The People > Learn about civic tech > Academia > Peer-reviewed research - (96)

Collaborative research programs dedicated to investigate the relations between technology and civic engagement and other challenges around concepts like citizenship, participation, and democracy.

Showing 96 Results

Improving Delivery of the Social Safety Net: The Role of Stigma

Article in Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory by Jessica Lasky-Fink and Elizabeth Linos

Protests in the United States on Palestine and Israel, 2023–2024

Analyzes the size, rhetorical nature, and non-violent nature of the pro-Palestine protest wave, which it finds to be "the largest, most sustained US protests sparked by a foreign event" since their data became available in 2017. Published in Social Movement Studies

Journal of Democracy

Focusing exclusively on democracy, the Journal monitors and analyzes democratic regimes and movements around the world.

Using publicly available satellite imagery and deep learning to understand economic well-being in Africa

Article in Nature by Christopher Yeh, Anthony Perez, Anne Driscoll, George Azzari, Zhongyi Tang, David Lobell, Stefano Ermon & Marshall Burke

Prosocial Media

We propose an alternative platform model that the social fabric an explicit output as well as input. By E. Glen Weyl, Luke Thorburn, Emillie de Keulenaar, Jacob Mchangama, Divya Siddarth, Audrey Tang

Toward Democracy Levels for AI

In this paper, building on insights from the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, we provide a "Democracy Levels" framework for evaluating the degree to which decisions in a given domain are made democratically.

Online Technology as a Pathway for Citizen Deliberation and Depolarization

This article proposes, and presents results from, an online technology platform and a methodology, which can help depolarize sectors of society, with the specific application to the current divisive post-war landscape within Colombia.

AI can help humans find common ground in democratic deliberation

AI can help humans find common ground in democratic deliberation

Stanford University, Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, USA

Google DeepMind and Stanford researchers built the "Habermas Machine" and found that AI mediators generated more palatable summary statements of the discussions, as rated by participants, than human-written summaries, while still representing minority views in the final version.

Generative Agent Simulations of 1,000 People

Generative Agent Simulations of 1,000 People

Stanford University, Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, USA

Stanford + DeepMind study that used LLMs to simulate people with AI agents based on a 2-hour interview

More and Better! Diversifying electronic participation mechanisms and improving the online services offered by Portuguese municipalities

The 2023 edition of the “IPIC – Portuguese Municipal Councils’ Online Presence Index” series of studies presents the results of the evaluation of Portuguese municipal councils’ websites.

Baseline vulnerable road user injury risk in multiple U.S. dense urban driving environments

Waymo partnered with dashcam company Nexar to analyze 500 million miles of driving, including 335 crashes, to create the 'largest ever’ dataset of pedestrian and cyclist injuries

Climate change psychological distress is associated with increased collective climate action in the U.S.

"Importantly, people experiencing distress are more likely to engage in collective action on climate change or express a willingness to do so, even when controlling for several correlates of environmental behavior"

Can digital humanitarian aid reach vulnerable populations in fragile states?

Evidence from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan shows that digital aid is a cost-effective, credible, and efficient way to reach vulnerable populations, in this case poor, tech-illiterate, female-headed households, in fragile states.

Conspiracy Debunking Conversations

An open database of conversations ChatGPT had with people who believe in a variety of conspiracy theories, which can be filtered by the efficacy of the conversation in changing beliefs.

The Impact and Opportunities of Generative AI in Fact-Checking

Paper by ROBERT WOLFE and TANUSHREE MITRA, University of Washington, United States

Open Data on GitHub: Unlocking the Potential of AI

Academic analysis of open data on Github finds it's "one of the largest hosts of open data in the world and has experienced an accelerated growth of open data assets over the past four years."

#ISOJ

#ISOJ

Austin, TX

#GotaGoGama, which criticized Gotabaya's candidacy and highlighted human rights abuses.

Digitalization in Disaster Risk Reduction: The Use of Smartphones to Enhance the Safety of Informal Settlements in Iringa, Tanzania

The aim of this study was to assess the current use of smartphones by the masons of the informal settlements of Iringa, Tanzania, and to identify pathways for improving their construction practices.

