| 1. |
- Cano-Viktorsson, Carlos, 1977-
(författare)
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From Vision to Transition : Exploring the Potential for Public Information Services to Facilitate Sustainable Urban Transport
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Policy initiatives to promote sustainable travel through the use of Internet based public information systems have increased during the last decade. Stockholm, in being one of the first cities in Europe to implement an Internet based service for facilitating sustainable travel is believed to be a good candidate for an analysis of key issues for developing sustainable travel planning services to the public.Aim: This thesis investigates the past development of two Stockholm based public information systems and their services in order to draw lessons on how to better provide for a public information service geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning through information and communications technology. The overall goal of the thesis is to contribute to an understanding on how to better design and manage current and future attempts at facilitating sustainable travel planning services based on historical case studies.Approach: The thesis draws ideas from the concept of organizational responsiveness – an organization’s ability to listen, understand and respond to demands put to it by its internal and external stakeholders – in order to depict how well or not the two public information systems and their owners have adapted to established norms and values of their surroundings.Results: Overall, the findings from the historical case studies suggest that organizations attempting to provide sustainable travel planning to the public need to design and manage their systems in such a way that it responds to shifting demands on how to provide for information. Implementing and embedding new technologies involves complex processes of change both at the micro level – for users and practitioners of the service – and at the meso level for the involved public service organizations themselves. This condition requires a contextualist framework to analyze and understand organizational, contextual and cultural issues involved in the adoption of new technologies and procedures.Conclusions: The thesis concludes with a discussion on how the findings from the historical case studies may provide lessons for both current and future attempts at providing public information systems geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning to the public. Historical examples and issues concerning collective intelligence and peer to peer based forms of designing, producing and supervising public information services identified throughout the study are looked upon and discussed in terms of their possible role in increasing the potential for public information services to facilitate sustainable urban transport.
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| 2. |
- Granåsen, Magdalena, 1978-
(författare)
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Exploring C2 Capability and Effectiveness in Challenging Situations : Interorganizational Crisis Management, Military Operations and Cyber Defence
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Modern societies are affected by various threats and hazards, including natural disasters, cyber-attacks, extreme weather events and inter-state conflicts. Managing these challenging situations requires immediate actions, suspension of ordinary procedures, decision making under uncertainty and coordinated action. In other words, challenging situations put high demands on the command and control (C2) capability. To strengthen the capability of C2, it is vital to identify the prerequisites for effective coordination and direction within the domain of interest. This thesis explores C2 capability and effectiveness in three domains: interorganizational crisis management, military command and control, and cyber defence operations. The thesis aims to answer three research questions: (1) What constitutes C2 capability? (2) What constitutes C2 effectiveness? and (3) How can C2 effectiveness be assessed? The work was carried out as two case studies and one systematic literature review. The main contributions of the thesis are the identification of perspectives of C2 capability in challenging situations and an overview of approaches to C2 effectiveness assessment. Based on the results of the three studies, six recurring perspectives of capability in the domains studied were identified: interaction (collaboration), direction and coordination, relationships, situation awareness, resilience and preparedness. In the domains there are differences concerning which perspectives that are most emphasized in order obtain C2 capability. C2 effectiveness is defined as the extent to which a C2 system is successful in achieving its intended result. The thesis discusses the interconnectedness of performance and effectiveness measures, and concludes that there is not a united view on the difference between measures of effectiveness and measures of performance. Different approaches to effectiveness assessment were identified, where assessment may be conducted based on one specific issue, in relation to a defined goal for a C2 function or using a more exploratory approach.
