How Important Is Civic Engagement for Public Transportation Communication?

Abstract

The communication between users of digital media and public or non-profit organization involved into an open data policy are represented through a democratic way with upwards and downward flows; implying an evolving participation of citizens and a progressive openness of a company’s database. Under this perspective, various tasks have been employed. The mission of this paper is to define and analyze the tasks – related to certain cultural factors – in an open data policy as well as their level of importance. This action will help determine which communication process is suitable in such utopian relation. We conducted an empirical case study research design. Subsequently, a qualitative and a quantitative data analysis were performed. The authors present a cultural context of civic engagement as well as a communicational model between the players enrolled in democratic exchanges taking place in an open data environment. Our research reveals the main characteristics of information flows and of the communication relations established among the company Transports Publics Genevois (TPG), a civic community of experts and the end users of the mobile application "UnCrowdTPG". Organizations involved into an open data project could communicate mainly through two cultural factors: "Knowledge", establishing content oriented communication; and "Trust", constituting a relation oriented communication.

Keywords: civic engagement, open data, communication, trust, knowledge, open innovation