Civic technologies for informing, empowering, and connecting people

I examine civic technologies for informing, empowering, and connecting people, addressing two fundamental questions:

  • i) How do new media technologies influence human behavior and society?
  • ii) How can we harness these technologies for social good to foster a more informed, equal, and inclusive society?

I operationalize these questions in empirical contexts including the following:

  • i) Large-scale online collaboration systems, such as:
    • - applications of collective intelligence in open and participatory journalism
    • - deliberation and policy-making
    • - civic crowdfunding
    • - applications of artificial intelligence for civic use
  • ii) virtual, mixed, and augmented reality as civic technologies

At the micro level, I study users’ interaction with civic technologies using human-computer interaction frameworks. At the macro level, I analyze the impact of technologically mediated behavior on society, including power structures, representations, and distribution of information. The better we understand the impact of new technologies on people and society, the better we can design and apply technologies for social good—to support equal access to information and civic participation.

By deploying theories and methods from social sciences and engineering, I examine the cyclical and reciprocal relationships among our behavior, technologies, and society: technologies affect our behavior, our behavior impacts society, and society, in turn, affects our behavior. This dynamic also shapes the design of new technologies.

My work is driven by both academic goals and a mission to contribute to a more equal, informed, and inclusive society.