Affiliations: [a] Center for Human-Computer Interaction, Virginia Tech,
Blacksurg, VA, USA | [b] Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech,
Blacksurg, VA, USA | [c] Department of Communication Studies, Virginia Tech,
Blacksurg, VA, USA | [d] Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech, Blacksurg, VA,
USA | Faculty of Business Administration, Information
Systems Department, Université Laval, PQ, Canada | Fundacion Universidad de las Americas Puebla, Business
School, Santa Catarina Martir, San Andres Cholula, Puebla, Mexico | Graduate School of Management, Clark University,
Worcester, MA, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Andrea Kavanaugh, Center for
Human-Computer Interaction, Virginia Tech, Blacksurg, VA, USA. E-mail:
kavan@vt.edu
Abstract: Traditional sources of information for small and rural communities
have been disappearing over the past decade. A lot of the information and
discussion related to such areas is now scattered across websites of numerous
local organizations, individual blogs, social media and other user-generated
media (YouTube, Flickr). To facilitate citizen engagement and social
interaction it is important to capture this information and make it easily
accessible. A system with location-based support can provide local citizens
with an engaging way to interact with information and identify the local issues
most relevant to them, such as a road construction site. We created an
information aggregator, called the Virtual Town Square (VTS), to support and
facilitate local discussion. It supports a location-based interface for users
to access the information collected. In this paper, we discuss focus group
interviews with local citizens that motivated our design of a system to
facilitate civic participation. We then discuss the unique design challenges of
a local news aggregator and our design approach to create a local information
ecosystem. We also describe the initial evaluation and feedback we received
from local users. We close the paper with a discussion of future changes to VTS
to address its initial limitations.
Keywords: Civic participation, information aggregator, local information
