E Participation Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- E Government, Social Media, E Participation, Open Government
- by Naoum Liotas and +2
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- Public Administration, Mobile Technology, E Participation, Information and Communication technology

1 As information and communication technologies (ICTs) have diffused throughout the customary forms of works and services, various models, theories and approaches have emerged and been developed to measure how and to what extent people accept technologically transformed products and services in the e-government domain. Despite the existence of applicable models regarding the acceptance and diffusion of e-government and e-participation, the current literature has failed to fully cover citizens' expectations due to factors affecting complex and organic bonds between states and citizens (i.e. trust). This study aims to discuss whether and how trust serves as an intermediary function with regard to technology acceptance models on e-government in general but e-participation in particular. This review finds (1) that it is necessary to develop a comprehensive approach for a trust-building environment regarding e-participation and (2) that trust in e-participation can be consolidated through interrelation among and within parties. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Computers in other domains → Computing in government → E-government KEYWORDS Trust Model, e-Participation, Literature Review ACM Reference format: Burcu Demirdoven, Ecem Buse Sevinc Cubuk, Naci Karkin. 2020. Establishing relational trust in e-Participation: a systematic literature review to propose a model. In

- by Naci KARKIN and +1
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- Public Administration, Trust, E Participation, e-Participation

The objective of this research paper is to assess the e-governance maturity of state governments in India. A case study research design has been adopted. Five Indian states viz. Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra were selected. Data was gathered through the researcher's interactivity and exchanges with the selected state governments' official websites. Data gathered was tested against the e-governance maturity framework adopted for the purpose of the study. Assessment of the e-governance maturity of the selected state governments was basically conducted by identifying the government websites' fulfillment of the characteristics of various stages of the e-governance maturity framework adopted. The findings of the study indicate that the state governments have soared to the transactional stage of e-governance maturity, GoR, GoM and GoMP in a full-fledged capacity, GoA and GoUP in a limited capacity. Among all the government websites under study, none could reach the integration or the participation stage of e-governance maturity. The findings of this study can serve as crucial input in understanding the gaps in government utilisation of internet platform and web technologies and also appreciate the accomplishments of the states in pursuit of e-governance in India.

- by IAEME Publication
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- E Participation, ICTs, E-Services, E-democracy

To what extent is political participation deepened and enriched by the Internet? Is the Internet more inclusive—especially towards the young—than traditional forms of participation requiring physical contact? Do people learn more by discussing on the Internet—and especially in online political forums—than by deliberating face-to-face? We aim to answer these questions by presenting the results of research based on the observation of a deliberative experience that allowed both online and face-to-face participation, namely the IDEAL-EU project, carried out by the Tuscany (Italy), Catalonia (Spain), and Poitou-Charentes (France) regions. IDEALEU was aimed at involving young people—between ages 14 and 30—to discuss the issue of climate change in order to produce a report to be handed to the President of the European Parliament Commission on Climate Change.
It first consisted in online discussion forums, and then in an electronic town meeting organized in the three regions' capitals in November 2008. This town meeting involved both keypad voting and face-to-face discussions in small groups. The comparison of these two stages of the experience allows evaluation of the respective effects of online and face-to-face
political discussions on young participants’ political knowledge.
Using content analysis of websites, direct observation of the assembly, and interviews and questionnaires completed by both online and assembly participants, we evaluate the respective effects of these different forms of civic engagement for actors' perceived level of knowledge on climate change and on their political competence more generally.

The objective of this policy paper is to help governments foster citizen participation. Therefore,
it addresses the following issues:
• How can citizens be motivated to participate?
• What can be done to reduce abandonment rates?
• Are there any differences between offline and online participation regarding enrolment and abandonment?
In order to answer these questions and provide policy recommendations, the authors rely on two case studies of Spanish cities allowing both online and offline participation.
Fostering citizen participation requires governments:
• To clearly define the objective of their participative projects;
• To provide citizens with relevant and understandable information at all stages;
• To design projects in such a way as to reduce the time citizen participation consumes;
• To enroll civil society organizations first because citizens who are already engaged are more likely to maintain participation over time;
• To adequately transmit positive and tangible benefits to participants.
The policy paper also shows that
• Online and offline participants usually have different socio-demographic profiles and drop-out rates;
• e-Participation tools allow reaching a larger audience, but involve a higher drop-out rate. Accordingly, some sporadic face-to-face meetings or phone calls should be considered to maintain loyalty.

- by Sonia Royo and +1
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- Community Engagement & Participation, E Participation, Citizen participation

The subject of this paper is an examination of the connection between the most quoted and widely used indexes of the e-government and e-participation presented by the United Nations and the actual use of basic e-government activites of inviduals (as a part of the electronic participation) in the European Union. My main question is the following: could the UN's mostly infrastructural readiness-based indexes tell us anything about the actual level of goverment-to-citizen interactions? In this paper my primary goal is to answer the question above.

