[Bigbang-dev] BigBang & Decidim

[Christoph Becker]

Hi all,
motivated by the recent drive of BigBang to include new sources of
communications (3GPP, IEEE, Discord) I thought about the possibility to
include digital platforms for political participation (DPPP), which are
being trialled by an increasing number of municipalities one of them being
Helsinki <https://omastadi.hel.fi/>.

So I reached out to a friend (Yu-Shan
<https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/yu-shan-tseng>) of mine who
just started her PostDoc there on that very topic, who again reached
out to Pablo
Aragón <https://elaragon.net/>, who is the co-founder of the DPPP
<https://github.com/decidim/decidim> that is used under the hood in
Helsinki.

Together, we want to gain an understanding of e.g.:

- What are the types of similar user-behaviour and how frequent are they?
(e.g. engaging, super-posters, or on-time users)
- How do the topologies of e-participatory budget differ between user-types?
- How do topologies of e-participatory budget implicate on the diversity of
proposals and the equality of participatory democracy?

(Note, 'topologies' here is understood in a similar way as outline here
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951716642456>.
In short, 'topologies' for geographers and some STS scholars do not just
mean 'topography' -- such as measuring/locating an object in Euclidian
space -- but are also concerned with 'qualities of connectivity' and other
alternative time-spaces in which an object 'enrols' or 'creates'. Thus,
there will be multiple topologies for a DPPP.)

The methodology will rely on ethnographic as well as on 'digitial'/'big
data' methods. BigBang could be used and enhanced to cover the latter.

At the moment we are mapping out what data is already (e.g. what can be
seen on the interface of the website) or could be made available (e.g.
voting timestamps). The latter is more interesting, as such data hasn't
been used previously due to the difficulty of getting hold of it. But
thanks to Yu-Shan's and Pablo's position we have a chance of getting access
to it. Yu-Shan is going through the process of getting the permits now
which ensure that the research is aligned with the GDPR and other ethical
boundaries. Therefore it might be, that those who want to participate in
this research have to sign an agreement.

If you are interested to join or have any questions please let me know :-)
All the best,
C

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>


*Christoph Becker (he/him/his)PhD at the*
*Institute for Data Science and*
*Institute for Computational Cosmology*
*Durham University*
*United Kingdom*
*christovis.github.io* <http://christovis.github.io>
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