Peter Mechant holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from Ghent University (2012) which focused on interactivity in a Web 2.0 context and posited a conceptual framework to explore how software enables and constrains agency and engagement.Until mid-2005 Peter worked as an ICT-project coordinator for an e-business firm. He studied several scripting and programming languages during and after this period. After joining mict, Peter has been mainly working on imec research projects related to e-gov (open and linked data), smart cities, social software and online communities.As senior researcher, he is currently involved in managing projects and project proposals on a European, national as well as regional level. Besides expanding and enhancing mict’s offering towards the scientific research community, he is also coordinating a TETRA-project for the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Product Design of Ghent University.
Base registries contain core public sector data. They are fundamental building blocks in supporti... more Base registries contain core public sector data. They are fundamental building blocks in supporting interaction between government and private sector. To enable the private sector to discover, adopt and use information from base registries (e.g. addresses of organizations and public services), the government needs a distribution model. Therefore, the Flemish government is working on a technical strategy to add markup to government portals to embed their 'DNA', semantic annotations, on third-party private sector platforms, to dissolve the existing governmental silos and to provide better public services. In this context, this paper reviews a potential strategy to 'open up' base registries that combines the best of both worlds: bridging between the schema.org and the European ISA Core vocabularies.
Data are increasingly underpinning important actions and processes in both governmental and non-g... more Data are increasingly underpinning important actions and processes in both governmental and non-governmental environments. However, the consolidation of data in silo's limits its ability to be reused while also restricting the control that people have over how their data is used. To mitigate these issues, decentralised storage and personal data store technologies have been put forward as an alternative. Such technologies have gained momentum in Flanders (Flanders is the northern part of Belgium) and became a key policy aspect and a driver for innovation. To support the adoption of these technologies, the Flemish government initiated 'Solid Community', a platform for academia, governments, citizens and industry to collaborate on the development of Solid, a technology specification for decentralised data storage. Through ten plenary sessions, the potential challenges that relate to the adoption of Solid were discussed within Solid Community. The reports of these sessions were analysed through qualitative content analysis, leading to the identification of four domains in which these challenges can be situated: social, technical, legal and network (ecosystem) challenges. This paper discusses these challenges and contributes to the development of an interdisciplinary research agenda to help shape the framework conditions for the further diffusion of socially robust, ethically justified and legally supported personal data space initiatives in Flanders.
The transformation of society towards a digital economy and government austerity creates a new co... more The transformation of society towards a digital economy and government austerity creates a new context leading to changing roles for both government and private sector. Boundaries between public and private services are blurring, enabling government and private sector to collaborate and share responsibilities. In Belgium, the regional Government of Flanders embedded the re-use of public sector information in its legislation and published a data portal containing well over 4000 Open Datasets. Due to a lack of interoperability, interconnecting and interpreting these sources of information remain challenges for public administrations, businesses and citizens. To dissolve the boundaries between the data silos, the Flemish government applied Linked Data design principles in an operational public sector context. This paper discusses the trends we have identified while 'rewiring' the Authentic Source for addresses to a Linked Base Registry. We observed the impact on multiple interoperability levels; namely on the legal, organisational, semantic and technical level. In conclusion Linked Data can increase semantic and technical interoperability and lead to a better adoption of government information in the public and private sector. We strongly believe that the insights from the past thirteen years in the region of Flanders could speed up processes in other countries that are facing the complexity of raising technical and semantic interoperability.
Tijdschrift Voor Communicatiewetenschappen, Sep 1, 2011
Flemish teenagers’ techno-subsystem: choices in the use of communication technologies Flemish tee... more Flemish teenagers’ techno-subsystem: choices in the use of communication technologies Flemish teenagers’ techno-subsystem: choices in the use of communication technologies Nowadays teenagers are confronted with a variety of technologies to accommodate their interpersonal communication. In this article, we focus on the communication technology choices of a representative sample of 1725 Flemish teenagers, aged 12 to 18. The results show text messaging to be the most popular means to communicate with a large variety of communication partners of all ages, embedded in a variety of systems within the ecology of adolescent development. Online communication however mainly accounts for communication with peers. By means of additional quantitative data and a qualitative follow-up study, these results are put into the context of the ownership and everyday usage meanings of these technologies.