- by Péter Molnár
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- E Participation, E-Government, Epi, EGDI

W przeciwieństwie do zasad zwykle stosowanych w przypadku słowników biograficznych, zespół redakcyjny niniejszego tomu postanowił pozostawić autorom stosunkowo szeroki zakres swobo- dy w kwestii konstrukcji biogramów. Zasadnicza struktura jest jed- nak wspólna dla wszystkich zamieszczonych w Leksykonie artykułów. Każdy rozpoczyna się metryką, zawierającą informacje o datach i miejscach urodzin oraz zgonu opisywanej postaci, spis używanych pseudonimów, podstawowe informacje dotyczące rodziców oraz wy- kaz najwyższych pełnionych przez nią stanowisk państwowych. Dalej następuje – stanowiąca trzon artykułu – obszerna nota biograficzna, całość wieńczy zaś zwięzła bibliografia. Aby uniknąć nadmiernego rozrostu not bibliograficznych, zdecy- dowano się na ograniczenie ich jedynie do monografii, artykułów i re- lacji bezpośrednio odnoszących się do bohatera danego tekstu oraz biogramów zawartych w słownikach biograficznych, leksykonach, czy encyklopediach historycznych. Wierzymy, że zastosowanie tego roz- wiązania umożliwi Czytelnikom stosunkowo łatwe dotarcie do lite- ratury szczegółowej, pozwalającej poszerzyć wiedzę na temat losów każdej z prezentowanych w Leksykonie postaci, chroniąc jednocześnie przed licznymi powtórzeniami tytułów najważniejszych monografii naukowych poświęconych różnym aspektom aktywności środowiska piłsudczykowskiego. Ze względu na funkcjonującą w literaturze przedmiotu różnorod- ność sposobów zapisu dwuczłonowych nazwisk przedstawicieli obozu piłsudczykowskiego zdecydowaliśmy się na konsekwentne stosowanie w Leksykonie reguły zapisu umieszczającej dołączony do nazwiska przydomek lub herb szlachecki przed nazwiskiem rodowym. Reguła ta została zastosowana zarówno w treści poszczególnych tekstów, jak i przy procesie aranżacji artykułów w kolejności alfabetycznej. Stąd też w tomie pierwszym znajdzie czytelnik teksty o Tadeuszu Brzęku- -Osińskim czy Michale Tadeuszu Karaszewiczu-Tokarzewskim, a w tomie drugim przyjdzie mu szukać informacji o Bolesławie Wieniawie-Długoszowskim czy Marianie Zyndramie-Kościałkowskim. W publikacji celowo unikano również stosowania terminów „sa- nacja”, „sanatorzy”, „sanacyjny”, jako że już od końca lat 20. XX wieku obrastały one wyraźnie pejoratywnymi konotacjami, wynikającymi ze sposobu w jaki stosowali je zarówno nieprzychylni funkcjonujące- mu od 1926 r. reżimowi komentatorzy polityczni międzywojnia, jak i niemała grupa historyków zajmujących się dziejami Drugiej Rzeczy- pospolitej w okresie PRL. Zamiast tego, konsekwentnie używane są mniej obciążone sformułowania, takie jak „obóz pomajowy”, „obóz rządzący” czy „ piłsudczycy”.

- by Jakub Szlachetko
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- Development Studies, Public Management, Political Participation, Urban Politics

Information and communication technology (ICT) can make rapid changes in government processes, especially in developing countries. Basis of ICT development is composed of ICT infrastructure, ICT hardware, software & information system, human resource, ICT Security. ICT strategies and ICT plans should be evaluated to align with organization visions and missions in order to achieve effective use of ICT in their businesses.
This study carries out a framework to check the e-readiness of the 5 ministries of Nepal. This study will identify the status of the ministries to obtain benefits which raises from information and communication technologies. It will help to assist government of Nepal to gauge how ready the ministries are to participate in ICT activities such as e-government in terms of six main ICT factors, software and information system, ICT
Hardware, Network system, ICT Plans and policies, ICT security and Human Resource.

- by Dr. Abhijit Gupta and +2
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- E Government, E Readiness, E Participation, Nepal

This paper investigates determinants of online deliberation by way of a comparative study of 28 online forums initiated by the EU-commission as a part on the 2009 European Citizens Consultations. The cases analyzed in this paper share the same design (technological, as well as process), have the same connection to the policy process, were moderated in the same way, and implemented simultaneously. Still, great divergences are apparent in the level of deliberation occurring on the forums. Some of the forum discussions between participants were scarce and voting was the dominating form of participation, while on other forums discussion
was much more intense. The empirical analysis is conducted through a hypothetic deductive approach investigating four hypotheses about determinants of online deliberation grounded in prior studies and deliberative democratic theory. The analysis investigates the effects on the level of deliberation of: the number of participants, the diversity of opinion, the occurrence of a aggregative dynamic as well as the level of engagement among participants. The results of the analysis indicate that diversity of opinion on the forum and a high level of engagement among participants seem to have reinforcing effects on online deliberation while the number of participants and the aggregative dynamic on the forums seem unrelated to the level of deliberation. These results paint a picture of online deliberation as a more robust form of political participation than earlier studies have claimed. As a recommendation for practitioners of online deliberation, the results can be interpreted as saying: do not fear mass participation, controversial topics, or combining voting and deliberation. Instead, focus your attention on finding forms and issues that promote a high level of engagement and interest from participants.

