If landscape visualizations are applied as tools for participation, they should provide a high level of interactivity to facilitate planning process and outcomes. This book presents evidence for this hypothesis through demonstrative case studies in the Entlebuch UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Switzerland. In collaborative workshops, interactive real-time visualizations were used to respond directly to the dialogue, and long-term climate change impacts were illustrated through collapsing time animations. The author, Dr. Olaf Schroth, is a researcher at the University of British Columbia and has studied both geodesy and planning in Hanover, Hamburg and Newcastle upon Tyne. Since then, he has been working at the interface of planning and 3D visualization, and the book summarizes his work in the EU project VisuLands (2003-2006) and his PhD at ETH Zurich. His research is not technology-driven but rather raises critical issues from a planning perspective. Therefore, the results and hands-on recommendations address researchers as well as practitioners in planning, architecture, geovisualization, geography, cartography and computer visualization.
This book explains how and why information literacy can help to foster critical thinking and discerning attitudes, enabling citizens to play an informed role in society and its democratic processes. In early 21st century societies, individuals and organisations are deluged with information, particularly online information. Much of this is useful, valuable or enriching. But a lot of it is of dubious quality and provenance, if not downright dangerous. Misinformation forms part of the mix. The ability to get the most out of the information flow, finding, interpreting and using it, and particularly developing a critical mindset towards it, requires skills, know-how, judgement and confidence – such is the premise of information literacy. This is true for many aspects of human endeavour, including education, work, health and self-enrichment. It is notably true also for acquiring an understanding of the wider world, for reaching informed views, for recognising bias and misinformation, and thereby for playing a part as active citizens, in democratic life and society. This ground-breaking and uniquely multi-disciplinary book explores how information literacy can contribute to fostering attitudes, habits and practices that underpin an informed citizenry. The 13 chapters each come from a particular perspective and are authored by international experts representing a range of disciplines: information literacy itself, but also political science, pedagogy, information science, psychology. Informed Societies: Why Information literacy matters for citizenship, participation and democracy covers: - why information literacy and informed citizens matter for healthy, democratic societies - information literacy’s relationship with political science - information literacy’s relationship with human rights - how information literacy can help foster citizenship, participation, empowerment and civic engagement in different contexts: school students, refugees, older people and in wider society - information literacy as a means to counter misinformation and fake news - the challenges of addressing information literacy as part of national public policy. The book will be essential reading for librarians and information professionals working in public libraries, schools, higher education institutions and public bodies; knowledge and information managers in all sectors and student of library and information science students, especially those at postgraduate/Masters level who are planning dissertations. Because of the topicality and political urgency of the issues covered, the book will also be of interest to students of political science, psychology, education and media studies/journalism; policy-makers in the public, commercial and not-for-profit sectors and politicians implications of information use and information/digital literacy.
Shows that current elitist theories are based on an inadequate understanding of the early writings of democratic theory and that much sociological evidence has been ignored.
This book assesses the structural power mechanisms that shape global ICT governance and analyses the impact of NGOs on communication rights, intellectual property rights, financing, and Internet governance.
Participation is everywhere today. It has been formalized, measured, standardized, scaled up, network-enabled, and sent around the world. Platforms, algorithms, and software offer to make participation easier, but new technologies have had the opposite effect. We find ourselves suspicious of how participation extracts our data or monetizes our emotions, and the more procedural participation becomes, the more it seems to recede from our grasp. In this book, Christopher M. Kelty traces four stories of participation across the twentieth century, showing how they are part of a much longer-term problem in relation to the individual and collective experience of representative democracy. Kelty argues that in the last century or so, the power of participation has dwindled; over time, it has been formatted in ways that cramp and dwarf it, even as the drive to participate has spread to nearly every kind of human endeavor, all around the world. The Participant is a historical ethnography of the concept of participation, investigating how the concept has evolved into the form it takes today. It is a book that asks, “Why do we participate?” And sometimes, “Why do we refuse?”
This report assesses the current trends, drivers, obstacles, mechanisms, impacts, costs and benefits of stakeholder engagement in the water sector. It builds on empirical data collected through an extensive survey across 215 stakeholders, within and outside the water sector, and 69 case studies collected worldwide. It highlights the increasing importance of stakeholder engagement in the water sector as a principle of good governance and the need for better understanding of the pressing and emerging issues related to stakeholder engagement. These include: the shift of power across stakeholders; the arrival of new entrants that ought to be considered; the external and internal drivers that have triggered engagement processes; innovative tools that have emerged to manage the interface between multiple players, and types of costs and benefits incurred by engagement at policy and project levels. This report provides pragmatic policy guidance to decision makers and practitioners in the form of key principles and a Checklist for Public Action with indicators, international references and self-assessment questions, which together can help policy makers to set up the appropriate framework conditions needed to yield the short and long-term benefits of stakeholder engagement.
Within only a few years, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, You Tube and other social media have become an intimate part of everyday life. Web 2.0, the collective term for all forms of interactive online communication, is characterized by the overwhelming ability of users to collaboratively create content. The implications of Web 2.0 have become a central focus for interdisciplinary social science research. This book comprehensively addresses the profound impact of Web 2.0 on contemporary society and its dynamics in a multiplicity of fields. The chapters, authored by world-leading experts, vividly demonstrate that Web 2.0 is a dynamic basis for collective action and an unlimited source of societal destabilisation and revolutionary change, for better or for worse. Various aspects of the radical transformative potential of Web 2.0 are imaginatively and critically discussed in the analytical context of quantitative approaches, qualitative works and case studies. This book provides key insights into the wide-reaching implications of recent technological developments, casting new light into an area which may potentially contribute to a more peaceful and sustainable future. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences.
In this book Pragati Rawat and John C. Morris identify and evaluate the impact of factors that can help explain the difference in e-participation, public participation using information and communication technology, in different countries. While cross-sectional studies have been covered, few have taken an in-depth look at cross-national studies. This book attempts to fill the gap using quantitative panel data to explore the influence of technology and institutions, and the impact of their complex relationships in a mediation and moderation analysis, on e-participation. The current study reviews the scholarly work in the field of “offline” and “online participation” to identify a set of antecedents that influence e-participation. A conceptual framework is developed, supported by the theories from the public policy and socio-technical premise. The authors utilize secondary data, primarily from the UN and World Economic Forum, for 143 countries from three waves of surveys to measure the dependent and explanatory variables. The panel data is statistically analyzed and findings reveal the role of technology as a mediator as well as a moderator for institutions’ impact on e-participation. The Effects of Technology and Institutions on E-Participation provides a groundbreaking country-level analysis that will appeal to academics and students of e-government and Digital Government, Public Policy, Public Administration, Public Sector Innovation, and Public Participation.
