Project: Civic Tech

This research program aims to examine and develop Civic Tech in Asian contexts.

Image by Freepik

Civic Technology, or Civic Tech, refers to information and communication technologies (ICTs) that facilitate civic engagement. Government-centric Civic Tech refers to governments utilizing the technologies for service provision, citizen consultations, and data analyses to inform policy making. Citizen-centric Civic Tech refers to the platforms and applications that enable citizens to connect and collaborate with each other and with government. Multiple groups of actors have contributed to building and implementing Civic Tech, including governments, academics, NGOs, citizen groups, and more.

Recent Publications

  1. Chen, Z., & Zhang, W. (2026). Action Frames, Network Structure, and Online Movement Mobilization: Evidence from the Facebook Ad Boycott Campaign. Mass Communication and Society, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2026.2658713
  2. Zhang, W. (2026). Drawing the Faces of “Perpetual Foreigners”: A Multimodal Narrative Analysis of# StopAsianHate on Instagram. International Journal of Communication, 20. https://doi.org/10.65476/vjdz2s05
  3. Wang, R, Zhang, W., & Shin, J. (2025). Mapping the evolving networks of the #StopAsianHate movement on Twitter: the role of serial participants in digital activism. Information, Communciation & Society, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2571407
  4. Cheng, Y. & Zhang, W. (2023). C-MFD 2.0: Developing a Chinese Moral Foundation Dictionary. Computational Communication Research, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2023.2.10.CHEN [GitHub] [video in English, Chinese]
  5. Zhang, W. (2022). Hybrid deliberation: Citizen dialogues in a post-pandemic era. Consultancy report for The Bertelsmann Stiftung (The Bertelsmann Foundation). Accessed at: https://arxiv.org/submit/5018329/
  6. Zhang, W., Lim, G., Perrault, S., & Wang, C. (2022). A Review of Research on Civic Technology: Definitions, Theories, History and Insights. arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.11461. [paper][video]
  7. Zhang, W. (2022). Civic AI Education: Developing a Deliberative Framework. In 4th Annual Symposium on HCI Education (EduCHI'22), April 30-May 1, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. [video]
  8. Zhang, W. (2021, June). Online deliberation and #CivicTech. Deliberative Democracy Digest.
  9. Zhang, W., Lim, G., Wang, Z., & Perrault, S. (2020, October). # CivicTech For And By Citizens: A Review And A Meta-Evaluation. In Proceedings of Annual CSCW conference Workshop Position Papers on Civic Technologies. Virtual.

Partner Institutions

This research was funded by National University of Singapore's Collaborative Research Seed Fund (R-124-000-112-646) and NUS' Centre for Trusted Internet and Community Pilot Project Fund (R-728-117-002-290). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this website are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funder.

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