Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds and State-Citizen Partnership in Emergency Situations

Asmolov, Gregory

doi:10.1002/poi3.96

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In response to (proven) accusations of electoral fraud committed during the December 2011 parliamentary elections, that gave cause to a series of mass protests, the government installed webcams at nearly all polling stations for the 2012 presidential elections to allow for real-time monitoring via a special website (webvybory2012.ru). In total, 91,000 of the 95,000 polling stations had a total of 180,000 cameras installed; of these, 80,000 were streamed online and with sound (Asmolov 2014). Webcams had been in use earlier, but only on a small scale.…”

Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Gregory Asmolov, the actual impact of this massive infrastructural investment on increasing the transparency and, in particular, the accountability of the voting process was limited by the lack of an integrated mechanism for reporting fraudulent behavior, the impossibility of recording live-streamed footage (requiring one to file an official request to gain access to centrally stored footage from the webcams) and the ill-defined legal status of the recordings. As a result, no "criminal conviction of electoral fraud or revision of election results" were made on the basis of the videos (Asmolov 2014). Moreover, for volunteer monitors, the sheer number of available live streams made it difficult to monitor effectively.…”

Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond polling stations, webcams had earlier been used on smaller scale to monitor the progress on national projects in 2007, and in 2010 to monitor the reconstruction process following the wildfires. According to Asmolov, however, these initiatives symbolized rather than truly increased government transparency and accountability, as was their supposed aim (Asmolov 2014).…”

Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Digitalization of Russian Politics and Political Participation

Wijermars

2020

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

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The chapter discusses the impact of digitalization and the rise of online and social media on Russian politics and political participation. It departs from the question whether the introduction of digital technologies has resulted in the transformation of Russian politics in ways that go beyond the mere replication of political practices in digital form. Placing its analysis in the context of Open Government thinking, the chapter examines four areas: first, it discusses changes in political communication; second, it examines the impact of online communications on political campaigning; third, the chapter reflects on changes in the voting process; and, finally, it critically examines digital tools for political participation (so-called civic technologies) and civic engagement.

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Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Digitalization of Russian Politics and Political Participation

Wijermars

2020

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

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“…The Dobrovoletz.rf platform highlighted the tension between the role of ICTs in the engagement of people in emergency response and controlling the resources of people in situations of crisis. The model of a platform that is driven by an intent to control the resources of Internet users, rather than to use these resources, has been conceptualised as "vertical crowdsourcing" (Asmolov, 2015b). Another major tension can be seen around the state's approach to the role of ICTs in an emergency with regard to user-generated data.…”

Section: Natural Disasters and Crowdsourcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Runet in Crisis Situations

Asmolov

2020

Internet in Russia

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While the World Wide Web is a relatively recent invention, some scholars and writers had already envisioned networked structures that linked people together many years prior to the rise of the Internet. One early model of the Internet can be found in the novel Timur and His Squad (1940) by the Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar. Gaidar describes a vigilante group of children who in secret undertake to do a charitable activity and protect their fellow villagers from local hooligans. The secret headquarter of their organisation is in an old barn at the centre of which is a steering wheel linked through a network of strings to the houses of all members of this secret organisation. Whenever Timur, the leader of the squad, needs his team, he uses the wheel to call them. The number of times he turns the steering wheel indicates the different types of alert or calls for help. Strings can also be connected to or disconnected from the wheel in order to call on specific members of the network. The wheel is a tool that allows targeted mobilisation of the resources of a distributed network in a crisis situation. Using the wheel both define the crisis and address it. It also constitutes the nature of the informal network of Timur's squad. To what extent, we may ask, does Runet embody Gaidar's networked mobilisation wheel vis-à-vis their respective capacity to response to emergency situations?Research on the Internet, and specifically Runet, has addressed a broad range of issues including the economy, digital literacy and the digital divide, regulation, media, security, politics, social movements and games. While all these topics appear diverse, most of them share a common denominator. They each deal with issues that

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“… 8. Jonathan Donner, Framing M4D: The utility of continuity and the dual heritage of ‘mobiles and development’, The Electronic Journal of Information System in Developing Countries 44(3), 2010: 1–16; Maja Bott and Gregor Young, The role of crowdsourcing for better governance in international development, PRAXIS: The Fletcher Journal of Human Security 27, 2012: 47–70; and Gregory Asmolov, Vertical crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing governance of crowds and state–citizen partnership in emergency situations, Policy & Internet 7(3), 2015: 292–318. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Crisis crowdsourcing and China’s civic participation in disaster response: Evidence from earthquake relief

Lin

2017

China Information

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The devastating 2008 Wenchuan earthquake unfolded the co-evolution of a proactive civic engagement and extensive application of web-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) in China’s disaster response. However, existing literature has not yet sufficiently examined how ad hoc web-based voluntary participation has led to long-term development of digital disaster management in China in the wake of the Wenchuan earthquake of 2008. The present article addresses this gap by focusing on one specific type of ICT-mediated civic effort, crisis crowdsourcing, and presenting newly collected empirical evidence from relief work in the 2008 Wenchuan, 2010 Yushu, and 2013 Lushan earthquakes. This article examines the emergence of a broad-based digitally enabled civic participation in disaster response and its more general political implications. The main findings of this study suggest that web-based ICTs have not only enabled the relatively weak and episodic social actors to overcome constraints on information, fundraising, organizational development and to achieve collective development in a field historically dominated by the state, but also facilitated the evolution of a parallel disaster management system with agenda, skills and expertise independent of the state.

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Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds and State-Citizen Partnership in Emergency Situations

Cited by 20 publications

References 13 publications

The Digitalization of Russian Politics and Political Participation

The Digitalization of Russian Politics and Political Participation

Runet in Crisis Situations

Crisis crowdsourcing and China’s civic participation in disaster response: Evidence from earthquake relief

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