The Decidim ‘soft infrastructure’: democratic platforms and technological autonomy in Barcelona

Paper by Paolo Cardullo, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, and Paco González Gil. "In this paper we focus on the platform’s ‘soft infrastructure’ – the network of developers, ethical hackers, academics, maintainers, advocates and activists, and city administrators but also the agreements with the city and the documentation produced – on its internal governance arrangements and the provincialising relationships these might entail."

Do Open Data Impact on Citizens’ Behaviours?

This study by Yuya Shibuya empirically analyzes the impacts of open data on behavioral change by investigating the case of Taiwan.

The state of Civic Tech Research in Africa: An Evidence Map

The state of Civic Tech Research in Africa: An Evidence Map

South Africa (South Africa, Afrika-Borwa, Suid-Afrika)

The Evidence Mapping project aimed to create a common, up-to-date evidence/ knowledge base about civic tech in the African context, to improve support, decision-making and advocacy in relation to civic tech (including more broadly civil society innovation, tech for good and digital governance).

Tile2Net

Tile2Net

United States of America (the)

"an end-to-end open-source framework for creating georeferenced pedestrian networks from aerial imagery"

Empathy Helps Counter Hate Speech

Empathy Helps Counter Hate Speech

Stanford University, Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, USA

A team of researchers led by Dominik Hangartner, IPL co-director and professor of public policy at ETH Zurich, has joined forces with colleagues at the University of Zurich to investigate what kind of messages could lead authors of hate speech to refrain from such postings in the future

Journal of Deliberative Democracy (previously the Journal of Public Deliberation)

The Journal of Deliberative Democracy (formerly the Journal of Public Deliberation) is an open access journal publishing articles that shape the course of scholarship on deliberative democracy.

The Role of Community Engagement in Urban Innovation Towards the Co-Creation of Smart Sustainable Cities

"Findings from this study presents a developed model that can support community engagement for urban innovation by specifying factors that influences community engagement for smart sustainable city development." by Bokolo Anthony Jr.

Research Excellence Framework Impact case study database

Research Excellence Framework Impact case study database

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)

"Documents put together by university departments that attempt to explain the reach of their research beyond academia."

A citywide experiment testing the impact of geographically targeted, high-pay-off vaccine lotteries

"We implemented a pre-registered, citywide experiment to test the effects of three high-pay-off, geographically targeted lotteries designed to motivate adult Philadelphians to get their COVID-19 vaccine...we do not detect evidence of any overall benefits."

Designing Digital Participatory Budgeting Platforms: Urban Biking Activism in Madrid

Investigating the empirical case of urban biking activists in Madrid, we explore how the design of the digital platform Decide Madrid impacted the collaborative practices involved in digital participatory budgeting.

Artificial Intelligence in the City: Building Civic Engagement and Public Trust

A collection of essays edited by Ana Brandusescu and Jess Reia featuring essays from participants of the AI in the City: Building Civic Engagement and Public Trust symposium that took place remotely on February 10, 2022.

Matching to Categories: Learning and Compliance Costs in Administrative Processes

Research with Code for America on CalFresh, by Donald Moynihan, Eric Giannella, Pamela Herd, and Julie Sutherland finds "hard evidence on the barriers administrative burdens pose."

AI Ethics Initiative

AI Ethics Initiative

Cambridge, MA, USA

The AI Initiative is dedicated to shaping the global policy framework to govern the rise of Artificial Intelligence, addressing holistically short-, mid- and long-term governance challenges.

AI Now Institute

AI Now Institute

New York City, NY, USA

The AI Now Institute at New York University is an interdisciplinary research center dedicated to understanding the social implications of artificial intelligence.

The Reporters’ Lab

The Reporters’ Lab

Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

The Reporters’ Lab is a center for journalism research in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Our core projects focus on fact-checking, but we also do occasional research about trust in the news media and other topics.

AI for Good Foundation

The AI for Good Foundation engages on a number of fronts in order to continuously serve its core mission.

Journal of Online Trust and Safety

Journal of Online Trust and Safety

Stanford University, Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, USA

The Journal of Online Trust and Safety is a cross-disciplinary, open access, fast peer-review journal that publishes research on how consumer internet services are abused to cause harm and how to prevent those harms.

Edinburgh Futures Institute

Edinburgh Futures Institute

Edinburgh, Scotland

Teams of researchers will work with up to 350 partner organisations on a range of topics and themes, including how data-driven innovation can improve public services in the region, the role of artificial intelligence and the ethics of data.

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