- by Martin Karlsson
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- Public Deliberation, European Union, E Participation
- by Michela Balocchi
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- Political Participation, E Participation
- by Vasiliki Vrana
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- Blogs, E Participation, Academia Edu

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative trade-offs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.

- by Araz 𝖳aeihagh
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- Business, Information Systems, Business Administration, Information Science

Models of public governance are changing profoundly due to global and digital transformations and various context-specific societal pressures. One direction of development is the increased utilisation of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in facilitating governance practices. Such changes are intended to improve the performance of public organisations, the quality of democratic governance, and the cost-effectiveness of service delivery. This article outlines the potentials of technological trends in building governance platforms. The discussion is based on such influential trends as open source movement, Web 2.0, geoinformatics, and ubiquitous technologies. An approach that takes into account such e-enabled platform solutions is called platform orientation in public governance, which offers a framework for supporting policy and governance informatics. It’s supposed to provide new tools to create structured environments for governance and the capacity to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of public organisations as governance actors. Such e-enabled governance platforms are an answer to the needs of a highly complex and technologically meditated society with a special view to providing easy access to governance processes, encouraging creativity, sharing information in a cost-effective way, and integrating services and governance processes so that the processes are comprehensible, easy, and value-adding for citizens and other stakeholders.

- by Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko
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- Community Informatics, Public Administration, Web 2.0, Informatics

O estudo faz uma análise das iniciativas civis brasileiras que têm como pretensão
oferecer transparência online e participação política através do ambiente digital. O
objetivo é avaliar a atuação da sociedade civil na criação e gerenciamento destas
iniciativas para entender (se há e) quais são os ganhos democráticos que estes projetos
digitais oferecem ao cidadão. A revisão de literatura busca delimitar conceitos centrais
para esta pesquisa, como o de democracia digital, suas características e possibilidades,
o de iniciativas de democracia digital e o de ganhos democráticos. Em seguida ressaltase,
sobretudo, a existência de dois pilares em termos de requisitos democráticos básicos,
a transparência e a participação. O primeiro se materializa no provimento de
informações relevantes, claras, acessíveis e inteligíveis sobre a esfera de decisão
política, enquanto o segundo viabiliza atividades participativas, distribuídas neste
trabalho em três grandes áreas (expressão de reivindicações civis, participação e
democracia direta e deliberação online), além de ressaltar a importância da motivação
para que os cidadãos de fato participem, bem como de canais eficazes para que a eparticipação
aconteça. A análise de iniciativas civis de democracia digital é feita na
tentativa de se preencher uma lacuna existente na literatura da área, que prioriza a
avaliação de iniciativas governamentais. Foram analisadas iniciativas criadas e geridas
pela esfera civil e endereçadas aos cidadãos chamando a atenção para o fato de que os
interesses dos cidadãos isolados podem, muitas vezes, divergir do interesse de atores
coletivos da sociedade civil. Buscou-se desenvolver uma revisão de literatura que
oferecesse subsídios para o embasamento da parte empírica, que se divide em dois
momentos. No primeiro, é feita uma análise preliminar para a categorização das
iniciativas de acordo com os atores envolvidos, questões técnicas, cumprimento de
propósitos pré-estabelecidos e resultados. Esta prospecção permitiu que as iniciativas
fossem enquadradas nas categorias da e-transparência e da e-participação, e que fossem
identificadas aquelas mais completas em termos de cumprimento de requisitos
democráticos. Em um segundo momento, foram traçados pressupostos e uma hipótese
de pesquisa. Metodologias específicas de análise foram desenvolvidas e aplicadas para a
avaliação das iniciativas então destacadas anteriormente. As análises resultaram em
conclusões tanto acerca de seus aspectos técnicos quanto qualitativos. Ao fim, concluise
que iniciativas civis de democracia digital brasileiras podem, sim, contribuir no
cumprimento de metas democráticas como o reforço do controle e vigilância do cidadão
aos atores políticos e instituições, como verificado no Projeto Excelências do
Transparência Brasil, ou através da discussão sobre políticas públicas e da promoção de
espaço para novas vozes, como no caso do Cidade Democrática, o que leva, via de
consequência, à ganhos democráticos ao cidadão como a possibilidade de influência na
tomada de decisões e o fortalecimento da esfera da cidadania.Ressalta-se, todavia, que
as iniciativas tomadas como exemplo não podem generalizar a atual situação das einiciativas
civis brasileiras que, em sua maioria, não apresentam tantas possibilidades ao
permitirem a participação do cidadão sem garantir que esta implicará em resultados
efetivos.

kamu yönetimine katılımın e-araçları

- by Nur ŞAT
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- Public Administration, E Participation, Citizen participation, Electronic Participation

