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Aiehakemus Suomen Akatemian MOTIVE-ohjelmaan 31.1.2008 - hyväksyttiin jatkoon

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Sisällysluettelo 1 SOMUS - Social Media for Citizens and Public Sector Collaboration 1.1 1 Basic information 1.2 2 Connections to MOTIVE Research Programme 1.3 3 Background 1.3.1 3.1 Citizenship 1.3.2 3.2 Public services 1.3.3 3.3 Social media 1.4 4 Vision 2015 1.5 5 Objectives 1.6 6 Research group 1.7 7 Main research methods 1.8 8 Expected results and impacts 1.9 9 National and international cooperation 1.10 10 Schedule 1.11 11 References

SOMUS - Social Media for Citizens and Public Sector Collaboration

1 Basic information

Applicant:

Caj Södergård, Research Professor, Research Co-ordinator

VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland

P.O.Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT

Phone: +358 20 722 5963

Email: caj . sodergard ät vtt . fi

Project name:

Social Media for Citizens and Public Sector Collaboration (SOMUS)

Research sites:

The research will be carried out in four Finnish research organizations:

• VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Media and Internet, Espoo
• Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Department of Media Technology, Espoo
• University of Jyväskylä (JyU), Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Jyväskylä
• University of Tampere (UTA), The Journalism Research and Development Centre, Tampere

Additionally, an open Internet-based collaboration network Research swarm [1] with participants from different Finnish research institutions, non-profit organizations and companies is involved in the project.

2 Connections to MOTIVE Research Programme

MOTIVE research program aims at generating new knowledge, principles and technical solutions to promote human-centred ubiquitous society. The changes in media field must be studied from the citizens' and users' point of view. With this research intention we will focus on civil society and the new possibilities ubiquitous media may provide citizens and among their self-organizing, spatial and ad-hoc networks. We will study both the new forms of communication between different actors: government officials, media companies, third sector, civil organizations and citizens, and the technical solutions that empower these channels via Internet, mobile and other devices.

We understand media broadly as a form of interaction, participation and influencing, providing both the information and the possibilities for citizens to take part in the society and decision-making. The media environment of citizens consists of channels and services provided by existing commercial and administrative institutions as well as by emerging new forms and solutions. When studying the impact of new media channels on democracy and publicity, developing new ways of opening up these interfaces is a crucial focal point. Issues like personalization of information, needs of different citizen groups, privacy and reliability of information need to be considered. Multidisciplinarity will be ensured by doing the research and sharing the results openly on the Web and stimulating there discussion between disciplines.

3 Background

3.1 Citizenship

The dynamics of citizen participation in different situations, on diverse platforms, and between various actors must be elaborated in a more nuanced manner. More detailed understanding is needed about how civic participation evolves in the new networked media environment from the recognition of problems and stakeholders into building and sharing competences in interactive environments.

The project links to the notion of changing forms of citizenship, resources for civic participation and its connections to everyday life. Understanding citizenship from the grassroots perspective and recognizing the different roles people occupy when participating (as residents, users, media audience, customers, and consumers etc.) is crucial. The project serves in mapping the possibilities for active citizenship in existing citizen networks, and social media as a resource: what kind of information gathering and producing, problem solving, networking, public discussion evolve in the everyday life context, and what is the role and the use of the information that (local) administration and media produce for citizens.

Social media solutions and innovations provide a concrete situation in which to study the dynamics of how citizenship emerges bottom up in a process where people become involved in a) public definition of common problems, b) collection and accumulation knowledge and other competencies, c) development of socially grounded innovations, as well as d) actual decision-making.

3.2 Public services

The Government of Finland has a strong intent to develop electronic services and open communication channels for public administration [2]. However, open interfaces for public sector information are still missing and therefore new service development has been sluggish. According to the UN e-Government Survey 2008, Finland has dropped to the 15th position in e-Government readiness and is thus far behind other Nordic countries [3]. Finland's position is even lower (45) when it comes to citizens' possibilities to participate decision-making online.

