Slides from a short presentation at Code Across Seattle civic hack day, first discussing how emerging trends in s open data & social media may be applied to solving civic issues, and then reviewing some of our recent work looking specifically at the use of social media/open data for increased community development and civic engagement.

1. Leveraging Open Data
& Social Media
To Measure & Impact
Citizen Well-being
Shelly D. Farnham, Ph.D.
FUSE Labs, Microsoft Research
1

2. BIG DREAMS
“By 2035, there will be almost no
poor countries left in the world.”
Bill Gates
3 Myths that Block Progress for the Poor
2014 Gates Annual Letter
http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/9324963783/
2

3. REASON TO HOPE
3

4. REDEFINING
PROSPERITY
From opulence to well-being:
A sustainable economy does not
depend on consumer culture to drive
growth.
We can foster well-being by impacting
people’s ability to flourish – to
participate in life.
Everyone can be prosperous.
4

5. GLOBAL CAUSES OF LOW WELL-BEING
CAUSE
SOLUTIONS
Overpopulation, as ratio of: population size to
Impact population size: education and shift cultural norms around family planning; access
to birth control; education and shift cultural norms around gender equality policies.
Impact available resources: increase productivity of local economy through modernization of
industry, e.g., mechanize food production.
available economic resources.
Unequal distribution of resources.
Develop economies with industry and technology; infusion of essential raw materials and
infrastructure: access to resources; Develop skills through education/training, Change in
policies through more equal trade practices with other more developed countries (shift in
cultural norms), More investment and equal access to social programs that reduce impact on
productivity: mental health, drug abuse, learned helplessness, etc. Redistribution of income
from the haves to the have-nots. Minimum wage/tax incentives
Inadequate education and
employment, illiteracy and lack of work force with
Increase access and adoption of education technologies. Increase productivity of local
economy and related employment opportunities – e.g., globalization of work force with
context independent skills
context independent skills
Environmental degradation, leading to
Education and shift of cultural norms and policy around sustainability/environmental issues
such as deforestation. Increase access to other resources/economic opportunities
shortages in available resources; often caused by
overpopulation
General economic trends,
Education/training specialized skills. Predicting/tracking trends to support an adapting
workforce (analysis, and skills retraining) .
Changing demographic shifts, such
Change in cultural shift around family planning: supporting education and access to birth
control. Economic/policy incentives to support two parent families & other social structures.
Cultural awareness and shift in social policies that “punish” the child, assuring crossgenerational entrapment in poverty.
such as
changing demands of work force for more skilled labor,
increase poverty rate of those without skills.
as increases in single parenthood making it difficult to escape
cycle of poverty over generations.
Intra-individual factors, such
motivational / individual responsibility, health
problems, addictions, and problems with welfare
dependency.
Foster cultural education, awareness, and investment in social programs to address intraindividual factors impacting joining the work force, including learned helplessness, drug
abuse, mental illness (depression, schizophrenia), physical well-being (obesity, malnutrition,
disabilities), social disenfranchisement, social skills. Welfare/wealth redistribution policy
incentives; structured to incentivize work, while at the same time assuring minimal well-being,
health, homelessness, other issues preventing ability to work or accessibility/adoption of
skills training and/or entrapment in poverty life-cycles.
BASED ON WHAT CAUSES POVERTY? http://www.fightpoverty.mmbrico.com/poverty/reasons.html
5

6. EMERGING TRENDS IN TECHNOLOGY =
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Learning networks that provide global access to free education and related social support
systems to assure successful motivation and adoption towards the development of the new skills
needed to foster a growing economy.
Civic crowd-sourcing services enabling direct redistribution of wealth to most
impactful social programs addressing causes of poverty, such as kickstarter for social programs,
supplementary self-taxing programs, community self-support programs.
Development of services such as
microfinancing that enable indirect redistribution of resources to
programs that foster economic development.
Analysis tools of large scale data systems (economics/social services/policies) examining
relative impact of various factors in influencing well-being, measuring the success of various
programs to improve well-being, and where to focus energy to maximally impact change.
Social media tools that empower citizens for increasing awareness, shifting cultural
norms, increasing engagement, empathy, and collective action, around factors impacting individual
well-being and community well-being.
Economic participation tools such as crowd-sourcing, sharing economy services,
online stores, DIY sites, for self-directed, bottoms up engagement in global economy..
Dematerialization of assets, driving economy without consumption of limited natural resources e.g.,
objects in games, digital art, experiential gifts, virtual signals of social status
6

7. LEVERAGING SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES TO
INCREASE POWER OF COMMUNITY
Place
Attachment
Buy Coffee
Sense of
Community
Event
Attachment
Come Back
Again and
Again
Sense of
Community
Neighborhood
Attachment
Civic Action
Sense of
Community
CoCollage
Pathable
Puget Sound OFF
Farnham, S. D., Keyes, D., Yuki, V., and Tugwell, C. 2012. Puget Sound Off: Fostering youth civic engagement through citizen journalism. In Proc CSCW 2012, ACM Press.
Farnham, S., McCarthy, J., Patel, Y., Ahuja, S., Norman, D., Hazlewood, W., Lind, J. (2009). Measuring the impact of place attachment on the adoption of a place-based community technology. In Proceedings of CHI 2009.
Farnham, S., Schwartz, J., Brown, P. (2009). Leveraging social software for strategic social networking and community development at events. In Communities and Technologies 2009.