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| 3. |
- Sõmersalu, Liisa, 1983-
(författare)
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Civic Cultures in Eastern Europe : Communication spaces and media practices of Estonian civil society organizations
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What kind of routine media and communication practices do Estonian civil society organizations enact in their everyday work? What sort of symbolic and physical spaces are used, created, and accessed by Estonian civil society organizations and informal citizen groups when engaging internally and with their target groups? How do these spaces and practices evolve over time? These are the questions this dissertation addresses, with the aim of understanding the ways in which already-established and evolving civil society organizations navigate the highly-mediated everyday through their routine media practices and the spaces in which these practices are situated.Theoretically, this study takes a cultural approach to political participation with the concept of ‘civic cultures’ (Dahlgren 2009, p. 103) in the centrum. In this dissertation, the civic cultures framework is concentrated into a focus on the everyday, on media practices, and on communicative spaces. The concepts of ‘everyday’ and ‘spaces’ are empirically accessed through a practice approach. To distill and explore the role of media in the everyday work of civil society organizations, this thesis borrows from “activist media practices” (Mattoni 2012, p. 159) framework.The empirical study is grounded in the wider geopolitical context of Eastern Europe and in the historical context of post-Soviet Europe, and more specifically in Estonian civil society. Using a multi-methods approach based on media ethnography, this study includes a nationally-representative survey, in-depth interviews with civil society organizations, and a longitudinal study of the Estonian Forest Aid movement.This study found that parallel to striving towards episodic visibility in physical spaces, in mainstream media, and in decision making, civil society organizations worked on constant visibility in the social media space. The most used social media platform, Facebook, proved to be an important space for developing civic cultures on an everyday level: it was used for campaigns, opinion shaping, for disseminating news, and for civic talk. Everyday communication within the organizations was done using a mix of different media technologies and face-to-face meetings. Each media technology and communicative space had their own role and function in the everyday work of Estonian civil society organizations.
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| 4. |
- Florin, Ulrika, 1964-
(författare)
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Från idé till gestaltningsförslag : fallstudie från Projekt Konstpaus
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Populär sammanfattning I vårt samhälle finns många offentliga konstverk. Dessa verk har kommit till på olika sätt men gemensamt är att konstverken i de allra flesta fall upphandlats med utgångspunkt i någon form av skiss. Skissen föregår det kommande konstverket och tjänar som underlag för beslut om upphandling av verket i full skala. Kunskapen om hur skisser kan tydas varierar och dessutom förekommer flera typer av skisser som var för sig fordrar olika sorters insikter av betraktaren (beslutsfattaren) för att kunna tolkas. Det övergripande temat för avhandlingen är kommunikationsprocesserna i relation till utvecklingen av 12 konstnärers gestaltningsförslag, tävlingsbidrag, samt hur juryns bedömning av dessa ser ut. Studien är baserad på material insamlat från de deltagande konstnärernas processer i Projekt Konstpaus, ett projekt delfinansierat av EU. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för hur konstnärer utformar sina gestaltningsförslag, samt hur dessa förslag används och värderas. För att göra detta har tävlingsbidragen analyserats och konstnärerna intervjuats. Konstnärliga gestaltningsprocesser har synliggjorts liksom kommunikationen mellan beställare och konstnär.Bland annat har det framkommit att det finns en större potential att förmedla ett komplext gestaltningsinnehåll till en jury med stöd av digitala skisser, än vid användande av traditionella skisser. Det har visat sig att det kommande konstverkets kvaliteter blir synliga, men också att de brister som finns i gestaltningen tydliggörs i 3D- skisserna. Liksom teknologier tidigare i historien haft sin påverkan på bildutvecklingen, tolkningen och seendet har också övergången till digitala skisstekniker denna inverkan. Det har också visat sig att den text som tillhör respektive tävlingsbidrag haft avgörande betydelse för utfallet av jurybedömningen. Muntliga och skriftliga presentationer, bilagor och brev har påverkat juryn i sina beslut.Studien har också visat hur konstnärer kan tolka och förmedla resultat av en inventering och genom sina skisser förmedla dessa tolkningar. Konsten som tolkare av miljö, tid och tanke, kan gestalta information om en plats och i och med detta också fungera värnande för ett samhälles identitet i olika faser av en utveckling.Studien har bidragit med en djupare inblick i konstnärliga gestaltningsprocesser och hur de kan beskrivas samt i och med detta också en fördjupad förståelse i allmänhet av kreativa processer.
