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1. Inequality and its strain on local Governments: Do external interventions Help?

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106855  

   Andersson, Krister P; Cook, Nathan J; Trautmann, Mark A; Valdivieso, Patricio (April 2025, World Development)

   Socioeconomic inequalities complicate the local governance process, especially in low- and middle-income countries. With limited public resources and high socioeconomic inequalities, local governments can find themselves in a vicious circle of increasing inequalities, declining ability to address needs, and mounting social problems. Here, we investigate a possible way out of the vicious circle: policy interventions that help reduce the strain of inequality on local government responsiveness. We argue that interventions are effective in dampening the strain when these recognize the leadership role of local government officials. To test our arguments, we analyze longitudinal data on how citizen satisfaction with local governments varies in 56 Chilean territories over a 15-year period. We find that high socioeconomic inequality is associated with lower overall citizen satisfaction with local government performance, but exogenous interventions can dampen this association when local politicians take the lead in planning and implementing the interventions. 

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2. A qualitative, network-centric method for modeling socio-technical systems, with applications to evaluating interventions on social media platforms to increase social equality

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-022-00486-8  

   Joseph, Kenneth; Chen, Huei-Yen Winnie; Ionescu, Stefania; Du, Yuhao; Sankhe, Pranav; Hannak, Aniko; Rudra, Atri (July 2022, Applied Network Science)

   Abstract We propose and extend a qualitative, complex systems methodology from cognitive engineering, known as theabstraction hierarchy, to model how potential interventions that could be carried out by social media platforms might impact social equality. Social media platforms have come under considerable ire for their role in perpetuating social inequality. However, there is also significant evidence that platforms can play a role inreducingsocial inequality, e.g. through the promotion of social movements. Platforms’ role in producing or reducing social inequality is, moreover, not static; platforms can and often do take actions targeted at positive change. How can we develop tools to help us determine whether or not a potential platform change might actually work to increase social equality? Here, we present the abstraction hierarchy as a tool to help answer this question. Our primary contributions are two-fold. First, methodologically, we extend existing research on the abstraction hierarchy in cognitive engineering with principles from Network Science. Second, substantively, we illustrate the utility of this approach by using it to assess the potential effectiveness of a set of interventions, proposed in prior work, for how online dating websites can help mitigate social inequality. 

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3. Algorithmic Misjudgement in Google Search Results: Evidence from Auditing the US Online Electoral Information Environment

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3658916  

   Perreault, Brooke; Lee, Johanna Hoonsun; Shava, Ropafadzo; Mustafaraj, Eni (June 2024, ACM)

   Google Search is an important way that people seek information about politics [8], and Google states that it is “committed to providing timely and authoritative information on Google Search to help voters understand, navigate, and participate in democratic processes.”1 This paper studies the extent to which government-maintained web domains are represented in the online electoral information environment, as captured through 3.45 Google Search result pages collected during the 2022 US midterm elections for 786 locations across the United States. Focusing on state, county, and local government domains that provide locality-specific information, we study not only the extent to which these sources appear in organic search results, but also the extent to which these sources are correctly targeted to their respective constituents. We label misalignment between the geographic area that non-federal domains serve and the locations for which they appear in search results as algorithmic mistargeting, a subtype of algorithmic misjudgement in which the search algorithm targets locality-specific information to users in different (incorrect) locations. In the context of the 2022 US midterm elections, we find that 71% of all occurrences of state, county, and local government sources were mistargeted, with some domains appearing disproportionately often among organic results despite providing locality-specific information that may not be relevant to all voters. However, we also find that mistargeting often occurs in low ranks. We conclude by considering the potential consequences of extensive mistargeting of non-federal government sources and argue that ensuring the correct targeting of these sources to their respective constituents is a critical part of Google’s role in facilitating access to authoritative and locally-relevant electoral information. 

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4. Freedom of the Press and Public Responsiveness

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719003852  

   Hiaeshutter-Rice, Dan; Soroka, Stuart; Wlezien, Christopher (October 2019, Perspectives on Politics)

   Public responsiveness to policy is contingent on there being a sufficient amount of clear and accurate information about policy available to citizens. It is of some significance then, that there are increasing concerns about limits being placed on media outlets around the world. We examine the impact of these limits on the public’s ability to respond meaningfully to policy by analyzing cross-national variation in the opinion–policy link. Using new measures on spending preferences from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, merged with OECD data on government spending and Freedom House measures of press freedom, we assess the role of mass media in facilitating public responsiveness. We find evidence that when media are weak, so too is public responsiveness to policy. These results highlight the critical role that accurate, unfettered media can play in modern representative democracy. 

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5. Examining User Access Options for eGovernment Services During a Crisis from a Digital Inequality Perspective

   Zobel, C.W.; Pamukcu, D. (January 2023, Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences)

   City governments incorporate ICTs into government services to improve citizen participation and access to those services. Too much dependence on technology, however, can lead to concerns about creating a digital divide between different groups of citizens. The potential for digital inequality is a critical issue that can be exacerbated by insufficient attention being paid to vulnerabilities across communities. Given that socio-economically vulnerable populations are the ones who need government services the most, especially during disaster events, it is critical to investigate the extent to which digital inequality is an issue for technology-based government services. With this in mind, this paper analyzes the use of different technology-enabled access options for a representative eGovernment service system, the New York City 311 service system, in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two sets of socio-economically distinct locations in New York City are compared, using average income as a proxy for vulnerability, to draw conclusions about potential inequalities in such a system during a crisis. 

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