Algorithmic empowerment: A comparative ethnography of two open-source algorithmic platforms – Decide Madrid and vTaiwan

Abstract

Scholars of critical algorithmic studies, including those from geography, anthropology, science talent search, and communication studies, have begun to consider how algorithmic devices and platforms facilitate democratic practices. In this article, I draw on a comparative ethnography of two alternative open-source algorithmic platforms – Decide Madrid and vTaiwan – to consider how they are dynamically constituted by differing algorithmic–human relationships. I compare how different algorithmic–human relationships empower citizens to influence political decision-making through proposing, commenting, and voting on the urban issues that should receive political resources in Taipei and Madrid. I argue that algorithmic empowerment is an emerging process in which algorithmic–human relationships orient away from limitations and towards conditions of plurality, actionality, and power decentralisation. This argument frames algorithmic empowerment as bringing about empowering conditions that allow (underrepresented) individuals to shape policy-making and consider plural perspectives for political change and action, not as an outcome-driven, binary assessment (i.e. yes/no). This article contributes a novel, situated, and comparative conceptualisation of algorithmic empowerment that moves beyond technological determinism and universalism.

Dialectical approach to unpacking knowledge-making for digital urban democracy: A critical case of Helsinki-based e-participatory budgeting

“…DPPPs’ emergence in Helsinki differed from other cities of origin – Taipei, Madrid and Barcelona (Tseng, 2022a). There was no pressing demand from civil society to reform existing decision-making processes within the City of Helsinki or to revitalise global democratic politics.…”

“…Conversely, democratic limitations found in OmaStadi are also likely to appear in other examples beyond post-welfare urbanism. However, we urge scholars not to reject other DPPPs that emerge as critical cases due to different digital-political configurations (see Tseng, 2022a). Overall, our strategic case study generates a new understanding of digital urban democracy, which may serve as a hypothesis to be tested by further investigations and generalisations (Flyvbjerg, 2006: 229).…”

“…Firstly, it debunked binary discourses that suggest digital technologies will either revolutionise or maintain the status quo of democratic politics (Wright, 2012b: 252). Scholars now see technologies as actively delimiting the scope and possibility of political participation (Colman and Cardoso Sampaio, 2017) by creating new relations with and between participants (Tseng, 2022a). Empirical details allow researchers to attend to power asymmetries between (middle-class, white) active and resourceful citizens and others (Bright et al, 2020; Hague and Loader, 1999; Wright, 2012a).…”

“…They allowed citizens to propose, comment and vote on urban issues, legislation and public budget allocation (up to 100 million euros in Madrid). This worldwide expansion of DPPPs has its roots in global social movements (i.e., the Occupy Movements) that prompted civic hackers to initiate decision-making reforms in Spanish municipalities (Barcelona and Madrid) and the Taiwanese government by inventing and/or deploying DPPPs (Tseng, 2022a). In this regard, DPPPs are quick, affordable, and ambitious political projects that aim to revitalise local democracies at the global scale (Tseng, 2020a); they contrast with the regional deployment of e-participatory budgeting in Brazilian cities from 2000 (Colman and Cardoso Sampaio, 2017) and other single deployments in European and Asian cities.…”

“…With their ever-expanding geographical trajectory, diverse configurations and cross-disciplinary nature, DPPPs present significant analytical and empirical challenges for urban scholars who seek to fully unpack their global democratic impacts. Emerging analysis of DPPPs in urban studies has sought to delineate the democratic potential of one or two cases through specific framings such as friction (Tseng, 2022b), algorithmic empowerment (Tseng, 2022a), technopolitics (Pena-Lopez, 2019; Smith and Martín, 2021) and smart urbanism (Charnock et al, 2021). Existing studies of DPPPs generally avoid techno-deterministic traps, but they experience two other limitations.…”