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Literaturverz. S. 87 - 104

International audience ; The worldwide use of the Internet and social networking has transformed the constraints of time and space in human interaction: we can now be heard at a massive scale unprecedented in human history. As a result, ICT may enable citizens to undertake both government through direct assembly and collective action at a scale and an efficacy previously considered impossible. Our research concerns this opportunity to leverage a new sort of political life. We focus specifically on how software systems may enable partic-ipatory democracy, that is, the participation of citizens in democratic assembly, action, and governance. As an initial step, we have developed a service-oriented software platform, called AppCivist-PB, focused on a specific, yet representative use case of participatory democracy, namely, Participa-tory Budgeting (PB for short). PB is an allocation process used in many cities around the world through which they commit a percentage of their annual budget (often 5%) to implement citizen-proposed projects. In PB, residents of a city (or a higher level territorial organization), brainstorm, develop, and select project proposals that local government institutions are required to fund and implement. The key contribution of AppCivist-PB is to enable the cohesive creation of both citizen and software assemblies that together implement a given participatory budgeting campaign.

International audience ; The worldwide use of the Internet and social networking has transformed the constraints of time and space in human interaction: we can now be heard at a massive scale unprecedented in human history. As a result, ICT may enable citizens to undertake both government through direct assembly and collective action at a scale and an efficacy previously considered impossible. Our research concerns this opportunity to leverage a new sort of political life. We focus specifically on how software systems may enable partic-ipatory democracy, that is, the participation of citizens in democratic assembly, action, and governance. As an initial step, we have developed a service-oriented software platform, called AppCivist-PB, focused on a specific, yet representative use case of participatory democracy, namely, Participa-tory Budgeting (PB for short). PB is an allocation process used in many cities around the world through which they commit a percentage of their annual budget (often 5%) to implement citizen-proposed projects. In PB, residents of a city (or a higher level territorial organization), brainstorm, develop, and select project proposals that local government institutions are required to fund and implement. The key contribution of AppCivist-PB is to enable the cohesive creation of both citizen and software assemblies that together implement a given participatory budgeting campaign.

In recent years, social media has become increasingly relevant in democratic decision-making processes, such as referendums or elections. Recent investigations have raised the concern of social media misuse in attempts to manipulate the public opinion and infuence results, undermining the foundations of democracy. By analyzing the use of Twitter during the 2017/2018 presidential elections in Paraguay, this study provides empirical evidence and analysis about the role of social media on political campaigns. In a departure from other countries in the region, dominance in this network did not correlate with elections results. The results we highlight in this article, therefore, challenge the impact of social media on elections, ofering an interesting view of their role in Latin America countries, like Paraguay.

International audience ; This paper analyzes existing practices and supporting technologies for Participatory Budgeting (PB), with a special focus on US-related initiatives, as a mean to understand the current and future design space of ICT for participatory democracy. We suggest new design opportunities for ICT to facilitate citizen collaboration in the PB process, and by extension, to reflect on how these technologies could better foster deliberative decision-making at a scale that is both small and large.

International audience ; Computer-mediated communication can be defined as any form of human communication achieved through computer technology. From its beginnings, it has been shaping the way humans interact with each other, and it has influenced many areas of society. There exist a plethora of communication services enabling computer-mediated social communication (e.g., Skype, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Slack, etc.). Based on personal preferences, users may prefer a communication service rather than another. As a result, users sharing same interests may not be able to interact since they are using incompatible technologies. To tackle this interoperability barrier, we propose the Social Communication Bus, a middleware solution targeted to enable the interaction between heterogeneous communication services. More precisely, the contribution of this paper is threefold: (i), we propose a survey of the various forms of computer-mediated social communication, and we make an analogy with the computing communication paradigms; (ii), we revisit the eXtensible Service Bus (XSB) that supports interoperability across computing interaction paradigms to provide a solution for computer-mediated social communication interoperability; and (iii), we present Social-MQ, an implementation of the Social Communication Bus that has been integrated into the AppCivist platform for participatory democracy.

International audience ; This paper analyzes existing practices and supporting technologies for Participatory Budgeting (PB), with a special focus on US-related initiatives, as a mean to understand the current and future design space of ICT for participatory democracy. We suggest new design opportunities for ICT to facilitate citizen collaboration in the PB process, and by extension, to reflect on how these technologies could better foster deliberative decision-making at a scale that is both small and large.

International audience ; Computer-mediated communication can be defined as any form of human communication achieved through computer technology. From its beginnings, it has been shaping the way humans interact with each other, and it has influenced many areas of society. There exist a plethora of communication services enabling computer-mediated social communication (e.g., Skype, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Slack, etc.). Based on personal preferences, users may prefer a communication service rather than another. As a result, users sharing same interests may not be able to interact since they are using incompatible technologies. To tackle this interoperability barrier, we propose the Social Communication Bus, a middleware solution targeted to enable the interaction between heterogeneous communication services. More precisely, the contribution of this paper is threefold: (i), we propose a survey of the various forms of computer-mediated social communication, and we make an analogy with the computing communication paradigms; (ii), we revisit the eXtensible Service Bus (XSB) that supports interoperability across computing interaction paradigms to provide a solution for computer-mediated social communication interoperability; and (iii), we present Social-MQ, an implementation of the Social Communication Bus that has been integrated into the AppCivist platform for participatory democracy.

As mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Zika continue to develop, traditional approaches have not curbed the epidemics, and evidence suggests that community-based programs are an effective alternative. In Paraguay, more than 8,300 cases of dengue were reported in 2019. Recent entomological surveys found that the percentage of houses with Aedes aegypti larvae is as high as 20% in the capital. In this context and based on the experiences of Camino Verde and DengueChat in Nicaragua, we started the TopaDengue project, a community-based intervention, supported by ICTs (information and communication technologies), in one of the most vulnerable territories of the Paraguayan capital, the Bañado Sur of Asunción. To inform our design of the socio-technical ICT platform, our fieldwork in this community explored the dynamic of interaction among researchers, facilitators, volunteers, the extended community, and technologies. Combining both paper and digital technologies with a continuous feedback loop among research, design, and community action, within a citizen science initiative, were key to strengthening the socialization and management processes of a community-based entomological surveillance program.