Jalisco Talent Land 2018

Information technology, especially social media, is an increasingly powerful tool for citizens to organize collective action and transform their societies.  However, most online collective efforts never get off the ground or produce any significant results. Imagine if instead we could use information technology to facilitate the collaborations between citizens and institutions to create large scale change.  However,  systematically coordinating citizen crowds for collective action is rare today because: (1) it is difficult to design platform workflows that facilitate the collaborations of enough citizens and organizations to have a significant impact; (2)  it is non-trivial to train citizens in the specialized areas that are needed for the collective effort.  
In this talk, I will discuss how we can combine crowdsourcing, blockchain technology and sociology theory to create Blockchain-based systems for guiding citizen crowds to produce collective action at scale. This Blockchain-enabled collective action provides transparency to facilitate collaborations between citizens and institutions by building trust and accountability. I will first present large scale data analysis investigating how online collective action happens in the wild. Next, I will discuss how to use the results from these analyses as design probes to create novel civic media platforms.  I will demonstrate how Blockhain-enabled collective action facilitates citizen-government  collaborations. I will present case-studies showcasing how these collaborations can lead to collective action that revolutionizes rural communities by providing better work opportunities.