In this article we elaborate on Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) or Personal Data S... more In this article we elaborate on Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) or Personal Data Stores (PDS) that provide a person with affordances for managing his/her personal data, giving him/her granular control over the data captured about him/her, and over how that data is shared and used. We examine the promise of PDSenabled data cooperatives from a socio-technical approach by critically unpacking the current discourse on data activism and related concepts such as data cooperatives, data collaboratives or data bazaars in the context of PDSs. We highlight critical reflections on user empowerment, power symmetries and user appropriation. While we see promise in a collective approach to the management of (personal) data, as it may reorient markets and change who benefits from datafication, we point out that further research into the potential obstacles or hurdles that hinder the implementation of data cooperatives in a PDSecology and into what consumers think about these and other possible data management models, is needed.
International journal of interactive communication systems and technologies, Jul 1, 2012
In order to gain insight in interactivity on Web2.0 platforms, and thus to assess the impact of W... more In order to gain insight in interactivity on Web2.0 platforms, and thus to assess the impact of Web2.0, we develop an analytical framework. Based on a conceptual analysis of interaction, a phrase omnipresent in the discourse on new communication technologies, the Internet and Web2.0 in particular, our framework can take into account the objective, structural features of Web2.0 platforms (expressed in structural affordances) and the functional, subjective perception and usage of these features by the users of those Web2.0 platforms (expressed in functional affordances). In order to test the value and usefulness of this analytical framework we setup a small, qualitative research project (n=27). Our goal was to use the developed framework to explore how agency and engagement on Flickr and deviantART, two Web2.0 sites, is reflected in the use of Web2.0 affordances, and thus demonstrate the usability and value of the developed framework.
This article builds upon communication infrastructure theory and investigates how communication p... more This article builds upon communication infrastructure theory and investigates how communication practices on online neighborhood networks (ONNs) relate to the social cohesion of neighborhood communities. Specifically, we study the hyperlocal social media platform Hoplr, which provides ad-free ONNs in which neighbors can communicate with one another. Local governments can subscribe to Hoplr to communicate with their residents and engage them for community and public participation purposes. This study is based on an online survey of Hoplr members (N = 3,055) from 150 randomly selected ONNs. Social cohesion is disentangled as a combination of social support, a sense of community, reciprocal exchange, and social trust. We investigated social cohesion differences at the neighborhood level in relation to self-reported types of ONN communication practices (shared interest, supportive communication, and both tangible and informational support mobilization). The results reveal the limited value of quantified behavioral data to explain differences in neighborhood social cohesion. However, interesting patterns are revealed between different communication practices and neighborhood social cohesion, such as the importance of trivial storytelling and information exchange practices for enhancing trust, reciprocal support, and a sense of community. At the same time, a reversed relation appears when ONNs are considered explicit information exchange platforms. With these insights, we enhance the theoretical understanding of ONNs in relation to neighborhood social cohesion and within a broader repertoire of neighborhood communication infrastructures.
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, 2016
Public administrations are often still organised in vertical, closed silos. The lack of common da... more Public administrations are often still organised in vertical, closed silos. The lack of common data standards (common data models and reference data) for exchanging information between administrations in a cross-domain and/or cross-border setting stands in the way of digital public services and automated flow of information between public administrations. Core data models address this issue, but are often created within the closed environment of a country or region and within one policy domain. A lack of insight exists in understanding and managing the lifecycle of these initiatives on public administration information systems for data modelling and data exchange. In this paper, we outline state-of-the-art implementations and vocabularies linked to the core data models. In particular we inventoried and selected existing core data models and identified tendencies in current practices based on the criteria creation, use, maintenance and coordination. Based on the analysis, this survey suggest research directions for policy and information management studies pointing to best practices regarding core data model implementations and their role in linking isolated data silos within a crosscountry context. Finally we highlight the differences in their coordination and maintenance, depending on the state of creation and use.
