[open-government] Transparency International: Does open data make development more accountable? The case of Colombia

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

It is an interesting question!  I would say sometimes, and it depends on
who is mobilized around the information being disseminated, as the
information on its own cannot bring forward much change.

http://blog.transparency.org/2012/12/13/does-open-data-make-development-more-accountable-the-case-of-colombia/

Lisa Parks critically discusses this further here - *Digging into Google
Earth: An analysis of ‘‘Crisis in Darfur”*, Geoforum 40 (2009) 535–545
*Abstract:*

> Google publicists have suggested the Crisis in Darfur is an example of the
> Google Earth software’s ‘‘suc- cess at tangibly impacting what is happening
> on the ground.” Yet whether or not Google Earth’s interface, along with a
> medley of other media representations of the conflict, have impacted events
> on the ground or led to coherent policies of humanitarian intervention
> remains open to debate. This article draws upon critical approaches from
> media studies—namely discourse analysis—to analyze several aspects of the
> Google Earth/USHMM Crisis in Darfur project. While this project was no
> doubt developed with the noble intention of generating international
> awareness about widespread violence that has recently occurred in the
> Darfur region, it is important to evaluate how representations of global
> conflicts are changing with uses of new information technologies and
> whether such representations can actually achieve their desired impacts or
> effects. The article begins with a discussion of the Crisis in Darfur
> project’s history, proceeds to analyze some of the press coverage of the
> project and then moves to a critique of the layer using four categories of
> analysis: (1) the shifting role of satellite image; (2) the temporality of
> the inter- face; (3) the practice of conflict branding; and (4) the
> practice of ‘‘information intervention.” Throughout the article, I explore
> how the presentation of Darfur-related materials through Google Earth
> reproduces problematic Western tropes of African tragedy and misses an
> opportunity to generate public literacy around satellite images. I also
> consider how humanitarianism is intertwined with digital and disaster
> capitalism, and suggest that this instance of ‘‘information intervention”
> makes patently clear that high visual capital alone cannot resolve global
> conflicts.
>

-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
Post Doctoral Fellow
Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
http://datalibre.ca/
613-234-2805
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