Abstract:

Open media transparency data is published in Austria according to the “Transparency in Media Cooperation and Funding Act”. The project “More! Media Transparency” of the FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences is to visualize financial flows between both companies as well as political parties and newspapers. Hence, the paper focuses on the following question, “How can citizens be motivated to collaborate with others in order to prepare, to correct, to combine and to enhance given open government data.”

The project integrates relevant open government data and user involvement in a web application. The community functionalities will allow participants to correct and expand the database by interpreting the data with new aspects and by creating connections to related issues in order to increase significance. Emphasis is laid upon utilizing collaboration in communities in order to enhance the provided open government data with user generated content.

Solving problems and making decisions in groups has advantages as well as limitations. There are distinct conditions, which are necessary for a remote group to collaborate effectively. One key aspect of this paper is collaboration in general and the analysis of several projects, which use the “power of many” to reach community goals. Gamification motivates people to actively collaborate with others. Therefore, the fundamentals of gamification and in particular gamification in the context of online collaboration were researched.

Based on the research a concept for a community web application was developed, which can be implemented on various use cases, e.g. a gamified eLearning system for students. In this context the approach to reach collaboration on a web platform is described. Users need to be encouraged and supported by providing social networking features and gamification. The platform aims at establishing a democratic culture in which everybody can contribute and review the inputs of others.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, research projects, open government data, media transparency, collaboration