Hackathons are emerging worldwide as a new, grassroots interaction model to innovate with end-use... more Hackathons are emerging worldwide as a new, grassroots interaction model to innovate with end-users. Whether they are called hackathons, hack days, codefests or makathons, a wide variety of organizations organize such events to attract skilled volunteers to work with their data, technology or solve specific issues by means of technological solutions. While the origins of this phenomenon are to be found in the open source community, this innovation strategy is now widely adopted by corporate organizations, public service organizations, NGOs and governments alike to tackle the often complicated challenges they are facing. Today, ‘hacking’ and ‘making’ are increasingly inroads to a more diverse range of activities, industries, and groups. The emergence of the hackathon format has led to an evolution from underground phenomenon, to mainstream playground, with a high empowering potential. This way, individuals and groups gain control over the production of technological artifacts which i...
Het web valt niet meer weg te denken uit het leven van alledag, maar wat betekent het web voor er... more Het web valt niet meer weg te denken uit het leven van alledag, maar wat betekent het web voor erfgoedinstellingen? In Belgie bestaat het .be web domein sinds 1988, hoewel de eerste .be adressen pas in 1993 werden geregistreerd. In januari 2018 daarentegen waren er 1.591.622 geregistreerde .be adressen. Eind de jaren 1990 zagen de eerste webarchiveringsinitiatieven in het buitenland al het licht. Het Belgische web wordt echter tot op de dag van vandaag niet systematisch gearchiveerd, wat zeer problematisch is gezien het vluchtige karakter van informatie op het web. Er wordt geschat dat een website gemiddeld binnen de 100 dagen wordt aangepast of verdwijnt van het net, wat in de praktijk betekent dat enorm veel informatie verloren gaat. Het PROMISE project verzoekt een antwoord te formuleren door een duurzame strategie voor de preservatie van het Belgische web uit te werken. Het BRAIN project gefinancierd door BELSPO is het initiatief van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek en het Rijksarchie...
The web and online information has become of utmost importance. However, the short lifespan of on... more The web and online information has become of utmost importance. However, the short lifespan of online data (with 40% of content being removed after 1 year) poses serious challenges for preserving and safeguarding digital heritage and information. Hence, web or media historians, sociologists or digital scholars must learn to "dig" in online sources such as the Internet Archive or national web archives in order to find relevant research material. In this paper, we explore the requirements of researchers working with web archives and outline how they perceive the limitations and possibilities of using the archived web as a data resource, using survey data (n=154). We asked researchers with and without experience in working with web archives for, amongst others, the search functionalities and selection and access criteria they require. Given that archived web content is relatively new research material, new skills need to be acquired to work with this content which is not some...
Base registries contain core public sector data. They are fundamental building blocks in supporti... more Base registries contain core public sector data. They are fundamental building blocks in supporting interaction between government and private sector. To enable the private sector to discover, adopt and use information from base registries (e.g. addresses of organizations and public services), the government needs a distribution model. Therefore, the Flemish government is working on a technical strategy to add markup to government portals to embed their 'DNA', semantic annotations, on third-party private sector platforms, to dissolve the existing governmental silos and to provide better public services. In this context, this paper reviews a potential strategy to 'open up' base registries that combines the best of both worlds: bridging between the schema.org and the European ISA Core vocabularies.
