Behind the Myths of Citizen Participation: Identifying Sustainability Factors of Hyper-Local Information Systems

摘要

Various information systems have emerged to facilitate citizen participation in the life of their communities. However, there is a lack of robust understanding of what enables the sustainability of such systems. This work introduces a framework to identify and analyze various factors that influence the sustainability of "hyper-local" information systems. Using longitudinal observations of participation from 35 online neighborhood discussion forums over six years, we analyze the relationship between sustainability and online-offline community characteristics. Our results not only show patterns consistent with previous observations but reveal the dubious influences of member heterogeneity and network structure. Design insights are discussed.