Participation and Power - Intermediaries of Open Data

Intermediates often play a crucial role in the field of socially relevant communication, even if the configurations and structures can be quite different. The discussion revolving around “Open data” indicates that new sources of socially relevant information emerge. In the triangle between data providers, users and service providers it is unlikely that case-by-case solutions will be the solution of the hour, it is in all probability intermediaries will emerge and in fact traditional intermediaries like the media already start to occupy this field. Therefore the workshop takes open data as an example to discuss the development of intermediaries, what structures they have and what networks they form.

2 Research Questions

We have identified a number of research questions on this topic. Here are the top 2:

• Who is using open data, and why?
• Have dominant intermediaries emerged?