Predicting Civic Hackathons in Local Communities: Perspectives from Social Capital and Creative Class Theory

The growth of technology led voluntary efforts has blossomed in the past decades. While some of these are online, others are face to face. Hackathons are a part of the latter group. Volunteers come to work on community problems that involve technology. They are mostly short term face to face events. While they might be considered instances of episodic volunteering, they represent a regular series of volunteering opportunities for others. Hackathons are generally associated with the Civic Technology Movement, which aims at involving citizens, nonprofits and other stakeholders in reinventing government. Civic hacking is a new phenomenon, and the literature is limited. An important issue that has not been explored is why certain communities have hackathons while others do not. In this research effort, we hope to fill that gap in the literature by exploring the following questions: 1) Are there variations among communities in their use of Civic Hackathons to solve community issues? 2) Which factors account for this variation (if any) Theoretical Framework: To explain this variation we will need to account for differences in community problem solving and labor force characteristics. The theoretical framework uses Social Capital Theory (Putnam, 2000) and Creative Class Theory (Florida, 2003) Social capital theory speaks to the participatory nature of community problem solving while Creative Class Theory deals with the nature of the labor force.  This is cross sectional study using secondary data. The unit of analysis is U.S. counties. The dependent variable is the presence or absence of a Hackathon. The independent variables are an index of social capital and an index of creative class employment. Statistical analysis is accomplished with a generalized linear analysis using logistic regression.  The results suggest that creative class workforce and location in a metropolitan area are better predictors of the location of a Hackathon than social capital. Predicting Civic Hackathons in Local Communities: Perspectives from Social Capital and Creative  In the past few decades there have been a number of developments that have combined technology with civic engagement to create new structures that support civil society. Online political campaigns, Internet fund raising, and virtual communities and associations are all examples. Some of these are decades old, while others are of more recent vintage. Civic hacking and the development of civic hackathons is one of the most recent. Civic hackers use technology and open civic data (Goldstein& Dyson, 2014) to solve civic problems. While some civic hackers operate individually, many group based civic groups (such as Code for America's Brigades) offer an opportunity to work on civic problems in a cooperative and competitive environment. This type of activity is definitely voluntary action and might be considered a case of episodic volunteering, although the relationship with the client is frequently more complex than in many other volunteer situations. It is an exciting new area for exploration, and the research community has produced comparatively few studies. Most of the studies that are available look at general policy issue or focus on individual events. The present study is one of the first to look at an entire population of Civic Hackathons and some of the characteristics of the communities that host these events.  As a new phenomenon, civic hacking has not yet been widely studied, and offers a significant future direction for nonprofit research. While there is some research on civic hackathons (Ahn Stepasiuk, 2015; Stepasiuk, 2014) it generally deals with the Internal dynamics of hackathons. An important issue that has not been explored is why certain communities have hackathons while others do not. In this research effort, we hope to begin to fill that gap in the literature by exploring the following questions: 1) Are there variations among communities in their use of Civic Hackathons to solve community issues? 2) Which factors account for this variation (if any) These questions are important because civic hackathons are part of an emerging range of social interventions that hold the promise to redefine the relationship between the third sector and government through technology. The nonprofit sector is highly integrated into local communities. Understanding how communities vary in their adoption of these new interventions will help us understand their potential path and how they might affect local third sector dynamics.  The literature review for this exploration looks at civic hacking and civic hackathons, the larger context provided by civic technology and how these aspects relate to other nonprofit issues, particularly the relationship with episodic volunteering. This is followed by a theoretical framework that uses social capital and creative class theory to explain the differences between communities in their adoption of civic hackathons. Civic Hacking and Hackathons The academic literature on civic hacking and civic hackathons is limited (Baraniuk, 2013; Hebert, 2014; Snook, 2014) although there is a substantial gray literature on the topic. Hacking is a word with a great deal of negative connotations because it is frequently used to describe cybercriminals or cyber vandals (see Snook, 2014 for a discussion of the issues) but the word can also describe more positive activities. In general, civic hackers are people who want to use their technology skills to make society better. Not all hackers are civic hackers. Civic Hackers are also different from so called "ethical hackers" Ethical hackers are technologists who break into organizational information systems to expose vulnerabilities. Whether civic hackers are actually volunteers is a question of interpretation. In some cases, they clearly are volunteers, but in other situations other labels might apply. In any case, the relationship between the organization that is deriving the benefit and the one sponsoring the volunteer will be different in many cases. The idea of episodic volunteers seems relevant in this regard (see Hustinx, HaskiLeventhal Handy, 2008; McDuff, 2008; 1990; Cnaan Handy, 2005) Episodic volunteers generally work for short periods of time, rather than regularly volunteering with an organization. This creates a number of management, policy and liability issues. It also creates issues in conceptualizing who episodic volunteers are when compared to more traditional volunteers (see Cnaan Handy, 2005) Prior to the digital revolution, integrating episodic volunteers would be difficult from a management standpoint. Technology can facilitate episodic volunteering by facilitating the management of volunteers, even those who volunteer for extremely small blocks of time. If the volunteer work is knowledge work, the extent to which it can be divided often makes it possible for a large force of volunteers to do a task in very small increments. One example is citizen science, in which a massive number of volunteers do small amounts of data collection that is aggregated into substantial datasets (Dickinson, Zuckerberg Bonter, 2010) While hackathons are not essential for civic hacking, they provide a space where civic hacking can take place, the opportunity for cooperative programming, and often a variety of other resources (Ahn Stepasiuk, 2015; Stepasiuk, 2014; Johnson Robinson, 2014) They engage those with common interests on a set of common problems. This might be considered a community of practice or possibly a transient voluntary association. It should be noted that the creation of Hackathons has also been a useful strategy in a wide range of efforts unrelated to civic betterment. Business interests often use them to develop new technologies and business processes and they are often used by technologists who have an interest in a given application (Leckart, 2012; Irani, L. (2015) Civic Hackathons often involve request from government for specific applications. Some civic hackathons involve a competitive element and some have a prize or award of some kind. The National Day of Civic Hacking was begun in 2013 to provide a national exposure for civic hacking and civic hackathons. Events are held throughout the nation and there is substantial support from civic technology thought leaders, government agencies, local governments and nonprofit organizations. On June 6, 2016 the fourth National Day of Civic Hacking was held. While there are hackathons throughout the world, the National Day of Civic Hacking provides a showcase for these activities. Civic Hacking and Civic Hackathons are components of an overall civic technology movement. Civic technology is an overall effort to re envision communities through the use of technology. Civic Technology Civic technology is a nascent force in communities throughout the world. It brings together open civic data, new (and old) technology and a variety of new practices, including civic hacking and civic hackathons (McNutt, Justice, Melitski, Ahn, Siddiqui, Carter Kline, 2016; Goldstein Dyson, 2013; Patel, Sotsky, Gourley, Houghton, 2013) According to Living Cities, civic technology is "The use of digital technologies and social media for service provision, civic engagement, and data analysis [in ways that have] the potential to transform cities and the lives of their low income residents" (Living Cities. 2012, 3) This is a worldwide movement that is especially active in North America and Europe. Other areas of the world are beginning to develop their efforts as well. There are a number of foundations, think tanks and other nonprofits active in the effort. There are three major components of civic technology: Open Civic Data, Civic Technology Applications and Civic Technology Practices.  One portrays the relationship between these three components.