Socializing E-governance: A Parallel Study of Participatory E-governance and Emerging Social Media

Abstract

This chapter has a twofold objective: (a) to identify the factors that underlie an attempt to "socialize" (i.e., make more inclusive, collective, and peer-to-peer) citizen participation and governance in a Web 2.0-like fashion, and (b) to investigate the potential of social media as new and more inclusive forms of participatory e-governance. To this end, taxonomies, objectives, critical factors, and barriers of e-participation are discussed in Section I, with a view to synthesizing some key recommendations for successful e-participation projects. Section 2, on the other hand, discusses the advent and potential of social media and provides an overview and examples of using them for e-participation and e-governance services. The chapter concludes (Section 3) with a short discussion about the potential, in light of current developments, of applying social media to the service of e-participation not only as enabling technologies but also, and most importantly, as a reference for new participatory process models.