E-Government services have thus far been understood quite narrowly as services that public sector provides citizens. New ways of thinking and new types of interaction between public, private, and social knowledge and competencies are needed in the future. When people can collect, re-use and distribute public sector information, citizen groups can organize around it in new ways, creating new enterprises and new communities aiming at solving old problems in a new and more efficient way [4]. At the moment real life demonstrations need to be developed and evaluated. In ubiquitous society the focus should be not only on the tools like Web or mobile, but rather on supporting participation in the best possible way.

3.3 Social media

Media is inevitably bound to the development of citizenship. Although contemporary media culture is accused of only offering people the roles of passive consumer and audience, public debates of our societies still surround us in the media and invite us to step into the role of a citizen and to take a stand on a wide range of issues. Media not only raise issues that have importance in people’s everyday life, but also are involved in forming the understanding of potential places and means for civic participation.

What needs to be studied and understood better is how new and existing issue networks (ranging from civil society to public administration and government), social networks (connecting people across issue groupings), media networks (old and new) can – in new social media solutions – be brought together in innovative ways around shared problems. It is the new combinations of old competencies and resources (as well as sometimes new resources) which make up the social potential of future mashup solutions.

Internet technologies have rapidly created new possibilities and forms of collective intelligence, also referred to as the wisdom of crowds or crowdsourcing. Regardless of the term, the main observation is that a crowd creates in average better solutions than a single expert. One of the most famous examples is open encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Crowdsourcing and social networks create enormous potential in special situations where primary communication channels do not work. However, collective intelligence could be better utilized also in everyday and practical matters in the civil society.

If official data were accessible through open interfaces, information could be made more understandable for different citizen groups by providing different services, views and visualizations to the data. Collective intelligence could be utilized in service development, as well. One example of citizen-driven services are mashups – light Internet applications combining several data sources, such as budgets, timetables, press releases, news, blog articles, and web discussions. Some known mashups are Chicagocrimes.org and Tilannehuone.fi, which display crimes and alerts almost in real-time on a map.

4 Vision 2015

We share the vision of efficient web democracy as stated in the Finnish Government’s National knowledge society strategy for 2007–2015 [2]. In 2015 citizens may participate in the society easily as a part of their everyday life. Public decision-making starts from grass-root level actions and is transparent for all citizen groups. Citizens challenge public administration and media companies to better achievements via self-organizing networks that support public-citizen partnership and make communication and operation efficient in diverse situations. Wisdom of crowds is utilized in public sector by delegating some issues for citizens to solve, which leads to better and more efficient solutions.

Realization of the vision requires collectively built competences and open sharing of basic knowledge.

5 Objectives

The project has three main objectives:

1. To produce basic knowledge about dynamics of citizenship in ubiquitous media environment
2. To develop new forms of ubiquitous self-organizing media processes and tools
3. To demonstrate and evaluate new citizen-driven service concepts that are enabled through open interfaces for public and media sector data

These objectives will be achieved through the following case studies, during which several demonstrations of new media service concepts will be produced and evaluated:

• Sustainable development in urban planning: Public services that support citizens' participation in local decision-making, mashups that combine and visualize public, commercial, and social media
• Immigration media: Personalized public information in accessible and understandable form for all citizen groups from their viewpoints
• Crisis communication: Self-organizing networks in extraordinary situations combining information from public sector, media companies, third sector, and citizens.
• Collaboration swarm: Open and self-organizing competence networks within public sector, research, business, and citizens, providing open production processes in ubiquitous society

Exact topics for the cases will be defined later with the participating organizations and citizen groups. The different aspects will be studied as follows:

• Media channels, user-driven design of media services, user experience (VTT)
• Composition of mashups services, connecting information sources and propagation of event information (TKK)
• Self-organizing networks, impact on civil society, activation of citizens and third sector (JyU)
• Interaction between government, citizens and media, use of social media in civic networks connecting to mainstream media by using and modifying media content (UTA)

6 Research group

The consortium consists of four research groups from different organisations and the Research swarm.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Media and Internet knowledge centre lead by Res.Prof. Caj Södergård has long experience in studying and developing media services that combine Web, mobile, print and digital television. Research themes include e.g. social and semantic media and user-centred development of web and mobile services. PhD student Pirjo Näkki focuses in her research on participatory design of media services utilizing web-based research methods and tools like Owela Open Web Lab for participatory design and open innovation [5].

