JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
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Collective Action “Going Digital”: Overcoming Institutional and Micro-Structural Constraints through Technology Use
Get PDFTraditionally, macro-level and micro-level approaches have been used in silos to explain and determine the threshold where one crosses from non-participation to participation in social movements. Technological advancements have enriched but also complicated the process of collective action. This qualitative study is based on the premise that a confluence between political economy approaches, micro-structural analysis and Internet studies is needed to dissect the dynamics behind technology use in collective action. Through in-depth interviews with 26 activist bloggers in Singapore, this study sheds light on how Internet technologies are used by activists to overcome issues of collective incentives, structural proximity and structural availability, and negotiate the institutional terrain
Editorial 5(2)
No full textSecond issue of the international, peer-reviewed Open Access eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government (JeDEM
The Five Stars Movement in the Italian Political Scenario. A Case for Cybercratic Centralism?
Get PDFAbstract: With the rapid diffusion of Social Media, grassroots political organizations are starting to use supportive technologies to avoid party representation. The Pirate Party in Germany and the Five Stars Movement (5SM) in Italy are trying to use the interactive democracy paradigm to renew the institutional framework of political representation from the bottom up. This paper aims to analyse the case of Beppe Grillo and 5SM that - after a successful showing in administrative elections – has been involved - for the first time - in a national election (2013). How the 5SM - as a virtual party without a structured organization – will solve the problems related to its institutionalization and how the “proxy vote” will be used in parliament are the main questions, which scholars are debating. It is a unique occasion to see if this emerging model of a political form will evolve into a democratic rather than a cybercratic organization
Online parliamentary election campaigns in Scotland: a decade of research
Get PDFOver the last ten years, the authors have conducted a series of investigations into the use of the Internet by political parties and individual candidates during parliamentary election campaigns in Scotland. These are the only such studies which have looked specifically at the Scottish political arena. This paper provides a longitudinal overview of the results of these studies, and reflects on how new technologies have been adopted by political actors in Scotland in an effort to disseminate information to, and engage with, potential voters
Transformation of Citizenship and Governance in Asia: The Challenges of Social and Mobile Media
Get PDFThis special issue showcases innovative scholarly works examining the role of social and mobile media in the formation and/or transformation of democratic citizenship in some of the most populous and economically powerful countries in Asia—China, India, Japan and South Korea
Negotiating the Political Self on Social Media Platforms An In-Depth Study of Image-Management in an Election-Campaign in a Multi-Party Democracy
Get PDFThe elections 2010 were the first in Sweden where social media platforms were used to a large extent by politicians and parties in their campaigns. In this paper we follow the liberal parliamentarian Nina Larsson, who in tandem with traditional election campaigning used social media platforms with the guidance of a local communication agency, Hello Clarice. The paper is theoretically grounded in an understanding of our time as late modern, of social media use as expressive and web campaigning as to large extent revolving around image-management. The research question that will be attended to in this paper is how Nina Larsson used social media platforms in her campaign negotiate the image of herself. The methods used for empirical data-gathering are inspired by (n)ethnography, with both participant observation online and offline, interviews as well as content analyses of Nina's social media postings. Results indicate that she used social media platforms to control her political image, to amplify selected text - texts that often originated in offline/broadcast media – and to negotiate a position within the Liberal Party rather than to deliberate with potential voters
eParticipation that Works. Evidence from the Old Europe
Get PDFThis paper collects some evidence from a now completed EU-funded project, aimed at the localisation and institutionalisation of two eParticipatory tools, DEMOS-Plan and the Electronic Town Meeting, within real public administration processes. The independent or combined usage of the two tools, supported by the Living Labs approach has been tested in 18 local pilots across several regions of Europe, from Ulster (UK) to Sicily and Tuscany (Italy), from Turku Archipelago (Finland) to Voroklini (Cyprus). Selected policy domains include (among others): Spatial Planning, Socio-Economic Programming, Strategic Environmental Assessment, and Open Government. Deployment has led to a number of interesting implications for the European public authorities, such as: i) building up of a cost effective ICT platform that enables regular or occasional consultation of remotely and sparsely located citizens and stakeholders; ii) gradually migrating the whole administrative system related to spatial data infrastructure towards a full digitalisation of the “legally compulsory” exchanges between planning agencies, local stakeholders and the general public; and iii) setting the stage for these two facilities to become practically interoperable to each other and across different EU Member States
Smart Mobility – Encouraging sustainable mobility behaviour by designing and implementing policies with citizen involvement
Get PDFThe paper discusses the theoretical concepts, design considerations and preliminary findings from Smart Mobility, a research project currently being undertaken with the City of St. Gallen. The project aims at designing measures to encourage the increased use of public and non-motorised transport by integrating behavioural economic principles into public policy. The extensive involvement of citizens and their participation in the design of the measures are to support their democratic legitimization and later acceptance. The paper describes the energy policies behind the project and outlines the theoretical framework for integrating behavioural insights into public policy. The strategies envisaged include participatory instruments and methods, especially the use of existing social media channels, capitalizing on social processes and norms to increase the motivation of individuals to use public transport, creating an open innovation space by means of crowdsourcing as well as the proper framing of political communication to achieve changes in mobility patterns
Internal Security Institutions Meeting Internet Governance. A comparative view on the UK and Germany
Get PDFThe internet stays a high potential infrastructure of open interaction, hence, governmental desires in monitoring the internet are growing. A demonstrative example might be the attempts to make any technology based communication ‘traceable’ with the help of a European scheme of data retention (EU direction 2006/24/EC) and its national ratifications. Regarding this, two theses come up: First, governments try to achieve their logic of ‘real life’ internal security also within the internet regime. Second, the internet changed the society in so far as it opened space for new relevant communities and actors – lobbying more and more on institutionalised paths. This will be shown by analysing the processes in the UK and Germany. A focus will lie on each national implementation of the EU’s data retention directive. Societal and especially political differences will find some notion as well, as they build the framework of any political decision making process
Parliamentary Informatics Projects – Who Are their Users and What Is Their Impact?
Get PDFThe past decade has brought a boom of online initiatives that monitor performance of parliaments – a practice commonly referred to as ‘parliamentary informatics’. A recent survey identified 191 organisations monitoring over 80 parliaments worldwide; many of these use digital tools to aggregate information and facilitate citizens’ involvement in parliamentary activity (Mandelbaum 2011). At the same time, little is actually known about who uses these platforms and whether they increase the quality of democracy. This paper aims to fill this gap by assessing parliamentary informatics projects in three European countries from the point of view of key democratic dimensions: equality, accountability, and political responsiveness. In particular, the paper shows that parliamentary informatics projects achieve mixed results in terms of democratic quality. Many of the traditionally underrepresented groups in politics have even more limited presence on these online platforms. The accountability - including access to user-friendly, close to real-time, and objective political information that help ordinary citizen to hold their representative accountable - turns out to be the strongpoint of this type of projects. However, users do not consider transparency of information to be enough. Many participants build up significant expectations about political effects of their engagement. Yet, their expectations are generally disappointed by lack of impact