Data are increasingly underpinning important actions and processes in both governmental and non-g... more Data are increasingly underpinning important actions and processes in both governmental and non-governmental environments. However, the consolidation of data in silo's limits its ability to be reused while also restricting the control that people have over how their data is used. To mitigate these issues, decentralised storage and personal data store technologies have been put forward as an alternative. Such technologies have gained momentum in Flanders (Flanders is the northern part of Belgium) and became a key policy aspect and a driver for innovation. To support the adoption of these technologies, the Flemish government initiated 'Solid Community', a platform for academia, governments, citizens and industry to collaborate on the development of Solid, a technology specification for decentralised data storage. Through ten plenary sessions, the potential challenges that relate to the adoption of Solid were discussed within Solid Community. The reports of these sessions were analysed through qualitative content analysis, leading to the identification of four domains in which these challenges can be situated: social, technical, legal and network (ecosystem) challenges. This paper discusses these challenges and contributes to the development of an interdisciplinary research agenda to help shape the framework conditions for the further diffusion of socially robust, ethically justified and legally supported personal data space initiatives in Flanders.
The transformation of society towards a digital economy and government austerity creates a new co... more The transformation of society towards a digital economy and government austerity creates a new context leading to changing roles for both government and private sector. Boundaries between public and private services are blurring, enabling government and private sector to collaborate and share responsibilities. In Belgium, the regional Government of Flanders embedded the re-use of public sector information in its legislation and published a data portal containing well over 4000 Open Datasets. Due to a lack of interoperability, interconnecting and interpreting these sources of information remain challenges for public administrations, businesses and citizens. To dissolve the boundaries between the data silos, the Flemish government applied Linked Data design principles in an operational public sector context. This paper discusses the trends we have identified while 'rewiring' the Authentic Source for addresses to a Linked Base Registry. We observed the impact on multiple interoperability levels; namely on the legal, organisational, semantic and technical level. In conclusion Linked Data can increase semantic and technical interoperability and lead to a better adoption of government information in the public and private sector. We strongly believe that the insights from the past thirteen years in the region of Flanders could speed up processes in other countries that are facing the complexity of raising technical and semantic interoperability.
Tijdschrift Voor Communicatiewetenschappen, Sep 1, 2011
Flemish teenagers’ techno-subsystem: choices in the use of communication technologies Flemish tee... more Flemish teenagers’ techno-subsystem: choices in the use of communication technologies Flemish teenagers’ techno-subsystem: choices in the use of communication technologies Nowadays teenagers are confronted with a variety of technologies to accommodate their interpersonal communication. In this article, we focus on the communication technology choices of a representative sample of 1725 Flemish teenagers, aged 12 to 18. The results show text messaging to be the most popular means to communicate with a large variety of communication partners of all ages, embedded in a variety of systems within the ecology of adolescent development. Online communication however mainly accounts for communication with peers. By means of additional quantitative data and a qualitative follow-up study, these results are put into the context of the ownership and everyday usage meanings of these technologies.
In this article we elaborate on Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) or Personal Data S... more In this article we elaborate on Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) or Personal Data Stores (PDS) that provide a person with affordances for managing his/her personal data, giving him/her granular control over the data captured about him/her, and over how that data is shared and used. We examine the promise of PDSenabled data cooperatives from a socio-technical approach by critically unpacking the current discourse on data activism and related concepts such as data cooperatives, data collaboratives or data bazaars in the context of PDSs. We highlight critical reflections on user empowerment, power symmetries and user appropriation. While we see promise in a collective approach to the management of (personal) data, as it may reorient markets and change who benefits from datafication, we point out that further research into the potential obstacles or hurdles that hinder the implementation of data cooperatives in a PDSecology and into what consumers think about these and other possible data management models, is needed.
International journal of interactive communication systems and technologies, Jul 1, 2012
In order to gain insight in interactivity on Web2.0 platforms, and thus to assess the impact of W... more In order to gain insight in interactivity on Web2.0 platforms, and thus to assess the impact of Web2.0, we develop an analytical framework. Based on a conceptual analysis of interaction, a phrase omnipresent in the discourse on new communication technologies, the Internet and Web2.0 in particular, our framework can take into account the objective, structural features of Web2.0 platforms (expressed in structural affordances) and the functional, subjective perception and usage of these features by the users of those Web2.0 platforms (expressed in functional affordances). In order to test the value and usefulness of this analytical framework we setup a small, qualitative research project (n=27). Our goal was to use the developed framework to explore how agency and engagement on Flickr and deviantART, two Web2.0 sites, is reflected in the use of Web2.0 affordances, and thus demonstrate the usability and value of the developed framework.