O artigo está sistematizado em três seções principais, além das considerações e recomendações finais. Em um primeiro momento, contextualizar-se-á a adoção de iniciativas de governo digital como resposta às demandas por modernização e democratização da gestão pública na Era Digital. A segunda seção abordará o tema específico da democracia digital, definida enquanto uma das dimensões possíveis de governo digital no que se refere especificamente ao emprego das novas tecnologias para oportunizar o controle social e a participação cidadã no ciclo de políticas públicas.
Já na terceira seção, serão apresentados estudos de caso de três experiências brasileiras e-participação, com o fim de depreender as potencialidades e os possíveis constrangimentos ao desenvolvimento da democracia digital no país. Foram objeto de análise as consultas públicas eletrônicas promovidas pelo Governo Federal, o Gabinete Digital do Governo do Estado do Rio
Grande do Sul e o Orçamento Participativo Digital, da Prefeitura de Belo Horizonte. A título de conclusão, os principais pontos do trabalho são retomados e alguns desafios e perspectivas ao desenvolvimento do tema no Brasil são levantados, dentre os quais se destacam questões de ordem política, organizacional e institucional, além do problema da exclusão digital.

- by Ana Júlia Possamai
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- E Participation, Democracy, Participatory Democracy, E-Government

The emergence of the digital revolution has obligated governments all over the world to be more accessible,
effective and accountable in the provision of public services. The South Africa government has implemented various
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) enabled platforms in engaging citizens in decision-making, a
resultant effect of high world E-government Development Index (EGDI) rating for the country. Irrespective of the rating,
the citizens have resorted to public violence as a means of communicating about unsatisfactory service delivery issues.
The South African government has continued to witness numerous service delivery protests, resulting in destruction of
public property, injury and death of innocent citizens. This article therefore evaluates the application of e-participation in
government decision-making, using a three-dimensional framework of e-enabling, e-engaging and e-empowering. The
findings show that structural challenges exist that limit the achievement of the good intentions of e-participation. The
article relies heavily on existing data and focuses at local municipal level, which is considered the closest point of contact
between government and citizens.

- by Lifescience Global Canada
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- Government, E Participation, Service Delivery

Decentralized civic engagement, i.e. engagement which is not initiated and managed by government, has been often used as a popular slogan in various public speeches to highlight the importance of genuine civic interests in governance, yet offering very limited options on how to actually promote such involvement. The advent of the digital era has facilitated the development of a plethora of digital participatory platforms that could presumably help to boost the effective engagement of civic communities in decision making processes in an explicitly decentralized manner and, more so, the demand for such decentralized e-participation services is increasing during the current Covid-19 crisis. However, there is a real shortage of studies that directly focus on the analysis of such autonomous cases and all the more so from real life contexts in their natural settings. In this regard, this paper aims to fill the gap by analyzing the phenomena from an intrinsically peer-to-peer networking perspective, which could be observed today in popular autonomous civic engagement initiatives that have been launched in recent times in the area.

- by Maxat Kassen
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- E Government, E Participation, Peer-to-Peer, E-Governance

Electronic Participation (e-Participation) initiatives, seen as the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for facilitating citizen participation in the policy decision making process, have often had a limited success of citizens' engagement. Despite utilizing social media as a potential solution to remedy this limitation, many of such initiatives particularly those sponsored by governments, continue to suffer of low citizen involvement. This fact raises crucial questions about citizens’ incentives, attitude and adoption towards this interaction.
While e-Participation initiatives seek to empower citizens with ICT so as to be able to involve and impact decision making processes. Typically, examining and predicting citizens’ engagement cannot exclude the possibility role of various human behavior factors besides technology one. Significantly, information systems (IS) discipline consider the intersection of artifacts, humans, and tasks when investigate a phenomenon and reveals several theoretical models primarily developed from psychology and sociology theories. In thus, the current in progress research ultimate aim to derive and validate an integrative citizen adoption model. The model will be based on distilled the main critical social, behavior and technological factors related to the explanation and prediction of citizen’ adoption to involve in government-led e-Participation initiatives through social media

- by Ayman Alarabiat
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- Social Media, E Participation, E-Government, Open Government

D’une part, la « démocratie électronique » peut être conçue comme l’ensemble des expérimentations et réalisations conduisant à accroître la participation des citoyens « en greffant des formes de démocratie directe sur les mécanismes habituels de la démocratie représentative » (Rodotà, 1999, p. 48). D’autre part, une conception extensive de la « démocratie électronique » conduirait à s’intéresser plus largement à la pluralité des expériences politiques mobilisant les TIC, à travers les prises de parole des citoyens non contraintes par les pouvoirs publics, et concourant de ce fait à reconfigurer la forme de l’espace public traditionnel (Cardon, 2010).
Ce texte propose d’associer les problématiques soulevées par ces deux perspectives en questionnant les pratiques d’Internet au regard des éléments traditionnellement constitutifs de la participation – l’information, la discussion et l’engagement des citoyens à travers diverses formes d’action collectives et au sein des partis politiques.

Einordnung elektronischer Partizipation.

