Title
Deciding to Engage: Motivation, Participation and Collaboration

Authors 
Myung-Ho Kim, Leon Gibson, Andrew Hepler, Jason Cockerham, Joanne White 

Abstract 
Our democracy relies on the voice of the people. However it has been shown that less than 60% of the  people actively participate in US elections, while other countries experience far higher levels of participation. 

As our society becomes increasingly networked, we question if there are motivations to voting that are achievable in the online context which will improve voting numbers. In order to do this, we need to understand what kinds of motivation compel people to participate online. Further, what role does this motivation have in creating a culture of collaboration, participation and ultimately, community? Is it possible for us to identify key motivation strategies that will entice individuals to firstly participate, and secondly, to solidly engage with the content produced by others to the extent that they enter a wider realm of learning and forge a renewed interest in democratic engagement?

Keywords:
Voting, Community, cultures of participation, 

Problem / Goal
In the US 55% of the voting age population votes in presidential election years (38% in other years).  Other countries have a much higher percentage of people voting.  Gemany for instance had a voter turnout of 78% in 2005.  All countries are not democracies of course, and definitions of democracy are differently perceived in those which are founded on democratic principles, or feature voting as an aspect of electing governing officials. For example, Australia’s voting system compels you to vote if you are 18 years of age or more. If an election is held and you do not vote, you are fined $75. In the USA of course, this is not the case.

In order for democracy to work, citizens need to actively participate. If they do not, the only voices who are heard and the only people making decisions are those who are engaged. Currently, this is less than half the population (in off years). As for young people, only about 14% of them vote, which means the vast majority of them are simply not engaged.

We understand the problem to be a lack of engagement and willingness to participate in the process of voting, particularly in what is termed the youth vote (18-29 year old voters). Through the course we have discovered that education about how the process directly affects individuals can be one way of improving this. Additionally, we have found that in order to educate new voters, game play as well as creating social communities of participation could also hold the key. Rather than making voting ‘cool’, a culture of participation, where voting is the standard thing to do (making ‘good behavior’ visible), can solve this problem. This is particularly interesting to us, as the process of voting itself is a highly personal, private thing to do. However, the culture of voting calls on people to become educated about candidates, and possibly prepared to stand up for their beliefs when challenged in a social setting. For young people in particular, there is a lot of social capital at stake. 

Web surveys have provided many researchers and surveyors the ability to poll millions of online users. Yet those online don’t participate with the frequency that one would respect with the ease of access that online web surveys provide. This leads one to ask how to create respondent-friendly web questionnaires. Respondent-friendly web questionnaires are constructed in a manner that increases the likelihood that sampled individuals will respond to a survey request, answering each question accurately as intended by the surveyor. Are these users limited by their computer-literacy? It has been shown that the fancier the page, the more likely users will participate in a survey. There are limitations though, namely in the technologies used to create these surveys. The more cutting-edge or complicated the web technology the less likely all users in the focus group can participate based on their browser and operating system. 

If we are able to create communities of participation, using education gained through aspects of distributed cognition focused on young voters, we can move forward to increasing participation in voting. For instance, research into the areas of survey design is well documented in journals and technical writing. What rules or guidelines can improve the results of survey participation when researchers provide a survey online? Also what kind of reward system is needed both in surveys and in developing a strong user participation base makes sense in an online world? What has worked? What hasn’t? 

We are practicing what we preach through the use of Micromobs – a collaborative tool which encourages distributed cognition and learning through the use of threaded conversations, ability to add links, and organize content. The Micromobs site has a very clutter free interface, but provides both a nice aesthetic as well as current Web 2.0 Blog technology that provides all of the tools needed to develop a community of participation for the mob of a users choice. 

Methodologies

1. Preliminary survey to discover young people’s ideas on voting.
2. Data analysis on this survey to identify direction for our dual-voting scenario.
3. Two voting scenarios:

1. 
   
   1. First, an online voting situation where there is little prior education about the candidates, and there is no reward for completing the survey. The survey will be rolled out over all the social media of the team.
   2. Second:
      111. Creation of education content for people to find out about the candidates in a way most appealing to their learning style.
      111. Modifying the preliminary survey with principles that create more of a respondent-friendly web questionnaire that will encourage more participation.
      1. Invitation to vote, with incentive/reward mechanisms such as Facebook badges etc when voters have done so – this will also create a community of involvement, and spark conversations in social media so that younger voters become educated as the voting spreads.