This article builds upon communication infrastructure theory and investigates how communication p... more This article builds upon communication infrastructure theory and investigates how communication practices on online neighborhood networks (ONNs) relate to the social cohesion of neighborhood communities. Specifically, we study the hyperlocal social media platform Hoplr, which provides ad-free ONNs in which neighbors can communicate with one another. Local governments can subscribe to Hoplr to communicate with their residents and engage them for community and public participation purposes. This study is based on an online survey of Hoplr members (N = 3,055) from 150 randomly selected ONNs. Social cohesion is disentangled as a combination of social support, a sense of community, reciprocal exchange, and social trust. We investigated social cohesion differences at the neighborhood level in relation to self-reported types of ONN communication practices (shared interest, supportive communication, and both tangible and informational support mobilization). The results reveal the limited value of quantified behavioral data to explain differences in neighborhood social cohesion. However, interesting patterns are revealed between different communication practices and neighborhood social cohesion, such as the importance of trivial storytelling and information exchange practices for enhancing trust, reciprocal support, and a sense of community. At the same time, a reversed relation appears when ONNs are considered explicit information exchange platforms. With these insights, we enhance the theoretical understanding of ONNs in relation to neighborhood social cohesion and within a broader repertoire of neighborhood communication infrastructures.
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, 2016
Public administrations are often still organised in vertical, closed silos. The lack of common da... more Public administrations are often still organised in vertical, closed silos. The lack of common data standards (common data models and reference data) for exchanging information between administrations in a cross-domain and/or cross-border setting stands in the way of digital public services and automated flow of information between public administrations. Core data models address this issue, but are often created within the closed environment of a country or region and within one policy domain. A lack of insight exists in understanding and managing the lifecycle of these initiatives on public administration information systems for data modelling and data exchange. In this paper, we outline state-of-the-art implementations and vocabularies linked to the core data models. In particular we inventoried and selected existing core data models and identified tendencies in current practices based on the criteria creation, use, maintenance and coordination. Based on the analysis, this survey suggest research directions for policy and information management studies pointing to best practices regarding core data model implementations and their role in linking isolated data silos within a crosscountry context. Finally we highlight the differences in their coordination and maintenance, depending on the state of creation and use.
Hackathons are emerging worldwide as a new, grassroots interaction model to innovate with end-use... more Hackathons are emerging worldwide as a new, grassroots interaction model to innovate with end-users. Whether they are called hackathons, hack days, codefests or makathons, a wide variety of organizations organize such events to attract skilled volunteers to work with their data, technology or solve specific issues by means of technological solutions. While the origins of this phenomenon are to be found in the open source community, this innovation strategy is now widely adopted by corporate organizations, public service organizations, NGOs and governments alike to tackle the often complicated challenges they are facing. Today, ‘hacking’ and ‘making’ are increasingly inroads to a more diverse range of activities, industries, and groups. The emergence of the hackathon format has led to an evolution from underground phenomenon, to mainstream playground, with a high empowering potential. This way, individuals and groups gain control over the production of technological artifacts which i...