- by Oliver Märker
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- E Participation, Citizen participation, Electronic Participation

Literature has shown that countries such as Brazil and India have successfully implemented electronic voting systems and other countries are at various piloting stages to address many challenges associated with manual paper based system such ascosts of physical ballot paper and other overheads, electoral delays, distribution of electoral materials, and general lack of confidence in the electoral process. It is in this context that this study explores how South African can leverage the opportunities that e-voting presents. Manual voting is often tedious, non-secure, and time-consuming, which leads us to think about using electronic facilities to make the process more efficient. This study proposes that the adoption of electronic voting technologies could perhaps mitigate some of these issues and challengesin the process improving the electoral process. The study used an on-line questionnaire which was administered to a broader group of voters and an in-depth semi-structured interview with the Independent Electoral Commission officials. The analysis is based on thematic analysis and diffusion of innovations theory is adopted as a theoretical lens of analysis. The findings reveal that relative advantage, compatibility and complexity would determine the intentions of South African voters and the Electoral Management Bodies (IEC) to adopt e-voting technologies. Moreover, the findings also reveal several other factorsthat could influence the adoption process. The study is limited to only voters in Cape Town and these voters were expected to have some access to the internet. The sample size limits the generalizability of the findings of this study.

- by Ephias Ruhode and +1
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- E Participation, e-Democracy, E-voting

This article analyses the presence and activity on the field of social media in the countries that belonged to the same state in the past: Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH), Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – these named as Western Balkan Countries (WBCs) – and, Slovenia and Croatia as EU member states. The authors have analysed the official profiles of the respective countries on social media and calculated the Facebook Assessment Index (FAI) for WBCs, and Croatia and Slovenia as a benchmark. The results show that Twitter and Facebook are the most used social media. In WBCs group, the FAI index could not be calculated for BIH and Serbia, while the other two countries had high index values. Benchmark countries have lower values but they are significantly highlighted by individual sub-indices. The governments of the researched countries mostly publish promotional information about their work. Consequently, they have a relatively small number of friends...

- by Mirela Mabić
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- Political Science, Social Media, Facebook, Twitter
- by Arturo Di Bella
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- Urban Geography, Urban Studies, E Participation

ICT communications have not been either a complete boon or an unmitigated bane for antigovernment activists in South Korea.
The internet and social media have made it easier for government to respond to its critics.
More people are becoming aware of legal and internet architectural frameworks through experience.
Pervasive self-censorship as the result of government censorship.
Chilling effect.
Information and dialog necessary for democratic governance impeded.

- by Chad Anderson and +1
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- Social Media, E Participation

Nowadays “education for citizenship” is presented as a solution for many of the political, social, and co-existential issues in Western democratic societies in order to tackle dysfunctionalities produced by globalization, populism, migration, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and violence. At the same time, particularly among “millennials” or “digital natives”, lack of civil commitment and apathy toward politics as a whole contrasts with their intensive usage of digital social networks, or social media. By exploring potential conceptual correlations between the use of digital social networks and civilian participation among “millennials”, this paper presents two widely studied paradigmatic events of democratic regeneration: the “Kitchenware Revolution” in Iceland after the financial collapse on 6 October 2008, and the “15M Movement” in Spain after 15 May 2011. Despite the substantial relevance that digital social networks played in both cases, this paper wonders to what extent digital social networks foster millennials’ civilian participation, when, paradoxically, they seem to be the population target who contests the status quo but who is not actually being represented democratically in the formal political system. The author concludes that digital social networks could initially foster civilian participation, but they should be seen as a new artefact that, itself, does not necessarily lead to a better political representation of millennials. As well, this paper argues against the widespread assumption regarding the correlation between socioeconomic and educational status and Internet usage factors of millennials when it comes to civilian participation in extreme political mobilisation events such as the Kitchenware Revolution and 15M.

- by Rido P Panjaitan
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- Public Administration, Indonesian Studies, Indonesia, E Participation

The objective of this article is to provide an initial assessment of Facebook use by Western European municipalities considering two aspects: citizens’ engagement and municipalities’ activity. Data on 75 local governments in 15 countries were collected and tested for both government use and citizens’ engagement. Findings show that the use of Facebook by Western European local governments has become commonplace. The audiences of the official Facebook pages are rather high, but citizen engagement in general is low. Activity levels by municipalities and engagement levels by citizens in general terms are not statistically related to municipality characteristics, Facebook page metrics, or the technological readiness of the population. It seems that channel activity is more a decision on the part of local governments than a consequence of citizen demand. This article proposes a methodology that can be used in future research to measure citizen engagement on social media (SM) platforms. Fu...

- by Enrique Bonson
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- Political Science, Local Government, E Government, Social Media

Abstract There is a very limited empirical research examining the impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement on social media platforms, and basically none within the public sector. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of media and content types on stakeholders' engagement on Western European local governments' Facebook pages. The sample includes 15-member countries of the EU via 75 local governments belonging to four different public administration styles, analyzing 50 posts from each municipality. The posts were coded into 16 content types (e.g. environment, housing) and 5 media types (e.g. video, text), respectively. Metrics of popularity, commitment, virality and engagement were also computed for each post. Results show that the most used media types are links and photos. Cultural activities, sports and marketing related topics are the most widely posted by Western European local governments, but these contents do not seem to be the most relevant for citizens. Local governments' preferences to different media and content types seem to depend on the institutional context. Significant differences on engagement levels by citizens have also been found among media and content types and in different institutional contexts. This study provides practitioners and academics with some initial research findings about the effect of different communicational strategies on citizen engagement, which are very important factors in order to improve the effectiveness of e-participation offerings.

