The social impact of open government data in Hong Kong: Umbrella Movement protests and adversarial politics. Issue 4 (8th August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Meng, Amanda; DiSalvo, Carl; Tsui, Lokman; Best, Michael
• Is Part Of: Information society. Volume 35:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: 216
• Page End: 228
• Publication Date: 2019-08-08
• Subjects: adversarial politics -- contestation -- data intermediaries -- deliberative democracy -- Open government data -- participatory democracy -- social impact; Technology -- Social aspects; Information storage and retrieval systems -- Social aspects; Information science -- Periodicals; Sciences de l'information -- Périodiques; 303.483
• DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2019.1613464
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0197-2243

Abstract

Abstract: While there has been much anticipation that open government data (OGD) would increase the inclusion of marginalized groups in government decision-making processes, researchers have found little evidence of it. Such findings or lack of findings of social impact have led researchers to call for critical review of present notions of OGD's impact and also for better theoretical frameworks. In response to these calls, we develop a theoretical framework based on an ethnographic study of civic use of OGD in Hong Kong. We argue that constrained by the deliberative democracy models that focus on existing mechanisms of political participation, researchers have tended to overlook the use of OGD for protests, contestation, and other expressions of adversarial politics, which also produce a use of OGD for social impacts.