Innovating Democracy? Analyzing the #WirVsVirus Hackathon
Publication date
2023-08
Document type
Research article
Author
Organisational unit
Series or journal
Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society
Periodical volume
3
Periodical issue
1
First page
1
Last page
26
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Keyword
Digitalization
Democracy
Hackathon
Digital Democracy
Civic Tech
Abstract
The article concerns the case of #WirVsVirus, a civic hackathon organized in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and officially endorsed by Germany’s federal government. It aims to address the normative implications of this politically oriented technological format. Specifically, it asks how civic hackathons formulate and negotiate different political representation claims. Our analysis shows that the hackathon constituted a successful representative claim on behalf of civic tech initiatives vis-à-vis the administrative state. While this claim primarily concerned establishing a new format for efficient and subsidiary problem-solving in the wake of the crisis, the hackathon’s participatory promises have only been partially fulfilled. The hackathon was rather open to input from civil society, enabling it to attract substantial public interest. Nonetheless, its technological-organizational structure and competitive, solution-oriented procedures meant that decision-making power remained largely with the hackathon’s organizers.
Version
Not applicable (or unknown)
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Metadata only access