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| 5. |
- Stenlund, Jörgen, 1959-
(författare)
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Travelling through time : Students’ interpretation of evolutionary time in dynamic visualizations
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Evolutionary knowledge is important to understand and address contemporary challenges such as loss of biodiversity, climate change and antibiotic resistance. An important aspect that is considered to be a threshold concept in teaching and learning about evolution is the time it involves. The history of evolution comprises several scales of magnitude, some of which are far from direct human experience and therefore difficult to understand. One way of addressing this issue is to use dynamic visualizations that represent time, for example, to facilitate teaching and learning about evolution.This thesis investigates how students’ comprehension of evolution and evolutionary time can be facilitated by visualizations in educational settings. Two different dynamic visualizations were investigated. In paper I different temporal versions of a spatio-temporal animation depicting hominin evolution were explored. The temporal information was expressed as one or several timelines along which an animated cursor moved, indicating the rate of time. Two variables, the number of timelines with different scales, and the mode of the default animated time rate (either constant throughout the animation or decreasing as the animation progressed), were combined to give four different time representations. The temporal aspects investigated were undergraduate students' ability to find events at specific times, comprehend order, comprehend concurrent events, comprehend the length of time intervals, and their ability to compare the lengths of time intervals.In paper II, perceptions and comprehension of temporal aspects in an interactive, multi-touch tabletop application, DeepTree, were investigated. This application depicts the tree of life. The focus was on the interactive aspects, especially how the zooming feature was perceived, but also on any misinterpretations associated with the interaction. The same temporal aspects listed for paper I were also implicitly investigated.The findings indicate that handling the problem of large differences in scale by altering the rate of time in the visualization can facilitate perception of certain temporal aspects while, at the same time, can hinder a correct comprehension of other temporal aspects. Findings concerning DeepTree indicate that the level of interactions varies among users, and that the zooming feature is perceived in two ways, either as a movement in time or as a movement in the metaphorical tree. Several misinterpretations were observed, for example the assumption that the zooming time in the tree corresponds to real time, that there is an implicit coherent timeline along the y-axis of the tree, and that more nodes along a branch corresponds to a longer time.The research reported in this thesis supports the claim that careful choice, and informed use of visualizations matters, and that different visualizations are best suited for different educational purposes
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| 6. |
- Jensen, Mikael, 1969
(författare)
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Lärande och låtsaslek - ett kognitionsvetenskapligt utvecklingsperspektiv
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Denna licentiatuppsats är en tvärvetenskaplig undersökning kring lärandets relation till låtsaslek. Ur ett kognitionsvetenskapligt perspektiv är förmågan att låtsas något av en gåta. Därför är det särskilt intressant att undersöka hur barnet kan nå denna förmåga. Sker det genom lärande? Resulterar låtsasleken i något lärande? Fyller låtsasleken någon avgörande funktion för barnets framtid som kulturell medlem? Detta är de frågor som driver undersökningen. Forskningsprocessen vilar i grunden på tidigare forskningsresultat inom kognitionsvetenskap eller fält som är direkt relevanta för kognitionsforskning. Uppsatsen innehåller också ny empiri som används i två specifika syften: (1) att exemplifiera och förtydliga de teoretiska resonemangen, (2) att visa på förekomsten av visst lärande och viss låtsaslek från autentiska lekmiljöer. Den empiriska studien är utförd som deltagande observationer vid fyra förskoleavdelningar. Barnen i studien var från 20 månader gamla till drygt sex år. De resultat som denna uppsats särskilt bidrar med består i att skapa en teori som integrerar kognition, emotion och kommunikation. Därtill handlar det om tre särskilda perspektiv på lärande och låtsaslek: (1) Människan är utrustad med fem regulatorer som (a) märker av den emotionella statusen i närmiljön; om hot förekommer saknas förutsättningar för lek, (b) reglerar individens uppmärksamhet; vid låtsassituationer behöver individen vara särskilt uppmärksam på små skillnader, (c) transformerar andras handlingar till egna handlingar genom ett spegelsystem som möjliggör imitation, (d) bidrar till lärande av kulturella normer och regler, (e) förhindrar vissa kulturellt oacceptabla handlingar. (2) Människan tar del i sociala aktiviteter och låtsasleken kan ses som en sådan. Låtsasleken som en social aktivitet bygger på kommunikation av två specifika slag: (a) lekhandlingar som är innehållet i leken; varje handling för leken framåt, (b) leksignaler som hela tiden påminner deltagarna om vilken typ av social aktivitet det rör sig om. Ibland kan lekhandling och leksignal sammanfalla men det kräver inte metakommunikation som andra lekforskare har föreslagit. (3) Genom att betrakta lärande och lek som transfer blir det tydligt vad barnet behöver lära sig för att kunna låtsasleka. Det blir också tydligt vad i leken som utgör ett lärande för framtida situationer. Ett sätt att kunna utföra transfer till och från leken är att lära sig särskilda principer. Åtta sådana föreslås och särskilt en princip, principen om funktionell frihet är sammanflätad med leken och lekutvecklingen. Att utveckla principen om funktionell frihet innebär för barnet att det bättre kan förstå den kultur i vilken det växer upp. Vad som föreslås i denna uppsats är att låtsasleken bidrar till kulturellt lärande och att leken har en potential att utveckla kulturen på sikt.
