{"id":4,"date":"2025-02-27T10:25:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T10:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/about-contact\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T17:46:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T15:46:58","slug":"about-contact","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/about-contact\/","title":{"rendered":"About & Contact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cWhat if digital platforms have public values at its core?\u201d<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The Civic Media Lab focuses on researching, designing, and advocating for digital platforms that enable community members to communicate, collaborate, and exchange information safely and securely. These platforms are built on public values and are transparently developed and managed by organizations and initiatives with a social purpose. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate about the need for a digital public infrastructure and public value-based online spaces has gained considerable momentum in recent years. Governments and funding bodies have issued various calls and manifestos on this topic, and it is increasingly appearing on national and European policy agendas. Several initiatives have also emerged in this space, such as Eurosky and Mastodon, technical protocols like ActivityPub and Matrix for decentralized (federated) social networks, and the open-source initiative Decidim for participatory processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civic media plartforms are not optimized for individual users but are designed for collaboration, dialogue, and communication within collectives and communities. As such, they are navigating relatively uncharted territory. The development of civic media and the underlying digital public infrastructure that supports it poses numerous challenging questions, which we will explore and reflect on here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These questions range from broad issues\u2014such as why civic media platforms are important and what legal and policy frameworks are needed\u2014to more practical concerns, including how to design, code, finance, steward, and promote civic media initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, we worked on PubHubs<\/a> as a case study to further investigate such issues. PubHubs is a platform which aims to offer a trusted, non-commercial digital environment for moderated conversations and digital identity management. Recent discussions with stakeholders at PubHubs, PublicSpaces<\/a> and the City of Amsterdam<\/a>, highlighted the need for further research into Pubhubs’ user interface design and usability\u2014particularly balancing privacy with ease of use. Municipalities support the concept but need clearer examples of how it could work in practice. The next phase of the project will focus on developing use cases and prototypes with public institutions, envisioning how PubHubs can be successfully deployed in practice. This project is financed by SIDN Fonds<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PubHubs is an initiative of Professors Jos\u00e9 van Dijck<\/a> and Bart Jacobs<\/a>, in collaboration with PublicSpaces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Contact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Team<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Jorgen Karskens<\/strong>
Lab manager<\/em>
j.r.karskens@hva.nl<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martijn de Waal<\/strong>
Professor Civic Interaction design<\/em>
<\/strong>b.g.m.de.waal@hva.nl
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Esther Hammelburg<\/strong>
Professor Hybrid Realities<\/em>
e.e.hammelburg@hva.nl<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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\u201cWhat if digital platforms have public values at its core?\u201d The Civic Media Lab focuses on researching, designing, and advocating for digital platforms that enable community members to communicate, collaborate, and exchange information safely and securely. These platforms are built on public values and are transparently developed and managed by organizations and initiatives with a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-about.blade.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civicixdproject.com\/civicsocialmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}