Rethinking gamified democracy as frictional: a comparative examination of the Decide Madrid and vTaiwan platforms

Perspectives on Amplifying Participation in Digital Culture through Global Digital Citizenship

“…Digital technology is helping to contribute to a rise in more open, participatory, and alternative forms of democracy [15]. Civic platforms of digital tools supporting online consultations or by improving and simplifying the way citizens experience government services online, such as vTaiwan (https://info.vtaiwan.tw) -a public online-offline consultation process platform in Taiwan and Decide Madrid (https://decide.madrid.es) -the city of Madrid's public engagement platform [60]. Similarly, smart digital culture is strongly associated with the identity of place and communities through enabling technologies, knowledge, and participation.…”

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

“…, 2020; Koc-Michalska and Lilleker, 2017; Wright, 2012). This issue is apparent in Decide Madrid where some citizens (often part of social associations) can better mobilise voters to support their proposals via Twitter, Facebook Groups, or WhatsApp groups (Tseng, 2022). Networked citizens who reinforce the majoritarian ordering have excluded controversial and minority issues about immigrants and refugees, who are less represented by established organisations and networks than Spanish victims of domestic violence or sexism, for example.…”

“…Many smart devices and developments created by international Information Technology companies (such as Cisco and IBM) prioritise profit-making and efficiency over democratic participation. In contrast, Decide Madrid and vTaiwan are considered cutting-edge examples of e-participation (Simon et al, 2017), as they deploy open-source and innovative software and demonstrate a strong commitment to reform decisionmaking structures by allowing citizens to contribute to policy-making (López, 2016;Tseng, 2022). Unlike in Brazil, where e-participatory platforms have been operating since 2010 (Coleman and Cardoso Sampaio, 2017), both vTaiwan and Decide Madrid are relatively new participatory processes for local citizens.…”

“…13 For digital democracy studies, the uneven distribution of decision-making power is inherent to any e-participatory platform where networked and digitally competent citizens gain advantages over those with fewer resources to campaign for their proposals via digital/social means (Bright et al, 2020;Koc-Michalska and Lilleker, 2017;Wright, 2012). This issue is apparent in Decide Madrid where some citizens (often part of social associations) can better mobilise voters to support their proposals via Twitter, Facebook Groups, or WhatsApp groups (Tseng, 2022). Networked citizens who reinforce the majoritarian ordering have excluded controversial and minority issues about immigrants and refugees, who are less represented by established organisations and networks than Spanish victims of domestic violence or sexism, for example.…”

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

“…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.…”