Some last-minute thoughts that may or may not have anything to do with our node’s project (volunteered observations of invasive species).
1. When we talk about participating in geoweb, how do you define participation? Who participates? Are there different types of participants (e.g. lay people, experts)?
A possible definition: Participation occurs when individuals or groups are involved in a process beyond the level of consumer. Within participation there are many levels of how much influence people have on the goals, direction, and outcome of the process (Arnstein 1969). A focus on process helps us think about how to involve the public both in the formulation of our projects, and in the final analysis and application of the results.
And who instigates a process? Is the instigator still a participant, or are they in another class? Who guides/facilitates/directs (to use Jon’s term) a process? Does a completely participatory process (if that exists) not need a director? Does it still need a facilitator? Does it still need an instigator?
Is expertise the amount of influence one individual wields on the outcome of a project? Or is it how much an individual can direct others’ influences? Or how much credence others give to that individual’s opinions (because of the individual’s academic degrees, the social status of their job, or their apparent real-world experience)? On Web 2.0, in the era of the “cult of the amateur” (Keen 2008), are there really no experts, or are there new (and multiple) standards for expertise, from the point of view of the masses online? Taking the example of Wikipedia, the new experts may be the people with more technical skills to edit and moderate, the early adopters who set the social standards for participation, or the volunteer editors who simply have more time on their hands to edit others’ submitted data.
Even within the same degree or level of participation (the same rung on the participation ladder, perhaps) individuals will have different capabilities to participate. For example, in the case of VGI, the volunteer’s local knowledge of an area might help them place a data point on a map more accurately, but their map reading skills also influence how accurately they can identify a location, and similarly their technical skills in using the map interface might also affect how accurate their data is. So who is the expert here? Clearly there exist different types of expertise.
2. How do people participate? What tools are used? To what end (e.g. what is the purpose of the tool?)? What results from this participation? Is this participation part of a broader process?
Geoweb (and Web 2.0) tools present a number of unique challenges. On the one hand, the tools must be made as simple and user-friendly as possible. The gap in usability between Google Maps and other heavier-weight GIS-based mapping servers is stark. However, an important facet of Web 2.0 is its promise of flexibility and interchangeable, interlocking components. Most sites that use Google Maps, however present an interface that is just as inflexible and un-customizable as ArcIMS, for example, just in different ways.
I suggest that in the spirit of open participation, we need to accept the challenge of allowing participation in formulating and adapting the Geoweb tools we create. This means providing input and output in standard formats such as RSS, and through a variety of clients (such as Twitter) when feasible. But we should also consider how to allow users to modify the tools we provide, that is, how do we “design for hackability”? In this case, the results are not necessarily refined tools, but tools that have been adapted by/for specific users or groups for their own needs. Results are not a set of tools but of protocols, practices, components, and the skills gained by the participants. Balancing this flexibility with user-friendliness is, of course, a massive challenge.
3. What characteristics would you say define effective participation?
Participants should not only have an influence on the thing being participated in, but their skill or knowledge level should also be enhanced by their participation. Effective participation should result in people who will be more empowered participants in the next phase or project, or be able to have more of a leadership/facilitating role in subsequent settings. This kind of knowledge and skill transfer is not only more effective, but it is also essential if we are to solicit participation ethically, without exploiting the participants.
For example, our partner organization, the Community Mapping Network, emphasizes building local capacity to more effectively collect and manage information. This knowledge transfer is also intended to promote increased environmental awareness and active stewardship of the environment. An effective participatory project must produce or enhance engagement in (“participation” in) the surrounding social and environmental context.
However, knowledge transfer is complicated by the web-only setting of Geoweb projects. The knowledge transfer that takes place in the Community Mapping Network includes in-person training programs. How much should our Geoweb projects incorporate offline education to ensure effective knowledge transfer? In an online-only setting, how can we ensure that the participants have learned the necessary technical skills and environmental knowledge to be effective participants? Can we (or should we) track participants to keep them from “falling through the cracks” and not getting the education they need, or so that we can identify the skill or knowledge level of the individual who submitted a particular piece of geodata?
