CRII: CHS: Redesigning Democratized Technology: The Broadening of Citizen Participation in Bottom-Up Technological Innovation

这项研究将为有关技术民主化的两个关键问题提供可行的见解：技术实践在特权用户方面仍然是排他性的，参与决策是不平等的。它将通过探索两个新兴的，以创造力为中心的技术社区作为案例研究-活动家和非营利导向的独立游戏开发者和创造性的实时音频和视频流媒体。它对技术民主化的关注将帮助计算技术和技术实践变得更具包容性、可负担性、可获取性和对普通公民开放。它强调扩大公民参与技术创新的可能性的机制、战略和技术，增加了女性和未被充分代表的少数民族在科学和工程教育中的机会和保留。这些发现和由这项工作产生的开发原型可以用于通知和解决其他寻求更开放、可访问和参与的计算社区的需求。这项研究还在两个层面上促进了公众对科学和技术的参与：通过激发科学和技术研究界对支持自下而上的技术创新的研究的兴趣，以及通过直接吸引许多创新者参与这项科学项目。这个项目的长期研究议程是探索以计算机为媒介的集体创新实践，并以以下研究问题为指导：(1)如果有的话，独立游戏开发者和创意直播者是如何感知、理解和解释他们的技术实践是民主化的？(2)他们使用什么机制、策略和技术来支持这些实践？(3)为了更好地支持最终用户驱动的技术创新的民主化技术实践，可以确定新的社会技术系统的哪些要求和设计？该项目通过使用新的研究背景和数据集，在计算机支持的协作工作和人机交互研究方面取得了经验和概念上的进步，这些研究涉及自下而上的创新和参与式文化，其影响超出了游戏和直播社区。它不仅揭示了一种技术实践如何被日常公民感知和解释为民主化，而且还阐明了为什么一个社区体现了这种解释。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research will contribute actionable insights concerning two key issues about democratizing technology: technological practices remain exclusive in terms of privileged users, and participation in decision-making is unequal. It will do so by exploring two emerging, creativity-centric technology communities as case studies - activist and non-profit oriented independent game developers and creative live audio and video streamers. Its focus on democratizing technology will help computing technologies and technological practices become more inclusive, affordable, accessible, and open to everyday citizens. Its emphasis on mechanisms, strategies, and techniques that broaden the possibility of citizen participation in technological innovation increases the opportunities for and retention of females and underrepresented minorities in science and engineering education. These findings and the developed prototype resulting from this work can be used to inform and address the needs of other computing communities seeking to be more open, accessible, and participative. This research also promotes public engagement with science and technology on two levels: by generating interest in the science and technology research community to pursue research that supports bottom-up technological innovation, and by directly engaging many of those innovators in this scientific project. The long-term research agenda of this project explores computer-mediated collective innovation practices and is guided by the following research questions: (1) How, if at all, do independent game developers and creative live streamers perceive, understand, and interpret their technological practices as democratized? (2) What mechanisms, strategies, and techniques do they use to support such practices? (3) What requirements and designs for new sociotechnical systems could be identified to better support democratized technological practices for end-user driven technological innovation? This project entails an empirical and conceptual advance in computer-supported cooperative work and human-computer interaction research on bottom-up innovation and participatory culture by using new research contexts and datasets, which have implications beyond the gaming and live streaming communities. It not only discloses how a technological practice can be perceived and interpreted as democratized by everyday citizens, but also elucidates why a community embodies such an interpretation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.