JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
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The Enabling Effects of Open Government Data on Collaborative Governance in Smart City Contexts
Get PDFThe term "smart city" has been strongly promoted since the late 1990s, yet its concrete meaning remains blurry. In this article, we shed light on two elements that many “smart cities” claim to pursue: open data and collaborative/participatory governance. Notably, we investigate whether smart city models that are based on an open data approach constitute a suitable environment for collaborative governance processes. Therefore, we introduce a comprehensive model of collaborative governance which allows us to derive theoretical assumptions regarding the influence of open data on collaborative processes in a smart city context. Based on a case study model, we try to find empirical evidence for our assumptions in three cities. However, only minor evidence for an existing influence can be found, which we explain with insufficient understanding about the potentials of open data and therefore lacking strategies how to use them for fostering collaborative processes
What’s in a name? A comparison of ‘open government’ definitions across seven Open Government Partnership members
Get PDFNo longer restricted to access to information laws and accountability measures, “open government” is now associated with a broad range of goals and functions, including public participation, open data, the improvement of public services and government efficiency. The 59 country strong Open Government Partnership (OGP) suggests that consensus on the value of open government is emerging amongst public officials. Similarly, academics have shown a renewed interest in open government as they discuss, debate and critique the meaning and role of open government reforms today. Yet, despite the diverse aims and tools characterizing contemporary open government, public officials and academics typically approach the subject as a cohesive unit of analysis, making sweeping—and generally non-empirical—claims about its implications, without accounting for the homegrown flavours that may characterize open government in practice. Simply put, the practice and study of contemporary open government suffers a lack of definitional clarity: what exactly is open government today, and how does it vary across governments? In response to these questions, this paper analyses the content of open government policy documents in seven OGP member states (Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, Kenya, United Kingdom, and the United States), providing the first systematic, empirically-grounded multi-country comparison of contemporary open government. The paper suggests where the term departs from and retains its original meaning, and how its definition varies across different government
Internet Aggregators Constructing the Political Right Wing in Japan
Get PDFThe Matome Saito are edited popular topic threads of the Ni-Channel anonymous bulletin board. The information on the Matome Saito is efficiently and concisely edited for those who do not usually access the vast Ni-Channel forum. This paper overviews the state and mechanism of the Ni-Channel forum of Japan, the edited blogs of Ni-Channel called Matome Saito, and aggregation of Matome Saito in relation to online aggregation and politics, with a focus on Japan and the December 2012 election. This paper examines the tone argument of the Matome Saito aggregation by conducting a content analysis of 148 politically related threads from November 16, 2012 to December 20, 2012 spanning the time period following the dissolving of the Japanese government by Prime Minister Noda to five days after the election
Protests against #delhigangrape on Twitter: Analyzing India’s Arab Spring
Get PDFThis study offers a comprehensive approach towards analyzing and explaining the role of Twitter in shaping and facilitating social movements especially during protests. It presents automatic and manual analyses of the tweet themes, usage characteristics and major Twitter users during a public outcry against a gangrape incident in Delhi, the capital city of India. Our results identified Twitter as an important channel for the diffusion of ideas and news among a vast set of adopters in defiance of geographical boundaries. Results of the content analyses highlight the prominent use of social media resources in disseminating information on Twitter, and the remarkable role of Twitter users as citizen journalists during the days of the protest. Results of the social network analysis suggest that major role players on Twitter were the offline protest leaders
The Impact of Public Transparency in Fighting Corruption
Get PDFThis paper is an attempt to shed light on the causes of corruption through empirical analysis of the impact of public transparency mechanisms on the frequency of improbities in Brazilian municipalities. First, we have presented a new model of corrupt agent´s utility function to better explain the results, and then some empirical evidences in favor of the hypotheses that E-government mechanisms are negatively associated with improbities in Brazilian local government
Understanding E-Democracy Government-Led Initiatives for Democratic Reform
Get PDFInformation and communication technologies (ICTs) offer opportunities for greater civic participation in democratic reform. Government ICT use has, however, predominantly been associated with e-government applications that focus on one-way information provision and service delivery. This article distinguishes between e-government and processes of e-democracy, which facilitate active civic engagement through two-way, ongoing dialogue. It draws from participation initiatives undertaken in two case studies. The first highlights efforts to increase youth political engagement in the local government area of Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom. The second is Iceland’s constitutional crowdsourcing, an initiative intended to increase civic input into constitutional reform. These examples illustrate that, in order to maintain legitimacy in the networked environment, a change in governmental culture is required to enable open and responsive e-democracy practices. When coupled with traditional participation methods, processes of e-democracy facilitate widespread opportunities for civic involvement and indicate that digital practices should not be separated from the everyday operations of government. While online democratic engagement is a slowly evolving process, initial steps are being undertaken by governments that enable e-participation to shape democratic reform
Parliamentary Information Visualization as a Means for Legislative Transparency and Citizen Empowerment?