Helsinki University of Technology

The Department of Media Technology is a totally new unit, which combines research groups from digital media and communications. Within the department, the multimedia research group headed by prof. Petri Vuorimaa focuses on digital media services and, especially, web technologies. Recently, the multimedia research group has studied, for example, mobile web services, mobile television, home automation and entertainment networks, and optimization of virtual machines. D.Sc. (Tech.) students Mikko Pohja and Alessandro Cogliati will complete their doctoral theses within the project.

University of Jyväskylä

Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä is the leading unit to research the Civil Society issues in Finland, including regional social networks, new social movements and social capital. It has Master's programme of the Expertise on Civil Society and national research portal of Civil Society, Kans (kans.jyu.fi). Professor Esa Konttinen is specialised to the research in Civil Society and Social Movements, including environmental movements. PhD student Kari A. Hintikka is making his dissertation about how common people self-organize and coordinate themselves via internet after extraordinary situations, like Asian tsunami or Katrina hurricane.

University of Tampere

The Journalism Research and Development Centre is based at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Centre has rapidly gained a prominent place in the field of journalism, publicity and new media. The main concern in the projects of the Centre is with the relationship between newspapers and their readers, the challenges presented by new technology to journalism and the changing public sphere. The Centre draws on strong domestic and international academic expertise and know how combined with a practically-oriented approach to research problems. The research interests of Professor Risto Kunelius include civic participation in professional journalism, theories of citizenship and challenges of professionalism in media, and the formation of transnational public spaces and spheres. PhD student Auli Harju focuses in her research on case studies of local civic action: how active citizens understand, define and experience their civic action and its media representations.

Finnish research swarm

Research swarm [1] is a self-organizing collaboration network on the Internet. It aims at organizing open multidisciplinary research in a new way utilizing social media tools, such as wiki and Jaiku. Also this project intention has been formulated as a result of collaboration in the Research swarm and written in an open wiki by several authors. Collaboration will continue throughout the project.

7 Main research methods

The possibilities and challenges regarding to open public-citizen partnership via different media channels and technical solutions can be best studied in real life context. Therefore the research will be carried out in the form of case studies from different fields and with different coalitions of citizens and citizen groups, public administration, and media sector.

The case studies consist of the following phases that will be carried out iteratively:

1. Definition: domain analysis, needs and requirements
2. Demonstrations: concept design, application development, evaluation with different actors
3. Reflection: analyzing the data, dissemination

Several mashups will be developed and tested with users. In addition to the mashups developed by the project team, an open competition will be arranged to get more services that can be used for the trials. User needs and user experience will be studied combining web and mobile tools for participatory design (e.g. Owela [5]). The used research methods include focus groups, web and mobile diaries, prototype testing, and field trials. Participants will be chosen among existing citizen groups that act and participate in concrete cases (e.g. land use questions, issues related to schools, ethnicity, and climate change).

Open collaboration will be not only studied but also practiced within the project. One part of the research will be done in collaboration with the Research swarm [1]. In order to study and compare self-organizing collaboration processes, same problem or research question will be given to the Research swarm and other Internet communities to solve.

8 Expected results and impacts

The project will result in understanding the phenomenon of social and participatory media as well as theories, models and demonstrations that will be evaluated in real-life context with users. It provides basic knowledge and practical tools for citizens and public sector collaboration in ubiquitous society.