Het web valt niet meer weg te denken uit het leven van alledag, maar wat betekent het web voor er... more Het web valt niet meer weg te denken uit het leven van alledag, maar wat betekent het web voor erfgoedinstellingen? In Belgie bestaat het .be web domein sinds 1988, hoewel de eerste .be adressen pas in 1993 werden geregistreerd. In januari 2018 daarentegen waren er 1.591.622 geregistreerde .be adressen. Eind de jaren 1990 zagen de eerste webarchiveringsinitiatieven in het buitenland al het licht. Het Belgische web wordt echter tot op de dag van vandaag niet systematisch gearchiveerd, wat zeer problematisch is gezien het vluchtige karakter van informatie op het web. Er wordt geschat dat een website gemiddeld binnen de 100 dagen wordt aangepast of verdwijnt van het net, wat in de praktijk betekent dat enorm veel informatie verloren gaat. Het PROMISE project verzoekt een antwoord te formuleren door een duurzame strategie voor de preservatie van het Belgische web uit te werken. Het BRAIN project gefinancierd door BELSPO is het initiatief van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek en het Rijksarchie...
The web and online information has become of utmost importance. However, the short lifespan of on... more The web and online information has become of utmost importance. However, the short lifespan of online data (with 40% of content being removed after 1 year) poses serious challenges for preserving and safeguarding digital heritage and information. Hence, web or media historians, sociologists or digital scholars must learn to "dig" in online sources such as the Internet Archive or national web archives in order to find relevant research material. In this paper, we explore the requirements of researchers working with web archives and outline how they perceive the limitations and possibilities of using the archived web as a data resource, using survey data (n=154). We asked researchers with and without experience in working with web archives for, amongst others, the search functionalities and selection and access criteria they require. Given that archived web content is relatively new research material, new skills need to be acquired to work with this content which is not some...
What People Leave Behind. Frontiers in Sociology and Social Research, 2022
In this chapter, we focus on how virtual communities (VCs) leave “traces” or “unintentional infor... more In this chapter, we focus on how virtual communities (VCs) leave “traces” or “unintentional information” and study how they can affect VCs and their features.
In doing so, we use qualitative data from a doctoral research project developed between Italy and Belgium. Firstly, in this introduction, we briefly describe how “traces” are considered. Secondly, we unpack the concepts “VC” and “sense of community.” Thirdly, we explore the context in which VCs take place theoretically.
Fourthly, we explain the methodology used and the case selection procedure. Then, we describe our results, and finally, the chapter ends with a discussion and a conclusion.
We consider the notion “traces” in Bloch’s terms (1992: 51) and use the interpretation given by Ricoeur; traces are “documents in archives (which) for the most part come from witnesses in spite of themselves” (2009: 171); “The trace is thus the higher concept under whose aegis Bloch places testimony. It constitutes the operator par excellence of ‘indirect’ knowledge” (170). Information disseminated by social media users, considered as unconscious “tracks,” can be used by others in different ways than the original intent, thus acquiring a different meaning.
In this chapter, our first research question polls for the features of information that are left unintentionally by the users of virtual communities (RQ1). Our second research question focuses on the role that such unintentional information has in virtual communities (RQ2) or, in other words, on how users of VCs appropriate and apply these traces in different ways than originally intended.
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Papers by peter mechant
In doing so, we use qualitative data from a doctoral research project developed between Italy and Belgium. Firstly, in this introduction, we briefly describe how “traces” are considered. Secondly, we unpack the concepts “VC” and “sense of community.” Thirdly, we explore the context in which VCs take place theoretically.
Fourthly, we explain the methodology used and the case selection procedure. Then, we describe our results, and finally, the chapter ends with a discussion and a conclusion.
We consider the notion “traces” in Bloch’s terms (1992: 51) and use the interpretation given by Ricoeur; traces are “documents in archives (which) for the most part come from witnesses in spite of themselves” (2009: 171); “The trace is thus the higher concept under whose aegis Bloch places testimony. It constitutes the operator par excellence of ‘indirect’ knowledge” (170). Information disseminated by social media users, considered as unconscious “tracks,” can be used by others in different ways than the original intent, thus acquiring a different meaning.
In this chapter, our first research question polls for the features of information that are left unintentionally by the users of virtual communities (RQ1). Our second research question focuses on the role that such unintentional information has in virtual communities (RQ2) or, in other words, on how users of VCs appropriate and apply these traces in different ways than originally intended.