In the context of a citizen lab, this article describes how a vanguard of activists, designers, scholars and participation practitioners were involved in a participatory prototyping process.... Show More

In the context of a citizen lab, this article describes how a vanguard of activists, designers, scholars and participation practitioners were involved in a participatory prototyping process. CoGovern was designed as an online participation tool whose focus is to incorporate citizen preferences in local policy making. It is aimed at supporting informed and transparent participatory processes while reducing the ability of sponsoring authorities to “cherry-pick” policy proposals and avoid providing explanations. This article proposes a decision-making process that incorporates artificial intelligence techniques into a collective decision process and whose result is mainly based on standard optimization techniques rather than vote-counting.

This article aims to interrogate the phenomenon of “entrepreneurial journalism” – a trend in teaching journalism in post-secondary schools as well as an approach to journalism production to... Show More

This article aims to interrogate the phenomenon of “entrepreneurial journalism” – a trend in teaching journalism in post-secondary schools as well as an approach to journalism production to understand changes to the field that have emerged due to digitization and whether they represent a threat to public service journalism. By drawing on qualitative open-ended interviews with journalism educators from three Canadian journalism schools, this article draws on the perspectives of educators in an attempt to understand the extent to which this model is being adopted in Canadian schools, educators perspectives on entrepreneurial journalism, and what values are at the forefront of their teaching practices.

This article uses the results of a 2016 survey of Canadian teachers to provide a snapshot of the extent to which the survey participants have been able to successfully incorporate digital literacy... Show More

This article uses the results of a 2016 survey of Canadian teachers to provide a snapshot of the extent to which the survey participants have been able to successfully incorporate digital literacy into their daily teaching. The data suggests that governments continue to prioritize technical access elements over more participatory elements of digital literacy, making it difficult to go beyond basic literacy requirements. In addition, there are a number of barriers that make it more difficult for teachers to cultivate digital citizenship. These barriers include: the dissolving boundary between in-school and out-of-school contexts; the commercial nature of the digital world; and the continuing difficulty of evaluating online information. This article concludes by arguing that the concept of digital literacy should be broadened beyond the skills-based approach and instead should be solidly organized with the goal of promoting and preparing students for democratic citizenship.

This article describes how political participation is a central component of democracy. Past research has found that a variety of factors drive individual decisions about participation, including... Show More

This article describes how political participation is a central component of democracy. Past research has found that a variety of factors drive individual decisions about participation, including the media that citizens use to gain political information. Social media offers the possibility of engaging citizens in a new way and potentially increasing various forms of participation. In this article, the role that social media use has in fostering a variety for forms of political participation is examined. This article finds that social media use can be a driver of participation, but that this impact is largely contingent on the political predispositions of the user.

This article describes how while confronted with digitization, governments need to equip their employees with skills for dealing with the upcoming technologies. To date, however, there has been no... Show More

This article describes how while confronted with digitization, governments need to equip their employees with skills for dealing with the upcoming technologies. To date, however, there has been no thorough analysis of which skills governments actually require and how these skills are addressed by (vocational) training. Therefore, the aim of this article is to understand both governments' needs and the scope of currently offered training as well as identifying the existing gaps by conducting qualitative interviews with employees from HR departments in governments. An understanding of what skills are actually required in public bodies and how they can be classified will be outlined. Furthermore, the challenges and benefits of governments' decision to offer vocational training are investigated, pointing out gaps that need further investigation. Based on this, implications for theory and practice for the digitization future and vocational trainings in government are derived.