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| 7. |
- Westius, Anders
(författare)
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The significance of view of life in persons with Alzheimer's disease
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Making it possible for persons with Alzheimer‟s disease (AD) to retain a sense of identity and personal worth during the process of the disease poses a great challenge to caregivers. The objective of the study was to investigate if the view of life of persons with AD could be understood in the frame of their life story and to elucidate the role of view of life in connection to their sense of identity. The view of life of an individual is defined as a conception of reality, a central system of values and a basic emotional attitude.Twenty-one persons with mild to moderate stages of AD were interviewed about their life story and their view of life. The narratives were interpreted using a phenomenological hermeneutic method.Despite their cognitive deterioration it was possible to understand the view of life of the participants in the frame of their life story. Their view of life was not erased by the disease. No exceptional characteristics that could be traced to AD were found in the participants‟ view of life. Their view of life seemed to guide them towards selecting mainly emotionally powerful and value-oriented memories. The origins of their present central values and basic emotional attitude were interpreted to have been established already in early life. A sense of meaningfulness and continuity when looking back on life was also expressed. Despite progressive memory loss and cognitive deterioration, the participants‟ view of life was interpreted as a vital aspect of their sense of identity.The study implicates that knowledge of the view of life of persons with AD is valuable for confirming and supporting their sense of identity.
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| 8. |
- Nyblom, Åsa
(författare)
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Making travel sustainable with ICT? : The social practice of travel planning and travel information use in everyday life
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Adopting the perspective of the traveller, this thesis examines how travel plans are actually made in the everyday situation and how information is used and drawn on when planning the many, often unremarkable, trips of ordinary urban life. Ethnographical field studies in southern Stockholm, Sweden, employing a practice theory perspective showed that people use a vast mixture of different types of information when planning and making trips. Therefore, the concept of travel information should be defined broadly enough to encompass informal, formal, analogue and digital types of travel information. Then, and only then, is it possible to perceive the interactions between these and see their potential as a change factor for sustainable city travel. In relation to this, situations when travel information was not used, were also identified in the qualitative data and are acknowledged and discussed in the thesis.Travel planning is in everyday practice undertaken little by little, squeezed in between other activities of daily life. It is a process more extended in time, space and content than the limited search for information about the best way to get from A to B, assumed and facilitated in many existing travel information services. Travel planning is closely connected to the overall scheduling of activities (planning of life) and thus spans much larger time frames than the single trip. Planning travel also includes consideration of issues such as preparations needed (things to be done before departure/brought on the trip); managing vehicles and equipment in time and space (getting the bicycle/car home again or safely parked); the weather (current and forecast); social relations (the potential of different travel options for relationship building or conflict triggering); social norms (e.g. of 'good parenting' or 'proper behaviour on public transport'); and health issues (wanting exercise or inability to manage stairs/luggage).The qualitative data revealed that travel information is sometimes perceived and used as a security blanket, i.e. something to hold on to and give the traveller courage on the trip until they are safe at their destination. It also showed that travel planning, depending on life situation, can be experienced as either a house of cards, i.e. if anything changes the whole house collapses and has to be rebuilt to a different layout, or a prefab building, i.e. the same prefabricated pieces are joined together in more or less the same pattern every time.Recent decades have seen rapid growth in ICT services relating to transportation. Different types of travel information services have been proposed as a means to decrease the environmental impacts of transportation through effecting behavioural change. Taking the empirical 4 insights provided by this thesis into travel planning and travel information use in practice, it is clear that travel information services of tomorrow, if connected to other ICT systems in everyday life, could be designed in a way that broadens their horizon of assistance in supporting travel planning processes in everyday life. Although, as this thesis demonstrates, the role and potential of travel information services and ICT in the work of achieving sustainable mobility should be discussed from a perspective critical of overly linear perceptions and instrumental starting points.
