Social Participation Network: Linking things, services and people to support participatory processes

International audienceDigital technologies have impacted almost every aspect of our society, including how people participate in activities that matter to them. Indeed, digital participation allows people to be involved in different societal activities at an unprecedented scale through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Still, enabling participation at scale requires making it seamless for people to: interact with a variety of software platforms, get information from connected physical objects and software services, and communicate and collaborate with their peers. Toward this objective, this paper introduces and formalizes the concept of Social Participation Network, which captures the diverse participation relationships-between people, digital services and connected things-supporting participatory processes. The paper further presents the design of an associated online service to support the creation and management of Social Participation Networks. The design advocates the instantiation of Social Participation Networks within distinct participation contexts-spanning, e.g., private institutions, neighbor communities, and governmental institutions-so that the participants' information and contributions to participation remain isolated and private within the given context