Get PDFThe objective of this article is to highlight the contribution and importance of parliamentary information visualization (PIV) with a view to legislative transparency and citizen empowerment. The constant appeal for parliamentary openness regarding information on laws and bills and accountability of elected representatives calls for transparency in parliamentary procedures and at several areas of parliamentary informatics, in order to enhance democratic control and re-establish constituents’ trust. On the other hand, the provision of easy to understand and analyze information plays a central role to the achievement of transparency. In this respect, this paper provides an overview of the characteristics and capabilities of information visualization that can contribute to delineating the institutional, but also technical possibilities and constraints of achieving legislative transparency. On the basis of this overview, it is attempted to highlight some causal relationships between parliamentary openness, legislative transparency and parliamentary information visualization, and discuss the potential and limitations of PIV not only in terms of technical solutions but also with respect to human factors and political aspects that need to be considered as further determining the success or failure of PIV efforts. In this line of thought, the concluding section of the article provides a discussion on the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats that can be identified for parliamentary information visualization, as well as on dimensions and specific checkpoints that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of PIV efforts, as regards the end objective of citizen empowerment
Civic Action and Media Perceptions within the Wall: The (Re) Negotiation of Power in China
Get PDFLittle has been known about China’s policing of the Internet until recently, when researchers began publishing insights on the types of messages that gets deleted and permitted on various social media platforms, as well as whether or not such moderations are performed automatically. Many discussions have focused on how such efforts may undermine the democratic potential and civic actions that may be empowered and facilitated by the Internet. Two cases discussed in this paper show a different picture: the aftermath of a train collision in Wenzhou in 2011, and an elaborate plan by a company to take out its competition – both utilizing social media. Structuration theory is used to analyse the types of agency, structures, and power negotiations that can be observed in both cases. The paper then reports a survey carried out with 499 participants on their perceptions of both cases, focusing on how trust propensity and types of information may shape their perceptions of media credibility. Results show that trust propensity was only significant in shaping perceptions of credibility for social media, but the types of information is significant in shaping perceptions of credibility for both mainstream and social media. Implications are drawn for media literacy as well as how civic actions function within China
Re-Designing Open Data 2.0
Get PDFSince 2009, eighty-one countries subscribed to President Obama’s Open Government program including its dominant Open Data (OD) component. Do Open Data 2.0 plans address the problems detected during the first generation of this program (2010-2012)? If not, how can these plans be improved? The article is a review of the main lines of criticism of the original OD program based on lessons learned worldwide. OD1.0 suffered from bad design, flawed execution, and adverse consequences. Open Data 2.0 plans fail to address the critical flaws of the first Open Data program. The analysis of OD1.0 reveals two primary lessons for converting OD2.0 into a more focused and effective openness program: OD2.0 architects must consider agencies’ data release strategies, and avoid creating a transparency “policy bubble”. Numerous countries followed the path of the original American Open Data program; therefore, the future of this program will have an impact on bureaucracies worldwide
A Trigger or a Muffler? - Examining the Dynamics of Crosscutting Exposure and Political Expression in Online Social Media
Get PDFThis study explores the potential of online social media to serve as a sphere for political discourse and investigates the extent to which everyday uses of online social networking sites can expose citizens to politically diverse viewpoints. In addition, this study asks whether such crosscutting exposure in online social networks will act as a trigger or a muffler for political expression – that is, whether exposure political difference will stimulate or discourage political discussions. With analyses of a sample of online social networking site users in the context of the 2012 presidential election in South Korea, this study explicates the link between crosscutting exposure and citizens’ political expressions in social media. Results reveal that contrary to the predictions in previous literature, exposure to politically incongruent viewpoints in online social networking sites does not seem to undermine users’ expressive behaviors but instead positively contribute to political expression. In addition, this study shows the significant role of citizens’ perceptions of candidate support in their own networks, and illustrates that the dynamics of political expression differ significantly depending on the users’ age