- by Enrique Bonson
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- Computer Science, Public Administration, Social Networking, Government

This report aims at providing an overview of the normative and institutional state of art of ICT-mediated citizen participation in Spain. The first section provides an overview of the political and civic liberties framework in Netherlands. In the second section the landscape of ICT mediated citizen engagement is mapped. In the third section, the report engages with implications of technology mediations for deliberative democracy and transformative citizenship.

- by Ismael Peña-López
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- E Participation, e-Participation, e-Democracy, Technopolitics

Many researchers have assumed that social media will reduce inequalities between elite politicians and those outside the political mainstream and that it will thus benefit democracy, as it circumvents the traditional media that focus too much on a few elite politicians. I test this assumption by investigating the association between U.S. Representatives using Twitter and their fundraising. Evidence suggests that (1) politicians' adoptions of social media have yielded increased donations from outside their constituencies but little from within their own constituencies; (2) politicians with extreme ideologies tend to benefit more from their social media adoptions; and (3) the political use of social media may yield a more unequal distribution of financial resources among candidates. Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings for political equality, polarization, and democracy.

- by Sounman Hong
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- Media Studies, New Media, Digital Media, Political Campaigns

The aim of this chapter is to see whether online discussion forums dedicated to popular culture (reality TV) provide a communicative space, content and style for politics that extends the public sphere. Given their typically casual, chatty and frivolous nature, we might assume that political talk doesn’t emerge in such spaces, and if it does, it would fall well short of the type of talk crucial to the public sphere. To what extent does political talk emerge in such spaces? If so, do such forums fulfil the requirements of rationality and ‘decent’ deliberation? Given the nature of the forums, the analysis moves beyond a formal notion of deliberation by also taking into account the use of expressive speech acts: emotion, humour and acknowledgements. What role do ‘expressives’ play within online political talk and how do they impact the normative conditions of deliberation? Moreover, comparing these spaces with a space dedicated to high politics – the Guardian political discussion forum – allows us to see whether, as critics would expect, deliberative talk is taking place in the one and emotional and irrational talk in the other.

- by Todd Graham
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- Communication, Media Studies, New Media, Media and Cultural Studies

Whilst the idea of utilizing social media to advance government-led e-Participation initiatives has proliferated significantly in recent years, mostly such initiatives do not meet the intended expectations, as the majority of them fail to attract wider citizens' audience. Overall, the key factors that could explain and predict citizens' participation are not yet thoroughly identified. Therefore, the current study develops a theoretical citizen-centric model that seeks to explain and predict the intention of citizens' behavior towards their involvement in government-led e-Participation initiatives through social media. The methodological approach is primarily based on utilizing and extending one of the well-known theories for describing a person acceptance behavior, namely the Theory of Planned Behavior. The model applies the main constructs of the Theory – attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control; and complements them with several constructs drawn from relevant literature. The paper contributes to understanding the reasons why citizens decide to engage or not in government-led e-Participation initiatives through social media.

- by Ayman Alarabiat
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- Theory of Planned Behaviour, Social Media, E Participation, E-Government

It is widely acknowledge that many of e-Participation initiatives often attract wider audience and face serious limited citizens’ involvement. The use of social media has been seen as a hope to remedy such limitation. However, despite the recently adoption of social media the lack of citizens’ involvement in e-Participation initiatives still remains. This ongoing research paper aims at producing a general overview of e-Participation through social media.
So far, the latest research works on such topic have been predominantly focused on a political context of e-Participation, where politicians-citizens interactions and activities are the central interest of the studies. Little existing studies investigate e-Participation in its own right in government context. The findings also reveal that the majority of e-Participation through social media initiatives are more informative than interactive, since few initiatives have been found that aim to considerably enhance citizen participation in policy decision making.

- by Ayman Alarabiat
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- Social Media, E Participation, E-Government, e-Democracy

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for politically-orientated discussion forums, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. People talk politics just about anywhere online from reality TV discussion forums to numerous other forum genres. Thus, the need to tap into those discussions is important if our aim is to provide a more comprehensive overview of the online discursive landscape. However, widening our scope of analysis presents us with a new set of difficulties, namely, how do we identify political talk within the vast pool of threads and postings, and how do we assess such talk in light of the public sphere, while at the same time, taking into account its informal nature. The aim of this article is to tackle these questions by presenting a methodological approach, which attempts to detect, describe, and assess political talk in non-political discussion forums.

- by Todd Graham
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- Communication, Media Studies, New Media, Media and Cultural Studies

How social media can enable opportunities for collaboration between citizens and governments is an evolving issue in theory and practice. This paper examines the dynamic aspects of collaboration in the context of the 2011 riots in England. In August 2011, parts of London and other cities in England suffered from extensive disorder and even loss of human lives. Based on a dataset of 1746 posts by 81 local government Twitter accounts during or shortly after the riots, we explore how local authorities attempted to reduce the effects of the riots and support community recovery. Using Twitter's conversational and rapid update features, they produced a variety of informational and actionable messages with clear calls for offline or online action. In some cases, collective against the riots evolved in a mutual way: not only citizens were mobilized by local authorities, but also local authorities actively promoted actions initiated by citizens.

