TICTeC 2024: Redefined civic tech: community-centric impact stories from Georgia скачать в хорошем качестве

TICTeC 2024: Redefined civic tech: community-centric impact stories from Georgia

Vero Melua (ForSet, Georgia) at mySociety's The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC) on 13 June 2024 in London and online. ForSet bridges technology and civil society through community building, hackathons, contests, and other activities aimed at creating civic and democratic technological products. AskGov, based on the Alaveteli platform, hosts 1,118 datasets. What sets it apart is that the data does not remain confined to the platform: through contests, fellowship programmes, datathons, and other initiatives, around 140 storytelling or data visualisation projects have been created and distributed to a mass audience by journalists, researchers, and activists focusing on topics such as the environment, corruption, transparency, gender, occupation, and more. Many of these outputs have ignited widespread discussion; for instance, an investigation based on AskGov.ge data revealed how the Georgian Internal Ministry employs Kremlin-connected Russian AI systems for crime investigation, collecting vast amounts of personal data vulnerable to cyber threats. ForSet organises challenges to empower civil society with technology. For example, the Counter-Disinformation Bootcamp equipped 50 high-level journalists with three AI tools developed by the Georgian tech community for investigation, detecting disinformation, and identifying propaganda. With tailored mentorship, journalists produced nine investigations that were featured in mainstream media. ForSet also developed Data for Crisis, a social listening platform enabling journalists to monitor, track, and analyse social media conversations from two distinct communities: Russian migrants residing in Georgia and the Georgian community. The portal was created in response to the significant Russian migration to Georgia and Kazakhstan triggered by the war in Ukraine. With over four million data points, this open data portal offers comprehensive sentiment, emotional, topic, and keyword analysis, as well as correlation analysis and other customised features to assist journalists and researchers in investigating and reporting on Russian migration, potential marginalisation, and conflict issues in Georgia. With tailored mentorship, 15 high-level journalists developed nine widely distributed investigations. ForSet utilises gamification methods to impact democracy, having developed three games that aid students and junior journalists in investigating disinformation. They are currently in the process of establishing a community of social media influencers who will conduct storytelling campaigns to engage Generation Z in the 2024 elections. TICTeC 2024 brought together 180+ people from 35 different countries. It was the seventh in an annual series of conferences from mySociety, focusing on making civic technology more successful and impactful, to tackle global problems around democracy and climate change. To find out more about TICTeC please visit: http://tictec.mysociety.org