To begin to understand the implications of the implementation of IT-mediatedCrowds for Politics and Policy purposes, this research builds the first-knowndataset of IT-mediated Crowd applications currently in use in the governancecontext. Using Crowd Capital theory and governance theory as frameworks toorganize our data collection, we undertake an exploratory data analysis of somefundamental factors defining this emerging field. Specific factors outlined anddiscussed include the type of actors implementing IT-mediated Crowds in thegovernance context, the global geographic distribution of the applications, andthe nature of the Crowd-derived resources being generated for governancepurposes. The findings from our dataset of 209 on-going endeavours indicatesthat a wide-diversity of actors are engaging IT-mediated Crowds in thegovernance context, both jointly and severally, that these endeavours can befound to exist on all continents, and that said actors are generatingCrowd-derived resources in at least ten distinct governance sectors. We discussthe ramifications of these and our other findings in comparison to the researchliterature on the private-sector use of IT-mediated Crowds, while highlightingsome unique future research opportunities stemming from our work.
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