Theories. The project offers a way to theoretically combine the expectations both the society and its citizens have for citizenship and participation, to explore in practice civic agency in today’s mediated society and understand the possibilities social media creates for social involvement. The project will create enhanced theoretical understanding of public spheres, publicity and public life in the era of social media. It will result in basic research and theoretisation about the interfaces between earlier institutionalised and at the moment rather well resourced networks and actors and their interface with the evolving and changing landscape of citizen-participation in various issues via the Web.

Models. The project creates models about how common people, associations and movements self-organize themselves using latest developments of internet communication technologies, and how informal social networks could be used more efficiently in critical communication situations.

Also a process model for user-driven service development will be developed. The model takes into account, how different roles of users and communities must be taken into account when developing new social media services.

Technology. The project will develop new technical solutions for mashup services. The mashup services will be based on the REpresentational State Transfer (REST) paradigm. New methods to link information sources and dynamically update user interfaces will be developed. The aim is build tools for citizens for creating new mashup services, while public authorities and media companies can publish their information using the defined mashup interfaces. The objective is to create a platform for mashup services that allows one to combine information from different sources as easily as copying and pasting data between office applications.

Impacts on society. The main beneficiaries are Finnish society and its citizens, to who better services can be offered. The research can have an impact on the strategical level on how the Finnish society works and collaborates with citizens. Additionally, opening the official information channels provides huge opportunities for both web service providers and traditional companies for new service concepts. Although the data would be free of charge, many commercial services can be built on them, as well.

The goal of the project is to open one central governmental or municipal web page with data that can be utilized in different services via mashups. Within the project we will build up a web portal with public mashup services, including 1) a breakthrough service that becomes widely used and improves citizens' opportunities to participate in decision-making and development of social innovations, and 2) several smaller demonstrations of mashup services that combine data from different public and private sources. Users may develop mashups also by themselves utilizing the platform developed in the project.

Impacts on research. Within the project a new way of doing research work openly on the Web will be tested and evaluated within the Research swarm.

9 National and international cooperation

National cooperation will be done between the four consortium partners, as well as inside the Research swarm. Participation in the case studies and providing data for mashups has thus far been discussed with the representatives of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and City of Espoo.

International cooperation can be done through existing international networks, such as Civil Society and New Forms of Governance - the Making of New European Citizenship (CINEFOGO), as well as with following contacts:

• Prof. Lewis A. Friedland, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
• Prof. Mark Deuze, Department of Telecommunications, University of Indiana-Bloomington, USA & Journalism and New Media, Leiden University, The Netherlands
• Prof. Nils Enlund, Media Technology and Graphic Arts, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Prof. Jean Vanderdonckt, Belgian Laboratory of Computer-Human Interaction (BCHI), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium
• Dr. Jasminko Novak, Collaboration and Media Technologies Lab, University of Zurich, Switzerland
• D.Sc. Pablo Cesar, The National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), The Netherlands
• M.Sc. Petter Bae Brandtzæg, Cooperative and Trusted Systems, SINTEF ICT, Norway

10 Schedule

The project is planned to take two years: 1.1.2009-31.12.2010.

• Background analysis (citizen, society and media viewpoints): 1.1.-31.3.2009
• User studies: needs and requirements: 1.2.-31.5.2009
• Application development: 1.3.2009-31.5.2010
• Demonstrations: 1.6.2009-31.9.2010
• Evaluation (with different actors): 1.6.2009-30.11.2010
• Dissemination: 1.6.2009-31.12.2010

11 References

1. Research swarm, http://tutkimusparvi.wikispaces.com
2. Kansallinen tietoyhteiskuntastrategia 2007-2015 , Tietoyhteiskuntaohjelma, Valtioneuvoston kanslia, 2006
3. UN e-Government Survey 2008 - From e-Government to Connected Governance, United Nations, January 2008
4. Power of Information : An independent review by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg, June 2007
5. Owela Open Web Lab, http://owela.vtt.fi, VTT