Research on political participation suggests that citizens are alienated from mainstream politics: declining voting turnout rates and party membership are signs of this disenchantment. However, citizens are not less passionate about politics, as the recent wave of protests taking place in several western liberal democracies has manifested with exceptional strength. Contentious politics is part of the repertoire available to citizens to communicate with their representatives, and digital media have become indispensable for the coordination of these mass mobilisations; yet sustainable political participation requires the consolidation of more normalised channels of communication.
Open data initiatives (like data.gov.uk and PublicData.eu) aim to facilitate avenues for better communication between government departments and citizens. The question this project aims to consider is: How effective are these initiatives and the uses of open data to encourage civic engagement in policy-relevant domains?
This project aims to survey the open datasets made available through the data.gov.uk website and determine how many of these sources are being used to develop applications that can improve citizen-government interaction. Our aim is to identify the landscape of applications developed under the umbrella of open data initiatives and gauge interest on both the supply and demand side of the market (i.e. developers and users).
This work is supported by Google.
Former
Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon is a sociologist interested in the internet, social networks, and political engagement. Her research uses large-scale data to analyse the structure and content of political discussions, and how interactions evolve over time.
Former Researcher
Ning Wang holds a joint position between the OII and Oxford's Mathematical Institute. His work involves in the collection and analysis of a big dataset tracking patterns of communication in online social networks.
Research Associate
In 2022 Jonathan Bright became the Head of AI for Public Services at the Turing Institute, having previously been a faculty member of the OII. A political scientist, he specialises in computational and ‘big data’ approaches to the social sciences.