InfraPublics addresses a gap between journalism studies and smart city research, taking the datafication of urban spaces as an opportunity for journalism to go beyond the “informed citizen” model of its audience. The project maps and evaluates approaches to how journalists, citizens, cities, data providers and civic tech NGOs can work together on a local level to shape infrastructures for civic communication in the connected city. The main fields of research explored in this project are limited to data journalism and civic communication, participatory approaches to "platform urbanism" and living labs for sustainable cities and communities. Approaches from the field of Human-Computer-Interaction assisted to make data-driven insights actionable for civic initiatives.
This website is a core output from the project, showcasing projects and approaches in the domain of data journalism, civic tech and in smart city developments along with interviews of researchers, journalists and public stakeholders working on these questions. The Knowledge Base will be continuously expanded to show relations between subject fields and cities but also inspire international collaboration. If you think your project or field of work are related and relevant, email Christoph (craetzsch@cc.au.dk) and we can feature it here.
The collection of interviews and projects will be used to develop a teaching format on Methods and Approaches to Studying Infrastructures. Stay tuned for InfraPublics Lessons coming soon.
Raetzsch, Christoph; Hamm, Andrea; Shibuya, Yuya (2023). “Mainstreaming Civic Tech and Citizen Sensing: A Research Agenda on Co-Creation Methods, Data Interfaces, and Impact Pathways.” Frontiers in Environmental Science 11. https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2023.1228487 (open access)
Hamm, Andrea; Shibuya, Yuya; Cerratto Pargman, Teresa; Bendor, Roy; Hansen, Nicolai Brodersen; Raetzsch, Christoph; Shoji, Masahiko; Bieber, Christoph; Hendawy, Mennatullah; Klerks, Gwen; Schouten, Ben (2023). Failed yet successful: Learning from discontinued civic tech initiatives. Proceedings from Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hamburg, Germany. https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3573818
Garms, Franziska; Raetzsch, Christoph (in preparation): Shifting Epistemologies of Data Journalism and the Audience Turn: A Systematic Literature Review.
April 2022: “'InfrapPublics' workshop: Co-creating the citizen news interface for the 21st century” (Engaging Citizen Science Conference 2022, Aarhus): https://conferences.au.dk/citsci2022
May & June 2022: “Infrastructures of Publics Workshops” (online): https://digtcom.au.dk/old-news-and-events/show/artikel/infrastructures-of-publics-workshops-1
April 2023: “Failed yet successful: Learning from discontinued civic tech initiatives”. Workshop at CHI 23 in Hamburg (with Andrea Hamm, Yuya Shibuya, Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Roy Bendor, Nicolai Brodersen Hansen, Masahiko Shoji, Christoph Bieber, Mennatullah Hendawy, Gwen Klerks, Ben Schouten https://discontinued-civictech.github.io/
September & October 2023: Background Talk with Data Journalists and International Journalism Students “Impact for Data Journalism”
January 2024: “Creating Impact with Data Journalism: Pathways to Civic Communication and Engagement” (Aarhus and online), with Yuya Shibuya, Hendrik Lehmann, Gianna-Carina Grün, Olaya Argüeso Pérez, Kristoffer Dahl Sørensen, May Ee Wong, & Jacopo Ottaviani
https://digtcom.au.dk/old-news-and-events/show/artikel/creating-impact-with-data-journalism-pathways-to-civic-communication-and-engagement
Franziska Garms, Scientific Assistant: FG
Email: frgar@cc.au.dk
Marie Vestergaard Bengtson, Editorial Assistant: MB
Email: marie.v.bengtson@gmail.com
Diogo Pereira Henriques was employed in this project as a postdoctoral researcher between 2021 and 2023.
Albína Mrázová (https://dk.linkedin.com/in/alb%C3%ADna-mr%C3%A1zov%C3%A1-079172b7 )
Email: mrazova.albina@gmail.com
Unless otherwise stated, images were generated through Adobe Firefly AI.
Christoph Raetzsch, Associate Professor for Journalism Studies, Aarhus University (Pure: https://www.au.dk/en/show/person/craetzsch@cc.au.dk)
Email: craetzsch@cc.au.dk
Centre for the Digital And Green Transition of Cities and Communities (DIGTCOM): https://digtcom.au.dk/projects/infrapublics
The project is funded by Aarhus University Research Fund (AUFF) between 2020 and 2024 under Project No. AUFF-F2020-7-11.