Tap The "Make This Public" Button: A Design-Based Inquiry Into Issue Advocacy And Digital Civics

This paper examines the strategies of cycling advocates when deploying digital tools in their advocacy work as they support and create better cycling infrastructure and policies. Over the course of two years, we interviewed and conducted design-based fieldwork in two large U.S. cities with individuals and advocacy organizations, learning about the goals, motivations, and constraints that inform their work in their respective urban homes. Our design-based investigation and fieldwork advance a deeper, situated understanding of the role that computing technology plays when engaging across multiple sites of advocacy work. From this, we add detail to the connections across resources, identities, and issues and continue to advance the emerging area of digital civics, which seeks to design tools that support relational civic interactions across multiple categories of civic actors.