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| 9. |
- Allström, Andreas
(författare)
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Highway Traffic State Estimation and Short-term Prediction
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Traffic congestion is increasing in almost all large cities, leading to a number of negative effects such as pollution and delays. However, building new roads is not a feasible solution. Instead, the use of the existing road network has to be optimized, together with a shift towards more sustainable transport modes. In order to achieve this there are several challenges that needs to be addressed. One challenge is the ability to provide accurate information about the current and future traffic state. This information is an essential input to the traffic management center and can be used to influence the choices made by the travelers. Accurate information about the traffic state on highways, where the potential to manage and control the traffic in general is very high, would be of great significance for the traffic managers. It would help the traffic managers to take action before the system reaches congestion and limit the effects of it. At the same time, the collection of traffic data is slowly shifting from fixed sensors to more probe based data collection. This requires an adaptation and further development of the traditional traffic models in order for them to handle and take advantage of the characteristics of all types of data, not just data from the traditionally used fixed sensors.The objective of this thesis is to contribute to the development and implementation of a model for estimation and prediction of the current and future traffic state and to facilitate an adaptation of the model to the conditions of the highway in Stockholm. The model used is a version of the Cell Transmission Model (CTM-v) where the velocity is used as the state variable. Thus, together with an Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) it can be used to fuse different types of point speed measurements. The model is developed to run in real-time for a large network. Furthermore, a two-stage process used to calibrate the model is implemented. The results from the calibration and validation show that once the model is calibrated, the estimated travel times corresponds well with the ground truth travel times collected from Bluetooth sensors.In order to produce accurate short-term predictions for various networks and conditions it is vital to combine different methods. We have implemented and evaluated a hybrid prediction approach that assimilates parametric and non-parametric short-term traffic state prediction. To predict mainline sensor data we use a neural network, while the CTM-v is ran forward in time in order to predict future traffic states. The results show that both the hybrid approach and the CTM-v prediction without the additional predicted mainline sensor data is superior to a naïve prediction method for longer prediction horizons.
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| 10. |
- Crusoe, Jonathan, 1991-
(författare)
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Why is it so challenging to cultivate open government data? : Understanding impediments from an ecosystem perspective
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Introduction: This compilation licentiate thesis focuses on open government data (OGD). The thesis is based on three papers. OGD is a system that is organized when publishers collect and share data with users, who can unrestrictedly reuse the data. In my research, I have explored why it can be challenging to cultivate OGD. Cultivation is human activities that change, encourage, or guide human organizations towards a higher purpose by changing, introducing, managing, or removing conditions. Here, the higher purpose is OGD to realize believed benefits. Thus, OGD cultivation is an attempt to stimulate actors into organizing as OGD.Problem and Purpose: OGD is believed to lead to several benefits. However, the worldwide OGD movement has slowed down, and researchers have noted a lack of use. Publishers and users are experiencing a set of different impediments that are challenging to solve. In previous research, there is a need for more knowledge about what can impede the OGD organization, cause non-valuable organizing, or even collapse the organization. At the same time, there is a lack of knowledge about how impediments shape the organization of OGD. This gap can make it hard to solve and overcome the impediments experienced by publishers and users. The sought-after knowledge can bring some understanding of the current situation of OGD. In this research, I have viewed the organization of OGD as an ecosystem. The purpose of this thesis is to draw lessons about why it can be challenging to cultivate OGD ecosystems by understanding OGD impediments from an ecosystem perspective.Research Design: I set out to explore OGD through qualitative research from 2016 to 2018. My research started with a pilot case study that led to three studies. The studies are each reported in a paper and the papers form the base of this thesis. The first paper aims to stimulate the conceptually oriented discussion about actors’ roles in OGD by developing a framework that was tested on a Swedish public agency. The second paper has the purpose of expanding the scope surrounding impediments and was based in a review and systematization of previous research about OGD impediments. The third paper presents an exploration of impediments experienced by publishers, users, and cultivators in the Swedish national OGD ecosystem to identify faults. From the three papers, lessons were drawn in turn and together, that are presented in this thesis.Findings: Cultivators when cultivating OGD ecosystems are facing towering challenges. The following three main challenges are identified in this thesis: (1) to cultivate a system that can manage stability by itself without constant involvement, (2) to cultivate a system that is capable of evolving towards a “greater good” by itself, and (3) to have an up-to-date precise vocabulary for a self-evolving system that enables inter-subjective understand for coordinating problem-solving.Contribution: The theoretical contribution of this thesis is that OGD ecosystems can be viewed as a public utility. Moreover, I recommend that researchers approach the organizing of OGD as the cultivation of evolution, rather than the construction of a structure; to consider the stability of the system in growth, value, and participation; and to be cautious with how they label and describe OGD actors. For actors that are cultivating OGD, I recommend that they guide the OGD actors to help them organize; view OGD cultivation as the management of evolution (growth) towards a purpose; and view cultivation as a collaborative effort where they can supply ideas, technologies, practices, and expertise.
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