- by Panos Panagiotopoulos
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- Social Networking, Collaboration, Local Government, Social Media

Crowdsourcing is rapidly evolving and applied in situations where ideas, labour, opinion or expertise of large groups of people are used. Crowdsourcing is now used in various policy-making initiatives; however, this use has usually focused on open collaboration platforms and specific stages of the policy process, such as agenda-setting and policy evaluations. Other forms of crowdsourcing have been neglected in policy-making, with a few exceptions. This article examines crowdsourcing as a tool for policy-making, and explores the nuances of the technology and its use and implications for different stages of the policy process. The article addresses questions surrounding the role of crowdsourcing and whether it can be considered as a policy tool or as a technological enabler and investigates the current trends and future directions of crowdsourcing.

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel framework of E-Participation which covers complexity factors capturing technological and non-technological aspects. This paper is based on desk research collating together previous E-Participation frameworks (Kalampokis, Tambouris & Tarabanis (2008), Phang & Kankanhalli (2008), Macintosh (2004) and others) and enhancing to context complexity.
The previous frameworks mostly captured specific E-Participation aspects separately without connecting with environmental drivers and barriers which are also likely to have factors influencing E-Participation. Considering environmental drivers and barriers are important to make E-Participation implementation succesfull and match the spesific context.
The proposed framework captures complex factors related to E-Participation implementation including politics, economics, social, cultural, education and technology. The research uses Actor Network Theory (ANT) to capture the main actors in the E-Participation context. In the proposed framework, there are three main groups of actors consisting of governmental institutions, technology and people where technology acts as a conduit between people and government. People use technology as part of the participation process with government institutions. Government also uses technology to encourage engagement from people. This framework also llustrates processes between government institutions, technology and people influenced by drivers and barriers from social, politics, economics, education, culture and legal forces. Those drivers and barriers also have interaction between each others and can be different based on the environment. Different environments may have different drivers and barriers.
Hopefully this novel framework makes contribution to the E-Participation area by providing a tool to capture the main actors and influences in the E-Participation process. It also provides a base to consider the roles of different technology channels in the people-government relationship. The framework will be important for researchers and practitioners, especially policy makers in the government institutions in order to help them map the E-Participation context (such as people to government participation processes and technological channels as well as government to people engagement processes and each of the technological channels) needed to implement E-Participation successfully.

- by Muhammad Yusuf
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- E Participation

Over the last decade, the European Commission has supported and initiated participatory engineering projects to foster the participation of European citizens in EU affairs. The 2009 European Citizens Consultations (ECC) is the quantitatively largest and methodologically most complex of these projects so far, featuring multiple actors, phases and instruments of participation. The ECC project is analysed in this chapter, addressing the case of the ECC online forum in Sweden, and focusing on the complex design of the project. The origin of this complexity can be traced back to the Commission’s strategies for promoting citizen participation, and the project is analysed in relation to three tensions originating from this project design: 1) the combination of aggregative and deliberative means of participation; 2) the promotion of a deliberative form of participation in an online setting; and 3) the combination of separate participant groups in one project. In the concluding part of the chapter, he normative implications of these tensions for the Commission’s participatory engineering are discussed. The conclusion of the chapter recommends pursuing a simpler and more theoretically consistent design of participatory engineering that addresses more isolated objectives.

- by Martin Karlsson
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- European Union, E Participation

