed to integrate data of official dictionary into their projects. Sometimes, officials and civil servants cooperate with g0v. For example, vTaiwan was purposed by minister without portfolio and collaborated with volunteers from g0v. It establishes a platform for people to engage in policy making
- The share-cooperation-collective action is a dynamic evolution of the community. There is no absolute time points and development order for each stage. For example, share can happen in every development moment of projects. This picture shows how citizen engagement work in g0v. Due to openness, citizens can join in community anytime. The openness of g0v itself establish community as an open field. Anyone can participate thus it’s capable of maintaining broad and representative participation. Sharing help citizens acquire ample information, informed to participate in politics. Through Cooperation and collection action, participants can deliberate their views, make consensus and realize it. The boundaries between the inside and outside of the community are very vague. Citizens who support projects can contribute through sharing or join the project development. For objection ending, if there is someone keep maintaining the project, projects may return to cooperation stage, waiting for the chance to proceed to collective action some days. However, there are lots of project lack of management and were suspended. For the neutral conversation and acceptation ending, since project has done so many things to promote information spread and deliberation, we may judge that the decision citizens are credible. Also, information transparency make sure the accountability. Citizens can inquire everything they need to know to supervise government and policy makers.
- Although g0v may seems to bring a glimmer of hope, it’s not a perfect mode yet. As I’ve mentioned, there are many projects lack of maintaining, or even suspended during development. Participants are too busy to contribute. Some projects cost too much so it’s difficult to develop under volunteer model. G0v civic tech grant is an experimental plan. It supports developers funds, providing them resource to maintain their projects. How to retrieve a balance of community and grant plan? The former one is decentralize, no hierarchy and orders to follow. You can do what you like and when to do freely. The later one funds developers so project should be fulfilled before the deadline comes. The second stage is the question of digital divide and threshold of collaboration. NGO or government are not familiar with Effective tools g0v uses. Also, open culture the concept of collaboration in g0v are not familiar with NGO and government. How to bridge this gap to enlarge the engagement of citizens? It’s a question waiting for answer.