Person: Rozas Domingo, David
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First Name
David
Last Name
Rozas Domingo
Affiliation
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
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Informática
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Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial
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13 results
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Item Talk Is Silver, Code Is Gold? Beyond Traditional Notions of Contribution in Peer Production: The Case of Drupal(Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 2021) Rozas Domingo, David; Gilbert, Nigel; Hodkinson, Paul; Hassan Collado, SamerPeer production communities are based on the collaboration of communities of people, mediated by the Internet, typically to create digital commons, as in Wikipedia or free software. The contribution activities around the creation of such commons (e.g., source code, articles, or documentation) have been widely explored. However, other types of contribution whose focus is directed toward the community have remained significantly less visible (e.g., the organization of events or mentoring). This work challenges the notion of contribution in peer production through an in-depth qualitative study of a prominent “code-centric” example: the case of the free software project Drupal. Involving the collaboration of more than a million participants, the Drupal project supports nearly 2% of websites worldwide. This research (1) offers empirical evidence of the perception of “community-oriented” activities as contributions, and (2) analyzes their lack of visibility in the digital platforms of collaboration. Therefore, through the exploration of a complex and “code-centric” case, this study aims to broaden our understanding of the notion of contribution in peer production communities, incorporating new kinds of contributions customarily left invisible.Item Analysis of the Potentials of Blockchain for the Governance of Global Digital Commons(Frontiers in Blockchain, 2021) Rozas Domingo, David; Tenorio Fornés, Ámbar; Hassan Collado, SamerIn recent years, the increasing need for global coordination has attracted interest in the governance of global-scale commons. In the current context we observe how online applications are ubiquitous, and how emerging technologies enable new capabilities while reshaping sectors. Thus, it is pertinent to ask: could blockchain technologies facilitate the extension and scaling up of cooperative practices and commons management in this global context? In order to address this question, we propose a focus on the most paradigmatic and widely successful examples of global cooperation: non-rival global commons. Examples of these are the digital resources maintained by large peer production communities, such as free/libre open source software and Wikipedia. Thus, this article identifies and analyses the potentialities of blockchain to support the sustainability and management of non-rival global commons. Our approach draws on Elinor Ostrom’s classic principles for commons governance, although revisiting and adapting these to the more challenging scope of global commons. Thus, in this work we identify the affordances which blockchain provides (e.g. tokenisation, formalisation of rules, transparency or codification of trust) to support the effective management of this type of global commons based on these adapted Ostrom principles. As part of our analysis, we provide numerous examples of existing blockchain projects using affordances in line with each principle, as well as potential integrations of such affordances in existing practices of CBPP communities. Our analysis shows that, when considering the challenges of managing global commons (e.g. heterogeneity or scale), the potential of blockchain is particularly valuable to explore solutions that: distribute power, facilitate coordination, scale up governance, visibilise traditionally invisible work, monitor and track compliance with rules, define collective agreements, and enable cooperation across communities. These affordances and the subsequent analysis contribute to the emergent debate on blockchain-based forms of governance, first by providing analytical categories for further research, but also by providing a guide for experimentation with the development of blockchain tools to facilitate global cooperation.Item Exploring Organization through Contributions: using Activity Theory for the Study of Contemporary Digital Labour Practices(Research Methods for Digital Work and Organization: Investigating distributed, multi-modal and mobile work, 2021) Rozas Domingo, David; Huckle, Steven; Simon, Gillian; Pritchard, Katrina; Hine, ChristineThis chapter focuses on peer-production as a form of collaborative digital work, closely allied to crowdsourcing and other contemporary working practices that are mediated by digital platforms. Such platforms are a growing form of digital work; however, they raise complex methodological issues. First, although often a single collaborative platform coordinates groups, work can be distributed globally. Second, multimodal approaches require the researcher to transition between online and offline media. Finally, it can be challenging to identify what is ‘work’ as activity boundaries are blurred. It is argued that the use of Activity Theory overcomes some of these issues and its utility in an analysis of the production of the open source software, Drupal, is demonstrated, highlighting the potential for Activity Theory to enable cross-contextual comparisons and proposing the concept of ‘socio-technical systems of contribution’ as a way to understand interactions between networks of collaboration. The limitations of the approach and potential future developments are noted.Item Affordances of decentralised technologies for commons-based governance of shared technical infrastructure(Prospectives, 2020) Rozas Domingo, DavidIn this article I will illustrate affordances of decentralised technologies in the context of commons governance. My aim is to summarise the conversation around the lecture “When Ostrom Meets Blockchain: Exploring the Potentials of Blockchain for Commons Governance” I gave in the Mereologies Open Seminar organised by The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London on 25th April 2019. I will also extend the conversation by providing a concrete example of such affordances in the context of a community network.Item The platform belongs to those who work on it! Co-designing worker-centric task distribution models(2021) Rozas Domingo, David; Saldivar, Jorge; Zelickson, EveToday, digital platforms are increasingly mediating our day-to-day work and crowdsourced forms of labour are progressively gaining importance (e.g. Amazon Mechanical Turk, Universal Human Relevance System, TaskRabbit). In many popular