4. Final data analysis on the comparative results of the two surveys.
5. Depth interviews with 10 people who volunteer afterwards that they participated in the surveys.

6. Related Work

While many have looked to solve the issue of participation in democracy, none have looked to social media and cultures of participation in that realm as being a possible solution. Instead, some have identified that mass media have let young voters down – people no longer are interested in newspapers, or extended political debates – and therefore feel driven away from voting. 
It has been recognized that the largest turned out of young voters was in the 2008 US presidential election, where US states saw three or even four times as many young voters as ever before. Additionally, it has been said, “New technology, the internet especially, is making it easier for candidates to reach the youth and, in turn, more young people are voting. Websites such as Facebook and Youtube not only allow students who don't subscribe to newspapers or watch the evening news stay on top of the polls, but also allows them to share their excitement over the polls and candidates. (Von Drehle, 2008, Time Magazine)

1. 
   
   1. Relationship of your Project to the Themes discussed in the Course

Characterization of the Individual Contributions
This project is a joint effort, with different responsibilities being managed by different members of the team. While each team member is leading on different areas, the content is contributed by all team members.

Jason: Voting behavior, background and influences.
Myung: Preliminary findings and direction on voting; survey design.
Andrew: Education and preliminary preparedness for engagement in voting.
Leon: Visualizations, reward strategies for participation.
Jo: Social media rollout, research and support papers.

7. Findings and Results so far

Andrew: My current findings are from Internet sites that recommend Quest To Learn as the leading digitally-based school, in which students are engaged with collaborate work and systems thinking. Other sites that have been beneficial to my research have dealt with scores in math and science improving after use of educational games. Looking for an educational game that currently exists and relates to motivating a person to vote is quite rare. However, I have found some interesting facts about some political games that will tie the two subjects together more or less.

Jason: I have found voter turnout stats for the US from 1980 - 2008.  I have also found a couple stats for Germany and Australia, most of which do not specify a year.

Leon: My research has dealt with both design of surveys in the asthetic sense as well as the way to develop surveys that encourage participation. The research in both fields has been very interesting. Two key articles to my research will be The Influence of Plain vs. Fancy Designs on Response Rates for Web Surveys and Principles for Constructing Web Surveys, both authored by Dillman et. al . Each address the visual and content keys needed to encouraging participation in web surveys.

8. Further developments planned till the end of the semester

Andrew: I would like to look further into the Educate to Innovate campaign which is involved with many of the technological driven schools. Furthermore, I would like to add some information on whether or not learning styles have an influence over voter participation.

Jason: I am going to try to find more stats on Germany and Australia.  Then I’m going to find stats on Japan.  Next, I’m going to post a few reasons people don’t vote on our Micromobs site (that I have already found).  Then I’m going to post responses about why people vote from the Colorado-Waseda group on the Micromobs site.

Leon: Through my research, I intend on improving the preliminary survey using principles found by those authors. Also I will develop a reward that encourages those who still may choose not to participate in our survey to maybe do it for the reward.

9. References

1. Benkler and Nissenbaum (2006) “Commons-Based Peer Production and Virtue”
2. Burke, M., Marlow, C. and Lento, T. (2009) “Feed Me: Motivating Newcomer Contribution in Social Network Sites”
3.  Harris, Chris. "Super Tuesday Youth Voter Turnout Triples, Quadruples in Some States." MTV.com. retrieved 6 Feb 2008.http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1581027/20080206/ld_0.jhtml
4. Learning by playing: Video games in the Classroom, New York Times, 19 September, 2010; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?_r=4
5. Von Drehle, David. "Why Young Voters Care Again." Time Magazine. Feb 2008:34-48
6. Youth Vote, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_vote
7. http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm
8. http://san-antonio.movingtoanapartment.com/living/top-10-reasons-people-dont-vote.htm
9. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651614,00.html
10. Dillman, Don A., Robert D. Tortora, and Dennis Bowker. "Principles for Constructing Web Surveys." http://survey.sesrc.wsu.edu/dillman/papers/Websurveyppr.pdf
11. Dillman, Don A., Robert D. Tortora, Jon Conradt, and Dennis Bowker. "The Influence of Plain vs. Fancy Designs on Response Rates for Web Surveys." http://www.sesrc.wsu.edu/dillman/papers/asa98ppr.pdf