ÖZET Demokrasi geleneği yerelde kazanılan ve yerelden ulusala aktarılan bir gelenektir. Bu anlamda yerel yönetimler ve demokrasi arasında incelenmesi gereken özel bir ilişki olduğu bilinmektedir. Bu ilişki uzun yıllardır birçok uzman tarafından farklı yönlerden incelenmiş ve analiz edilmiştir. Bu kapsamda çalışmada Türkiye’de gelişmekte olan bir olgu olan e-katılım olgusu yerel anlamda demokrasinin bir kaynağı olarak incelenmektedir. Zira katılım demokrasinin işlemesi için hayati bir öneme sahiptir. Günümüz şartlarında yönetim anlayışının bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerinde yaşanan gelişmelere ayak uydurması ve zamanı yakalaması ihtiyacından dolayı da e-katılım uygulamaları da öne çıkan bir konu olmuştur. Çalışma öncelikle yerel yönetimler ile demokrasi arasındaki ilişkiden, bu ilişki sonucunda ortaya çıkmış olan yerel demokrasi, demokratik yerel yönetim ve yerel özerklik kavramlarından ve katılım kavramlarından bahsederek konunun gelişimine yönelik gerekli ön bilgiyi aktarmaktadır. Daha sonrasında e-katılım kavramının tanımlanması ve açıklanması ile birlikte yerelde e-katılımın önemi, etkileri ve uygulama alanları üzerine bir tartışma ortaya koymaktadır. Türkiye’de henüz gelişmekte olan ve uygulama alanı dar olan e-katılım olgusunun açıklanması, yaratacağı faydanın ifade edilmesi ve uygulama önerileri verilmesi ile çalışma sonuçlandırılmaktadır. Çalışma e-katılım uygulamalarının yerel anlamda öneminin ortaya konulması ile yerelden başlanarak Türkiye’de e-katılım uygulama alanının genişletilmesi için bir kaynak oluşturması amacıyla hazırlanmıştır. Nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden uygulamalı değerlendirme ve politik araştırma yöntemi kullanılarak e-katılımın yerelde demokrasi anlayışının geliştirilmesinde oynayabileceği roller analiz edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda e-katılım unsurlarına sahip olan ve e-katılım uygulamalarını başarıyla hayata geçiren yerel yönetimlerde; daha geniş bir sivil katılıma ulaşma yolunda önemli adımlar atılmış olacağı, daha demokratik bir yapıya sahip olunacağı, demokrasi ve yerel yönetim ilişkisinin sağlamlaşacağı ve demokrasi kültürünün yeni boyutlar kazanacağı sonuçlarına ulaşılmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Demokrasi, Yerel Yönetimler, katılım, e-katılım, yerel e-katılım DEMOCRACY IN THE LOCAL AND LOCAL E-PARTICIPATION ABSTRACT The understanding of democracy is a tradition gained locally and transferred from local to national. In this sense, it is known that there is a special relationship between local governments and democracy. This relationship has been examined and analyzed by many experts for many years. E-participation is a developing phenomenon in Turkey and in this context, it is examined in this study as a source of democracy in the local sense. Because participation is a vital component for functioning of democracy. In today's conditions, because of the need to catch up with the developments in information and communication technologies and to catch up with time, e-participation applications have become a prominent issue. The study primarily deals with the relationship between local administrations and democracy, then the concepts of local democracy, democratic local government and local autonomy which emerged as a result of this relationship, and the concept of participation. Then, with the definition and explanation of the concept of e-participation, a discussion on the importance, impacts, and application areas of e-participation in the local level is presented. The study is finalized with the explanation of the benefits that will be created by e-participation as a developing phenomenon in Turkey and the application suggestions of e-participation. The study is prepared for creating a source for the expansion of e-participation applications in Turkey beginning from the local level to the whole by emphasizing the importance of the implementation of e-participation at the local levels. It has been tried to analyze the roles that e-participation can play in developing the democracy in local level by using practical evaluation and political research method from qualitative research methods. As a result of the research, it is reached that in local administrations which have e-participation elements and implement e-participation applications successfully; important steps will be taken to reach a broader civic participation, a more democratic structure will be achieved, the relationship between democracy and local government will be strengthened, and democracy culture will gain new dimensions.* Arş. Gör., Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi,

- by Niyazi Karabulut and +1
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- Local Government, E Participation, Electronic Democracy, e-Democracy

The objective of the paper is to introduce the first Hungarian scientifically developed online voting advice application project Vokskabin (www.vokskabin.hu). It was established on the occasion of the Hungarian super election year 2014, when three elections-parliamentary, the European Parliament and the municipal elections – took place. As a first step the study describes the development phase of the project as well as its structure and purpose. Furthermore, it analyses the user-statistics of the answered questionnaires, generated by the online-tool, for all three Hungarian elections and for the two questionnaires " Equality of men and women in Hungary " and " Roma in Hungary " which were developed 2015 to keep the civic education aspect of Vokskabin alive and addressing politically and socially relevant issues like gender equality and minority situation, also outside the election period. The paper raises two main questions: 1. Are there any regional differences of Vokskabin users' behavior? 2. How does Vokskabin influence the voting behavior (with focus on the electoral participation) and the political knowledge? This part of the study is based on survey questionnaires addressed to the users of Vokskabin. In addition to the analysis of the statistics the paper aims to highlight the role of voting advice applications in general and the role of Vokskabin in particular, as means of civic education in the 21st century Hungarian society.

In this article we seek to revisit what the term ‘technopolitical’ means for democratic politics in our age. We begin by tracing how the term was used and then transformed through various and conflicting adaptations of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in governmental and civil organizations and grassroots movements. Two main streams can be distinguished in academic literature: studies about internet-enhanced politics (labelled as e- government) and politics 2.0 that imply the facilitation of existing practices such as e-voting, e-campaigning and e-petitioning. The second stream of the internet-enabled perspective builds on the idea that ICTs are essential for the organization of transformative, contentious politics, citizen participation and deliberative processes. Under a range of labels, studies have often used ideas of the technopolitical in an undefined or underspecified manner for describing the influence of digital technologies on their scope of investigation. After critically reviewing and categorizing the main concepts used in the literature to describe ICT-based political performances, we construct a conceptual model of technopolitics oriented at two contra-rotating developments: Centralization vs. Decentralization. Within a schema consisting of the five dimensions of context, scale and direction, purpose, synchronization and actors we will clarify these developments and structure informal and formal ways of political practices. We explain the dimensions using real-world examples to illustrate the unique characteristics of each technopolitical action field and the power dynamics that influence them.

- by Ismael Peña-López and +1
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- E Participation, Electronic Democracy, e-Democracy, Technopolitics