Failed yet successful: Learning from discontinued civic tech initiatives
Andrea Hamm, Yuya Shibuya, Teresa Cerratto Pargman, Roy Bendor, Nicolai Brodersen Hansen, Christoph Raetzsch, Masahiko Shoji, Christoph Bieber, Mennatullah Hendawy, Gwen Klerks, and Ben Schouten
In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’) (2023)
The design of civic tech is often confronted with impediments, barriers, and a lack of resources. These and other causes may lead to the discontinuation and even abandonment of initiatives. Since seemingly failed projects are much more difficult to publish as articles, this workshop will provide academics and practitioners with a rare opportunity to exchange experiences and insights on discontinued civic tech initiatives. The goal of the workshop is to develop a better understanding of why some civic tech initiatives fail and ask whether discontinued initiatives may still somehow contribute to social change and the growth of digital civics. A variety of subquestions around discontinued civic tech will be addressed in the workshop, including matters of participation, citizen science, public management, power structures and biases, and communication.