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The progressive roots of civic data hacking can be found in early 20th-century notions of \u201cpublicity\u201d and the right to information movement. Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data. I conclude civic hackers are utopian realists involved in the crafting of algorithmic power and discussing ethics of technology design. They may be misunderstood because open data remediates previous forms of openness. In the process, civic hackers transgress established boundaries of political participation.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/1461444816629469","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,16]],"date-time":"2016-02-16T21:21:09Z","timestamp":1455657669000},"page":"581-599","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":126,"title":["Civic hacking as data activism and advocacy: A history from publicity to open government data"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"18","author":[{"given":"Andrew R","family":"Schrock","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Southern California, USA"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,2,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/09505439609526455"},{"key":"bibr2-1461444816629469","volume-title":"The conscientious hacker: an ethnography of identity and community among hackathons","author":"Bassett N","year":"2013"},{"key":"bibr3-1461444816629469","first-page":"138","volume-title":"Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community","author":"Baym NK","year":"1995"},{"key":"bibr4-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/1461444809336551"},{"key":"bibr5-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/jcc4.12050"},{"key":"bibr6-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/106591290105400103"},{"key":"bibr7-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0263276411427744"},{"key":"bibr8-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/1369118X.2012.678878"},{"key":"bibr9-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.7551\/mitpress\/9693.001.0001"},{"key":"bibr10-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1475-682X.1998.tb00474.x"},{"key":"bibr11-1461444816629469","volume-title":"Networking Peripheries: Technological Futures and the Myth of Digital Universalism","author":"Chan AS","year":"2013"},{"key":"bibr12-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1353\/anq.2004.0035"},{"key":"bibr13-1461444816629469","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Coleman G (2009) Code is speech: legal tinkering, expertise, and protest among free and open source software developers. 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