4. Tell us about how your theory/idea(s) about participation connect to existing literature/theories/ideas about participation? With whose work does your approach resonate (describe and send us references)? Is there friction between your approach and others' (describe and send us references)
We might also find useful theories of participation if we look a bit further afield:
i. Open Source
The open source software movement clearly includes a strong ethic of participation: by making source code freely available, anyone can participate in developing, modifying and fixing the code. Eric Raymond contrasts the top-down development of proprietary software with the bottom-up open source approach using the metaphor of the cathedral and the bazaar. (Raymond 2001) The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, argues that open source software is less buggy, stating that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. Can our Geoweb projects find any benefit in applying some principles or observations from open source? Should we help our participants be bug-checkers and fixers for our software and our data?
The open source model also has its problems. The open source community is hierarchical and exclusive in its own ways, with a high technological barrier to entry. Despite its rhetoric of openness and distributed effort, most open source projects are developed and maintained by a handful of core individuals who write the vast majority of the code. In our Geoweb projects, how can we avoid having only a few individuals dominate all the activity? How do we level the playing field of participation?
ii. Digital Literacies
Does more effective participation require more “digital literacy” (Lankshear and Knobel 2008)? Here theories of digital literacies (and similar terms such as “new literacies”, “technoliteracy”, “(new) media literacy”, “information literacy”, etc) interpret literacy broadly, going beyond simple reading and writing skills to include the ability to understand, critically evaluate and synthesize information. A broad interpretation of digital literacy also includes the social practices and contexts in which the act of reading and writing is embedded. Theories of digital literacy might help us think about the levels and kinds of participation possible on the Geoweb, giving us another way to assess the empowerment of the individual through active participation. The notion of literacy helps us ask whether individuals know the how and the why of participation, gaining an understanding of the inner workings of the process (technological, social, and environmental) they are participating in.
Also, in our case, what role exists for “ecological literacy” (Orr 1992) or geographic literacy? Unlike other Web 2.0 projects, our Geoweb research works with information inherently embedded in ecological systems and geographic space. How much do participants need to understand spatial and ecological principles to participate effectively? What are the geographic and ecological interconnections that our projects must consider (and reveal to the user) in order to solicit accurate and meaningful participation?
iii. Participation in contemporary art: consensus or dissensus?
Participation is also a focus of much discussion in contemporary art and architecture. Participatory practices emerged as a response to the static work of art that only allows passive viewing (geographers might think instead about a static map) in an attempt to engage the viewer as an active participant in the artwork and in the space around them. There has also been a critique of the term “participation” (Miessen and Basar 2006), arguing that it has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, particularly in situations where there is little true participation (that is, situations that are very low on Arnstein’s participation ladder) and where the real intent is to manufacture the illusion of consensus. If the public is allowed to participate fully and control the outcome of a process (the top of Arnstein’s participation ladder) then we must accept the possibility that subsets of the public may disagree, possibly irreconcilably. If consensus is illusory, we have to make room for “dissensus”.
In our projects, how do we reconcile the multiplicities of answers and solutions that might arise through truly open participation with the scientific need to find a single answer? How do we allow for dissensus if participants have different opinions about which areas are valuable for conservation, for example? Is it always possible to find a compromise?
The literature on PPGIS and the “GIS and society” debates (Schuurman 2000) have addressed similar concerns about collapsing complex and contradictory human knowledge into simplified digital representations, but Web 2.0 may present further challenges. Some argue that the “disorganized” and “disordered” nature of Web 2.0 is one of its strengths. (Shirky 2008, Weinberger 2008). If this is an inherent attribute of Web 2.0 (is it?) then how can our participatory projects take disorganization into account? Can we (and should we) go against the grain?
References:
Arnstein, Sherry R. 1969. A Ladder Of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Planning Association 35, no. 4: 216.
Keen, Andrew. 2008. The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values. New York: Doubleday Business.
Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. 2008. Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies). Peter Lang Publishing.
Miessen, Markus, and Shumon Basar. 2006. Did Someone Say Participate?: An Atlas of Spatial Practice. The MIT Press.
Orr, David W. 1992. Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. State University of New York Press.
Raymond, Eric S. 2001. The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. O'Reilly.
Schuurman, Nadine. 2000. Trouble in the heartland: GIS and its critics in the 1990s. Progress in Human Geography 24, no. 4 (December 1): 569-590.
Shirky, Clay. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. New York: Penguin Press.
Weinberger, David. 2008. Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. Holt Paperbacks.