Modeling sustainability of participatory information systems for urban communities: A mixed-method approach

In the face of the growing challenge of low civic participation, various technology-based endeavors, such as hyper-local social media and open government initiatives, have emerged to facilitate citizens' involvement with their local communities. However, evidence-based guidelines about how to start and maintain viable information systems for urban communities are scarce and inconclusive. My dissertation aims to identify factors that affect the sustainability of these systems by conducting a mixed-method empirical investigation of the E-Democracy platform, a pioneer platforms of its kind. With this goal, I proposed a framework to model the influence of offline characteristics of the target urban communities, system design, and residents' online behaviors on the sustainability of participatory information systems for urban communities. Guided by this framework, I conducted analyses of urban communities' public data; longitudinal studies, content classification and social network analysis of archival data of the system; and a cross-sectional study of user surveys. The results indicate that (1) certain community characteristics, such as neighborhood instability, play a crucial role in the sustainability of these information systems, (2) both on-site and off-site communication among residents is key for the systems to have an impact on community involvement, and (3) particular design decisions can foster participation of underrepresented populations. My work bridges the gap between research on social computing and community informatics by providing a framework to analyze the sustainability of participatory information systems for urban communities. The findings have implications for information experts and technology developers seeking to study or design technologies for local communities.