e-Participation: Social Media and Public Space

Salvador, June 19 2012 ICCSA 2012 - Cities, Technologies and Planning

e-Participation: Social Media and the Public Space

Gilberto Corso Pereira1

Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

Maria Célia Furtado Rocha

PRODEB, Salvador, Brazil

Alenka PoplinHafenCity University Hamburg, Germany

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

NETWORK IS GLOBAL

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

PLACE MATTERS?

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)

PUBLIC SPHERE/SPACE

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)

GLOBAL 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

NETWORKED 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

HYBRID PUBLIC SPHERE

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

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

SPACES FOR COLLABORATION/CITIZENSHIP

https://www.fairelections.eu/

web

streets

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

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

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

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)

SOME COMMENTS

Visual explorations of urban mobility

SENSEable City Lab - MIT

Yu Zheng, Urban Computing with Taxicabs, Beijing, 2011

VIRTUAL/REAL

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

THE BORDER IS EVERYWHERE

Tweets after the earthquake in Virginia

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

FINALLY...

e-Participation: Social Media and the Public Space

Gilberto Corso Pereira1

corso@ufba.br

Maria Célia Furtado Rochamariacelia.rocha@prodeb.ba.gov.br

Alenka Poplinalenka.poplin@hcu-hamburg.de

Salvador, June 19 2012 ICCSA 2012 - Cities, Technologies and Planning