8. PUGET SOUND OFF:
FOSTERING YOUTH CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
THROUGH CITIZEN JOURNALISM
IN A LOCAL COMMUNITY CONTEXT
Shelly D. Farnham
FUSE Labs
Microsoft Research
David Keyes and Vicky Butler
Dept of Information Technology
City of Seattle
Chris Tugwell
Technology Programs
Metrocenter YMCA
Farnham, S. D., Keyes, D., Yuki, V., and Tugwell, C. 2012. Puget Sound Off: Fostering youth civic engagement through citizen journalism. In Proc CSCW 2012, ACM Press.
8

9. DESIGNING FOR EFFECTIVE CIVIC
ENGAGEMENT
ACQUIRING
KNOWLEDGE
SELFEXPRESSION
JOINING
PUBLICS
COLLECTIVE
ACTION
online
Online research
Consuming blogs, journals
Blogs
Twitter
Photos
Online groups
Mailing lists
Emails
Calendar events
offline
ENGAGED CITIZENS
Research
Attending town halls
Wearing badges
Posters in yard
Conversation
clubs, groups
meetings
Rallies
Letters to elected officials
Bennett, W. L., Wells, C., and Freelorn, D. 2009. Communicating citizenship online:
models of civic learning in the you web sphere. Civic Learning Online Project.

10. PUGET SOUND OFF USAGE
IMPACTED CIVIC ENGAGEMENT



Inspired conversations around local civic issues
Usage correlated with higher civic engagement
Usage correlated with whether it reflected their
community’s interests (r = .61, p < .05)
Photo Club @ WSHS, colleenmcdevitt
http://pugetsoundoff.org/image/21892
Civic engagement (Keeter et al., 2002)
e.g. “taking part in a protest, march or
demonstration”
“Spending time participating in community
service or volunteer activity”

11. IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A VOICE
IN PUBLIC SPACES
Structural equation model
showing only significant
standardized coefficients
between variables.
Public networks: Twitter, blogging,
wiki
Media sharing: photo sharing, videos
Personal networks: facebook, SMS
 Use of public networks and media sharing correlated with
civic engagement, not use of personal networks
 Civic self-efficacy and identification with community
correlated with civic engagement

12. HYPER-LOCAL
What is
happening in this
neighborhood?
Can we leverage social media/Twitter for:
Measuring well-being
Increasing community participation and well-being
12

13. NEIGHBORHOOD STUDY
Twitter
Analysis
Resident
Interviews and
Questionnaire
26 randomly selected
neighborhoods, 174
on site interviews
STUDY
One month of Twitter
messages mentioning
neighborhoods,
~3000 messages manually
coded
~50K automatically
Location
Data
Demographics
Census
Location, Inc.
real estate
dataset
13
Multi-method
approach allowed
us to triangulate on
a rich picture of
King County towns
and
neighborhoods.

14. INDICATORS OF
COMMUNITY WELLBEING FROM
INTERVIEWS
Indicators of Community Well-being
Thriving local businesses
Percent
Mentions
47%
33%
Community events
25%
Community resources
25%
Friendly
25%
Walkability
25%
Gathering places
24%
Social support
20%
Well-maintained
19%
Other health: mental, economic, physical
19%
People know each other
14%
Diversity (race, SES, age, families)
12%
Vibrancy -- people out and about
11%
People interact/communicate
“What does this community
have that indicates to you
that it is healthy or
unhealthy?”
Safe, low crime
11%
Civic engagement
10%
Environmental/geographical assets
10%
Growth - embracing change
10%

15. 1. Entities you develop
a personal
relationship with.
2.
3. Provide a place to
meet people in the
neighborhood.
Local businesses SERVE as quintessential
third places where communities grow

16. MORE PEOPLE = LESS CONNECTED
Population negatively
correlated with
neighborhood network
(r = -.37 p < .08*)
Community well-being
negatively correlated with
population
(r = -.51, p < .05)
People knew fewer neighbors
in more urban, densely
populated neighborhoods.
16

17. TECHNOLOGY USAGE correlated
with well-being and civic
engagement
Communication technologies are meaningful
part of people’s neighborhood community
well-being and civic life!

18. TWITTER AS NEIGHBORHOOD CHANNEL?
Social Deals, 1.8%
Festivals, 1.8%
"grooming", 2.
Social
1%
News, 10.1%
event, 2.3%
29% of
neighborhood
messages about a
current event or
happening
Educational
activity, 2.4%
Civic
activity, 2.4%
Local
business, 8.0%
Nature, 2.8%
Checkin, 3.2%
Classifieds, 3.6
%
Arts, 3.8%
Emergency
reports, 4.4%
Multi-media
link, 7.7%
Sports, 4.7%
Local
"flavor", 4.9%
Neighborhood topics largely correspond
with community well-being indicators
Content analysis:
Randomly selected up to 100
Tweets from 30 neighborhoods

19. TWITTER AND WELL-BEING
Small, family-oriented communities have the
highest well-being, but are not Tweeting.
Overall, Twitter
activity is NOT a
signal of
community wellbeing.
However, neighbor
hood Tweeting
does correlate with
lifestyle –
young, urban, singl
e people without
kids Tweet more
often, interact
more.
Young, single professionals in urban
centers Tweeting a lot.

20. Where people
do Tweet a
lot, mention
networks
(@ each other)
correlated with
well-being.

21. KEY TAKEAWAYS
How can we help people transition from strangers to trusted
neighbors and engaged communities…?
Strangers in
Public
Networks
Trusted friends
and neighbors
Increase awareness & discovery
Overcome stranger fear and find
similar others
Include local business as
community members
Support hubs as hyper
connectors
Make latent communities more
explicit groups

22. !
Making latent hyperlocal
communities more visible
•
•
•
discovery & awareness
Highlighting community hubs
including local business as
community members
Whoo?
Try it!
Whooly.net
22

23. 23

24. CONTACT
Shelly Farnham
@ShellyShelly
http://fuse.Microsoft.com
shellyfa@Microsoft.com
http://sodapoptech.com
24