Enabling Smart Participatory Local Government

Abstract

Social media and online communication have changed the way citizens engage in all aspects of their lives, from shopping and education to how their communities are planned and developed. It is no longer one-way or two- way communication. Instead, via networked all-to-all communication channels, our citizens engage in urban issues in a more complex and connected way than ever before. Therefore, the government needs new ways to listen to its citizens.This paper comprises three components. Firstly, we will build on the growing discussions in literature focused on smart cities, on one hand, and social media research, on the other hand, in order to capture the diversity of citizen voices and better inform decision-making. Secondly, with the support of the Australian Federal Government and in collaboration with case study local governments, we will collect citizen voices from social media platforms, on selected urban projects. Thirdly, we will present preliminary findings in terms of quantity and quality of publicly available online data representing citizen concerns on urban matters. Analyzing the sentiments of the citizen voices captured online and clustering them into topic areas, we will elaborate the scope and value of technologically-enabled opportunities in terms of enabling participatory local government decision making processes.