What makes civic tech initiatives to last over time? dissecting two global cases

Abstract

Civic tech initiatives dedicated to environmental issues have become a worldwide phenomenon and made invaluable contributions to data, community building, and publics. However, many of them stop after a relatively short time. Therefore, we studied two longlasting civic tech initiatives of global scale, to understand what makes them sustain over time. To this end, we conducted two mixed-method case studies, combining social network analysis and qualitative content analysis of Twitter data with insights from expert interviews. Drawing on our findings, we identified a set of key factors that help the studied civic tech initiatives to grow and last. Contributing to Digital Civics in HCI, we argue that the civic tech initiatives' scaling and sustaining are configured through the entanglement of (1) civic data both captured and owned by the citizens for the citizens, (2) the use of open and accessible technology, and (3) the initiatives' public narrative, giving them a voice on the environmental issue.