2020/09/28 by Mei-Chun Lee · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics #Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
paper · doi:10.1111/plar.12371
openalex publication_date 2020/09/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
Abstract This article examines Campaign Finance Digitization (CFD), a data initiative launched by the civic hacker community g0v (pronounced gov zero) in Taiwan. How do data trigger activism even before “facts” are known? This initiative crowdsourced xiangmin (netizens) to transcribe campaign finance reports from physical documents to digital datasets so as to bring transparency to the bribery and corruption in politics in postauthoritarian Taiwan. The crowdsourcing technology used by CFD harnessed an assemblage of humans, machines, codes, and signals around the data; turned this gathering of human and nonhuman actors into a political movement; and used the information as process and political practices. The political significance of CFD lies not in the “facts” produced from the data but in the collaborative practice of opening up the data. With mass participation, the data moved beyond the descriptive form of representation to produce a new type of digital participatory citizenship.