E-gora

A model for creating and managing E-goras (online representations of the extinct Agoras from Greece), in which citizens have the chance to work together with city administrators to manage their city

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Nowadays, there is a HUGE distance between the citizens and their governors (politicians). Therefore, people's opinion is usually ignored and governors decide what to do for them. This type of governance is called "Representative Democracy", in which we vote for someone to represent us and take decisions for us for a certain period of time, which we are tired of seeing as being a failure strategy all over the world. In this context, my idea was to use the Facebook Group's tool as a platform in which citizens and politicians could work together in order to better manage the city, creating some sort of online version of the extinct Agoras from Greece, where democracy was created. However, in this case, it is called "Direct Democracy", where all the citizens interested in participate would have equal voice, rather than leaving everything to politicians to decide, resulting in more realistic decisions, improving the citizens quality of life.

Then, I created the group and, now, 9 years later, politicians (mayor, vice-mayor, councilmen), city hall's employees, police men, normal citizen, etc., are all members of the group and discuss solutions for problems they bring to the group on a daily basis. Over the years, there is a number os examples in which the group has positively impacted the city through the discussions had on it, which motivated me at studying it and trying to come out with a model to support it, so that it would not "die", as it is common for the majority of groups on Facebook, whatsapp and so one, due to the large amount of spam, posts non-related to the group's subject, fake profiles on discussions, people removing posts, and so on.

Therefore, throughout the years, I've been acquiring an expertise in regard to how to create and, more difficult, how to maintain online communities. I'm super proud of myself on what I've achieved so far, by having a solid, healthy group that people on the city (almost 90% of the city population is part of the group) uses on a daily basis for a vast number of purpose, such as: finding jobs, discussing city problems, asking help to politicians or other citizens, suggesting changes for the city, etc. and, now, helping at spreading information regarding the Coronavirus (covid-19) , by creating a support web that assists each other during this moment, going from sharing information regarding how to stay safe during this period, to donations to people in need, the city hall uses it to spread information regarding new laws being created to enforce the social isolation, and so on. People in the city use the group as their main source of information, both oficial and unofficial, which, according to them (I ran a questionnaire to collect their feedback), has been helping them a lot!

I recently published an article on the ACM Magazine about my experience and the model I've been creating in the past 9 years on my PhD, which contains more information about it. Here is the link for it: https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/november-december-2019/e-goras.

At this moment, I'm working on a Tool to assist me on my administration's daily tasks, since Facebook doesn't provide support for my model, and the tools currently available on Facebook Groups are not enough to support E-goras, requiring a lot of manual tasks I perform as a volunteer everyday. It'd be AWESOME if Facebook could add some of them into their Group's platform. This is actually funny, because over the years, I've been sending them feedback about possible features to be added into the platform that'd greatly help group administrators and a number of them have been implemented. However, there is still a number that would greatly help supporting the creation and management of E-goras. As a result of that, other online communities such this one I've created could be created all over the world, which, based on the news, it has been the goal for Facebook in the past years, i.e., creating more meaningful and strong communities, which is exactly I've achieved by using my model.

Finally, my goal with this submission is to share this experience with others so that both people can use this knowledge to create other online communities to support citizens from the cities during this difficult moment we are all facing due to the covid-19. In addition to that, once this period is over, they'll have a tool that has proven to be effective in leveraging civic engagement and, with that, help at improving city's management, resulting in an increase of citizens quality of life.

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