From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement

541 Pages·2011·18.463 MB·English

by  Marcus Foth, Laura Forlano, Christine Satchell, Martin Gibbs, Judith Donath

From Social Butterfl y to Engaged Citizen

From Social Butterfl y to Engaged Citizen
Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to
Support Citizen Engagement
edited by Marcus Foth, Laura Forlano, Christine Satchell, and Martin Gibbs
epilogue by Judith Donath
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2011 M assachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or
mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.
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This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From social butterfl y to engaged citizen : urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing,
and mobile technology to support citizen engagement / edited by Marcus Foth . . . [et al.] ;
epilogue by Judith Donath.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01651-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ubiquitous computing. 2. Social media. 3. Political participation. I. Foth, Marcus. II. Title.
QA76.5915.F76 2012
302.23’1 — dc22
2011011450
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
I Theories of Engagement 1
Foreword 3
Phoebe Sengers
1 The Ideas and Ideals in Urban Media 5
Martijn de Waal
2 The Moral Economy of Social Media 21
Paul Dourish and Christine Satchell
3 The Protocological Surround: R econceptualizing Radio and Architecture in the
Wireless City 39
Gillian Fuller and Ross Harley
4 Mobile Media and the Strategies of Urban Citizenship: C ontrol, Responsibilization,
Politicization 55
Kurt Iveson
II Civic Engagement 71
Foreword 73
Yvonne Rogers
5 Advancing Design for Sustainable Food Cultures 77
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi and Eli Blevis
6 Building Digital Participation Hives: T oward a Local Public Sphere 93
Fiorella De Cindio and Cristian Peraboni
vi Contents
7 Between Experience, Affect, and Information: E xperimental Urban Interfaces in
the Climate Change Debate 115
Jonas Fritsch and Martin Brynskov
8 More Than Friends: S ocial and Mobile Media for Activist Organizations 135
Tad Hirsch
9 Gardening Online: A Tale of Suburban Informatics 151
Bjorn Nansen, Jon M. Pearce, and Wally Smith
10 The Rise of the Expert Amateur: C itizen Science and Microvolunteerism 167
Eric Paulos, Sunyoung Kim, and Stacey Kuznetsov
III Creative Engagement 197
Foreword 199
Gary Marsden
11 Street Haunting: S ounding the Invisible City 203
Sarah Barns
12 Family Worlds: Technological Engagement for Families Negotiating Urban
Traffi c 217
Hilary Davis, Peter Francis, Bjorn Nansen, and Frank Vetere
13 Urban Media: New Complexities, New Possibilities— A Manifesto 235
Christopher Kirwan and Sven Travis
14 Bj ø rnetjeneste: U sing the City as a Backdrop for Location-Based Interactive
Narratives 253
Jeni Paay and Jesper Kjeldskov
15 Mobile Interactions as Social Machines: Poor Urban Youth at Play in
Bangladesh 275
Andrew Wong and Richard Ling
IV Technologies of Engagement 291
Foreword 293
Atau Tanaka
16 Sensing, Projecting, and Interpreting Digital Identity through Bluetooth:
From Anonymous Encounters to Social Engagement 297
Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, Freya Palmer, Alan Penn, and Eamonn O’ Neill
Contents vii
17 The Policy and Export of Ubiquitous Place: I nvestigating South Korean
U-Cities 315
Germaine Halegoua
18 Engaging Citizens and Community with the UBI Hotspots 335
Timo Ojala, Hannu Kukka, Tommi Heikkinen, Tomas Lindé n, Marko Jurmu, Simo Hosio,
and Fabio Kruger
19 Crowdsensing in the Web: Analyzing the Citizen Experience in the Urban
Space 353
Francisco C. Pereira, Andrea Vaccari, Fabien Giardin, Carnaven Chiu, and Carlo Ratti
20 Empowering Urban Communities through Social Commonalities 375
Laurianne Sitbon, Peter Bruza, Renato Iannella, and Sarath Indrakanti
V Design Engagement 393
Foreword 395
Mark Blythe
21 A Streetscape Portal 401
Michael Arnold
22 Nonanthropocentrism and the Nonhuman in Design: P ossibilities for Designing
New Forms of Engagement with and through Technology 421
Carl DiSalvo and Jonathan Lukens
23 Building the Open-Source City: C hanging Work Environments for Collaboration
and Innovation 437
Laura Forlano
24 Dramatic Character Development Personas to Tailor Apartment Designs for
Different Residential Lifestyles 461
Marcus Foth, Christine Satchell, Mark Bilandzic, Greg Hearn, and Danielle Shelton
Epilogue: The City as Information Organism 485
Judith Donath
Editor Biographies 491
Author Biographies 495
Index 515

Preface
Marcus Foth, Laura Forlano, Christine Satchell, and Martin Gibbs
This book offers a pathbreaking collection of research and theory about the emerging
fi eld of urban informatics; its form provides a material artifact that intervenes in the
digital realms of communities, cities, and spaces around the world from Finland to
the United States, Australia, Korea, and Bangladesh. Over the past decade, ubiquitous
computing, social media, and mobile technologies have become integral parts of our
social lives and work practices, as well as shaping the way we make sense of our cul-
tures and engage as citizens. This book contributes to better understanding the oppor-
tunities and challenges provided by the tools, interfaces, methods, and practices of
social and mobile technology that enable participation and engagement.
The following chapters illustrate how Web 2.0 applications such as blogs, wikis,
video, and photo-sharing sites as well as social networking systems offer an arguably
more open, collaborative, personalizable, and therefore more participatory Internet
experience than what has previously been possible. Giving rise to a culture of partici-
pation, an increasing number of these social applications are now available on mobile
phones, where they take advantage of device-specifi c features such as sensors, location,
and context awareness. The scholars, commentators, and practitioners in this book
critically examine a range of applications of social and mobile technology such as
social networking, mobile interaction, wikis, twitter, blogging, virtual worlds, shared
displays, and urban screens, and their role in fostering community activism, civic
engagement, and cultural citizenship.
As a material artifact, the book signifi es the coming together of an international
group of academics and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines such as com-
puting and engineering, social sciences, design, digital media, and human – computer
interaction. In some cases, contributors ’ connection to the book has developed over
the course of a few months through electronic exchanges; for others, it is the result
of participation in one of two workshops that preceded the editorial work on this
book. The fi rst workshop was titled “ Digital Cities 6: Concepts, Methods, and Systems
of Urban Informatics ” and took place in June 2009 at Pennsylvania State University
in University Park, as part of the Fourth International Conference on Communities