1. e-Participation: Social Media and the
Public Space
Gilberto Corso Pereira 1
Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil
Maria Célia Furtado Rocha
PRODEB, Salvador, Brazil
Alenka Poplin
HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany
Salvador, June 19 2012 ICCSA 2012 - Cities, Technologies and Planning

2. NETWORK IS GLOBAL
Internet allows connection for various
networked local events occur in different
parts of the world
In digital culture, the distance is measured
differently
New geographies are formed exploding
contextual limits and boundaries between
localities and previous hierarchies of scale

3. PLACE MATTERS?
Most of the urban politics are concrete,
focused on the local issues and lead by
the local people
Public space accommodates a wide range
of political activities, many of them visible
on the streets
Their visibility can be amplified by the
digital media circulating in local and global
networks

4. PUBLIC SPHERE/SPACE
Cultural/informational repository for ideas
and projects that feed the public debate,
where the interaction between citizens,
civil society and the state happens
(Castells, 2008)
Public space provides the expanse that
allows the public sphere to convene, but it
does not guarantee a healthy public
sphere
(Papacharissi, 2008)

5. GLOBAL PUBLIC SPHERE
In the globalized world, a global civil society
emerges
 There is a shift of public spheres territorially
limited to a public sphere formed by systems of
media
Mass self-communication (web 2.0, 3G, 4G)
 Networks of communication that relate many-to-
many in a multimodal form of communication
that bypasses mass media and often escapes
government control (Castells, 2009)

6. NETWORKED PUBLIC SPHERE
Cellphones provide movements that are
born and flow into physical encounters,
spreading information and feelings
exponentially, a kind of effect from “small
worlds”
Networks of trust are formed instantly as
the person who receives the message
identifies its source and starts to distribute
it based on its own address book

7. HYBRID PUBLIC SPHERE
Social networks are now the space in
which people connect, communicate,
exhibit themselves, interact, and invite
other to flock to the streets, squares, every
public or almost-public spaces
The public sphere has become hybrid
 it incorporates virtual and geographical
spaces and traditional and social media
 no separations between digital/virtual and
physical/real as the citizens use these two
social environments simultaneously

8. SPACES FOR COLLABORATION/CITIZENSHIP
Digital serious games can add new
dimensions in the representation of the
reality, and aim to educate and support
learning about the environment and urban
planning initiatives
Participants take on different roles, can be
immersed in the system and suddenly part
of the digital reality in a completely new
way

9. SPACES FOR COLLABORATION/CITIZENSHIP
Digital representation of the world is now
available on handheld devices that can be
carried in the pocket and accessed
(almost) anywhere providing
 easy collaborative mapping and
crowdsourcing,
 use of geographical and social networking
applications on mobile devices
 applications of Augmented Reality

19. https://www.fairelections.eu
/

21. web
streets

25. SOME COMMENTS
Despite the lack of transparency and
control over the code embedded in the
commercial software, people are still
populating the cyberspace and creating
civic spaces online
 spaces that support the user’s
motivation to speak and collaborate with
her community or with a wider public
space with which he/she identifies
him/herself

26. SOME COMMENTS
Even e-Participation platforms that are simple
murals of complaints may turn into civic
spaces
creative spaces of shared practices can become a
place for the open knowledge construction and
democratic improvement
Initiatives that consider the differences in the
perception and interests among different
groups may accommodate various subjective
dimensions and establish a new public
space/sphere multifaceted

27. SOME COMMENTS
Internet is not only a support element and
technological mediation. It also works as
an environment for information,
communication and action within multiple
and heterogeneous systems
Planners must recognize that now the
citizens’urban experience is not only
influenced by urban form but by different
media and forms of communication with
which they interact daily

28. SOME COMMENTS
Geographical space was not replaced by
cyberspace. Dichotomy between the virtual/
digital x real/physical are being surpassed
by the overlap or convergence between
physical and digital environments
Besides the use of technologies for
communication and social interaction we
face the emergence of what some authors
call "urban computing" or "everyware"
(Greenfield, 2006; Dodge & Kitchin, 2011)

30. Visual explorations of urban mobility
SENSEable City Lab - MIT

31. VIRTUAL/REAL
Yu Zheng, Urban Computing with Taxicabs,
Beijing, 2011

33. THE BORDER IS EVERYWHERE
Individual and collective, micro and macro
actions became visible showing how the
world behaves at a certain times
Local interactions can influence the overall
network (Latour, 2011). Many people are able
to choose ideas coming from different
cultures and take what they find most
appropriate for each situation

34. Tweets after the earthquake in Virginia

35. FINALLY...
Knowledge produced in a new way – pervasive,
contextualized and unplanned – gives an
opportunity to a higher level of public
participation
In this way we might experience a citizenship
model where local government and public
administration represent just nodes in a
decentralized network whose topology responds
to demands for greater public participation and
democracy

36. e-Participation: Social Media and the
Public Space
Gilberto Corso Pereira 1
corso@ufba.br
Maria Célia Furtado Rocha
mariacelia.rocha@prodeb.ba.gov.br
Alenka Poplin
alenka.poplin@hcu-hamburg.de
Salvador, June 19 2012 ICCSA 2012 - Cities, Technologies and Planning