Presentation given at the Data Power Conference at Sheffield University, June 2015

1. Civic hacking: Re-imagining civic
engagement in datafied publics
Stefan Baack (s.baack@rug.nl, @tweetbaack)
Tamara Witschge (t.a.c.witschge@rug.nl)
Centre for Media and Journalism Studies
University of Groningen

3.
Empowerment?

5. State simplifications
vs.
Local knowledge

6. Empowerment?
1. Civic hacking is about creating
better means of connecting local
knowledge and practices with
centralized government

10. 1. Not knowing who is responsible
2. Council websites not user-friendly

12. “If somebody is able to report a
problem with a pothole outside their
house and next week it’s fixed, they
have learned that engagement
with authority is not futile…
FixMyStreet is a gateway drug into
bigger civic engagement.”

13. Giving citizens “a sense of agency”

14. Designing tools for the “citizen user”
è Enabling ‘direct’ exercise of power

15. Designing tools for the “citizen user”
è Enabling ‘direct’ exercise of power
- Connecting local knowledge with
centralized government

16. Data Power?

17. Empowerment?
2. Civic hacking as a struggle for
legibility

19. Structured data?
Going through a webpage “and trying
to spot in that where the names of
speakers are, where eldest votes
is…to work out…which people
voted in which way”

20. Structuring data as an editorial
process.

24. Increasing legibility by reducing a
problem of scale?
“I reviewed those documents, you
couldn't – you were too busy trying to
pay the mortgage – so let me tell you
what they show” (Rosen 2013)

25. Conclusion

26. 1. Empowering citizens by giving
them a sense of agency
è Connecting local knowledge and
practices with centralized government

27. 2. Structured data a necessary
precondition for doing so
è Struggle for legibility

28. Thank you!
Stefan Baack (s.baack@rug.nl, @tweetbaack)
Tamara Witschge (t.a.c.witschge@rug.nl)
Centre for Media and Journalism Studies
University of Groningen

29. References
Rosen, J. (2013, September 3). The “awayness”
problem. Retrieved April 15, 2014, from
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/
the_awayness_problem.php
Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: how certain
schemes to improve the human condition have
failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.