Agora2.0: enhancing civic participation through a public display

Abstract

Providing a common place for the civil society to gather and discuss topics of mutual interest is a growing challenge for social and collaborative computing. Web-based tools for civic engagement, while promising, are still disconnected from meaningful physical locations where citizens usually meet and might limit the involvement of a considerable portion of the citizen population. We propose a system, Agora2.0, designed to recover the useful function that public places have had in the past in promoting and regulating citizens' participation in public decisions. Agora2.0 is inspired by the old concept of the Greek agora, or public square. It is composed of an onsite interactive public display and an online site. We present the project, the analysis of the requirements, the system prototype, and its evaluation during deployments in a university and in a public relations office of a European city.