cases of crowdsourcing, a volatile, diverse, and globally distributed crowd of workers compete among themselves to find their next paid task. The logic behind the allocation of these tasks typically operates on a "First-Come, First-Served" basis. This logic generates a competitive dynamic in which workers are constantly forced to check for new tasks. This article draws on findings from ongoing collaborative research in which we co-design, with crowdsourcing workers, three alternative models of task allocation beyond "First-Come, First-Served", namely (1) round-robin, (2) reputation-based, and (3) content-based. We argue that these models could create fairer and more collaborative forms of crowd labour. We draw on Amara On Demand, a remuneration-based crowdsourcing platform for video subtitling and translation, as the case study for this research. Using a multi-modal qualitative approach that combines data from 10 months of participant observation, 25 semi-structured interviews, two focus groups, and documentary analysis, we observed and co-designed alternative forms of task allocation in Amara on Demand. The identified models help envision alternatives towards more worker-centric crowdsourcing platforms, understanding that platforms depend on their workers, and thus ultimately they should hold power within them.Item Scanning the European Ecosystem of Distributed Ledger Technologies for Social and Public Good: What, Why, Where, How, and Ways to Move Forward(2020) Hassan Collado, Samer; Brekke, Jaya Klara; Atzori, Marcella; Bodó, Balázs; Meiklejohn, Sarah; De Filippi, Primavera; Beecroft, Kate; Rozas Domingo, David; Orgaz Alonso, Sergio Christian; Martínez Vicente, Elena; López Morales, Genoveva; Figueras Aguilar, Abel; Roque Mendes Pólvora, Alexander, ed.; Hakami, Anna, ed.; Bol, Erica, ed.Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), such as blockchains, are primarily tamper-resistant and time-stamped databases. They allow multiple parties to record, verify and share data on a peer-to-peer basis across a network, in decentralised, synchronised and transparent ways, with limited human intervention and reduced intermediate steps. These technologies are mostly known for business use cases, from cryptocurrencies to asset track and tracing. But there are numerous organisations nowadays searching for alternative ways to harness the potential of DLTs in the pursuit of public and social good, from local to global challenges, and towards more inclusive, cooperative, sustainable, ethical or accountable digital and physical worlds. This Science for Policy report explores the current status of this particular field both theoretically and empirically, in the framework of the project #DLT4Good: Co-creating a European Ecosystem of DLTs for Social and Public Good. Part One offers a conceptual overview of the connections between main features of DLTs and their potential for social and public good goals. Emphasis is placed on different approaches to decentralisation, and on core building blocks of DLTs linked with values such as trust, privacy, self-sovereignty, autonomy, inclusiveness, transparency, openness, or the commons. Part Two comprises a scanning of the current European ecosystem of DLT projects with activities in this field. It contains a summarized version of a database published online with 131 projects, and a quantitative review of main trends. It also includes a qualitative assessment of 10 projects selected from the larger sample to showcase this field and its diversity. Part Three concludes with six independent position papers and recommendations from experts and advisors of the #DLT4Good project. The main topics addressed range from decentralized governance to collaborative economies, with highlights on issues such as trust, verifiability, transparency, privacy or bottom-up coordination.Item When Ostrom Meets Blockchain: Exploring the Potentials of Blockchain for Commons Governance(SAGE Open, 2021) Rozas Domingo, David; Tenorio Fornés, Ámbar; Díaz Molina, Silvia; Hassan Collado, SamerBlockchain technologies have generated enthusiasm, yet their potential to enable new forms of governance remains largely unexplored. Two confronting standpoints dominate the emergent debate around blockchain-based governance: discourses characterized by the presence of techno-determinist and market-driven values, which tend to ignore the complexity of social organization; and critical accounts of such discourses which, while contributing to identifying limitations, consider the role of traditional centralized institutions as inherently necessary to enable democratic forms of governance. In this article, we draw on Ostrom’s principles for self-governance of communities to explore the transformative potential of blockchain beyond such standpoints. We approach blockchain through the identification and conceptualization of six affordances that this technology may provide to communities: tokenization, self-enforcement and formalization of rules, autonomous automatization, decentralization of power over the infrastructure, increasing transparency, and codification of trust. For each affordance, we carry out a detailed analysis situating each in the context of Ostrom’s principles, considering both the potentials of algorithmic governance and the importance of incorporating communities’ social practices into blockchain-based tools to foster forms of self-governance. The relationships found between these affordances and Ostrom’s principles allow us to provide a perspective focused on blockchain-based commons governance.Item Loosen Control Without Losing Control. Formalisation and Decentralisation within Commons-Based Peer Production(Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 2020) Rozas Domingo, David; Huckle, StevenThis study considers commons-based peer production (CBPP) by examining the organizational processes of the free/libre open-source software community, Drupal. It does so by exploring the sociotechnical systems that have emerged around both Drupal's development and its face-to-face communitarian events. There has been criticism of the simplistic nature of previous research into free software; this study addresses this by linking studies of CBPP with a qualitative study of Drupal's organizational processes. It focuses on the evolution of organizational structures, identifying the intertwined dynamics of formalization and decentralization, resulting in coexisting sociotechnical systems that vary in their degrees of organicity.Item Research informing policy: an analysis of an emerging blockchain-enabled collaborative economy(Scanning the European Ecosystem of Distributed Ledger for Social and Public Good Technologies, 2020) Hassan Collado, Samer; Rozas Domingo, DavidItem Maintaining an affective commons through events: a practice-based study of three collaborative communities(2020) Rozas Domingo, David; Resch, Bernhard; Díaz Molina, Silvia