Predicting online participation through Bayesian network analysis

Despite the fact that preconditions of political participation were thoroughly examined before, there is still not enough understanding of which factors directly affect political participation and which factors correlate with participation due to common background variables. This article scrutinises the causal relations between the variables associated with participation in online activism and introduces a three-step approach in learning a reliable structure of the participation preconditions’ network to predict political participation. Using Bayesian network analysis and structural equation modeling to stabilise the structure of the causal relations, the analysis showed that only age, political interest, internal political efficacy and no other factors, highlighted by the previous political participation research, have direct effects on participation in online activism. Moreover, the direct effect of political interest is mediated by the indirect effects of internal political efficacy and age via political interest. After fitting the parameters of the Bayesian network dependent on the received structure, it became evident that given prior knowledge of the explanatory factors that proved to be most important in terms of direct effects, the predictive performance of the model increases significantly. Despite this fact, there is still uncertainty when it comes to predicting online participation. This result suggests that there remains a lot to be done in participation research when it comes to identifying and distinguishing factors that stimulate new types of political activities.

Making waves: A cross-study analysis of young people’s participation arenas in Scotland’s schools

This article compares democratic participation research in Scottish schools over a 10-year period. The comparison reveals how ‘organic’ aspects of decision-making arise in arenas of school activity. We argue that research heretofore has focussed on pupil councils to the exclusion of more everyday embedded and embodied choices. Primary researchers in the studies revisited data, drawing on their respective theoretical frameworks, to consider how new materialist perspectives offer ways to attend differently to the recursive, relational dynamics of participation.

Social Isolation and Aging Out of Place Among Immigrants and Refugee Seniors in Canada

Immigrant and refugee seniors experience cultural barriers, discrimination, and limited networks which increase the risk of social isolation and thus hinder their active participation in the society. This paper explores social isolation among immigrant and refugee seniors in Canada based on an environmental scan of federal/provincial/territorial and community-based programs and a systematic scoping review. Findings revealed important gaps and regional disparities in opportuntiies to reduce social isolation and great active participation. Research was limited, often qualitative in nature, typically based on larger urban centres, with measurement issues related to the need for consideration beyond one's living arrangements. The results highlight the need for greater understanding Canada’s immigration and refugee system and policies, and collaboration across levels of government. Reducing issues of social isolation and enabling better active aging for vulnerable seniors require a more nuanced and multidimensional conceptualization with prioritization on addressing the unique factors of culture and geographical context.

On the Intersectional Amplification of Barriers to College Internships: A Comparative Case Study Analysis

In this article, authors Matthew Wolfgram, Brian Vivona, and Tamanna Akram present a comparative case study analysis of five students from a comprehensive, urban Hispanic-Serving Institution whose experiences exemplify a coordination of intersectional factors that amplify barriers to internship participation. Research shows that college internships yield academic, economic, and professional benefits. However, the opportunity to locate and participate in internships is not equal across student demographic and socioeconomic contexts. There are multiple complex barriers to internship participation for students who are socially and institutionally minoritized by race, gender, and other contextual factors, including finances, work responsibilities, travel, and gendered familial obligations. These factors intersect with systems of power and privilege to amplify challenges and foreclose futures. The authors argue that the delineation of barriers into types alone, such as financial, social, and cultural, without additional analysis of the dynamics of how such barriers intersect and amplify, runs the risk of misconstruing students’ actual experiences when they struggle to access internships and other educational opportunities.

E-Participation Within E-Government

Through a bibliometric approach, this paper presents the results of a systematic review of the literature pertaining to e-participation and e-government. The objective of the review was to map the evolution of the current literature and identify the leading sources of knowledge in terms of the most influential journals, authors, and articles. From a total of 235 relevant articles, selected from the Scopus database, detailed citation analysis was conducted. The analysis of citation data showed that Government Information Quarterly is the leading journal in e-participation research. Lee Jooho was found to be the leading author in this field in terms of a total number of publications, total citations, and h-index, while the most cited article was authored by Vicente and Novo in 2014. The study further explored the conceptual structures such as word cloud, word dynamic trends, co-word analysis, and bibliometric coupling to show the trends. The contribution of this study is to clearly outline the current state of knowledge regarding e-participation and e-government services in the literature.

Why Social Media Matter

To understand how social media can contribute to political participation, research must first investigate the extent to which individuals experience political content on these platforms. Second, we need to understand whether and how these experiences and their effects differ among different types of users—such as those with different levels of political involvement and different ideological preferences. Finally, we need to know how these relationships are shaped by systemic factors that vary across countries—such as patterns of electoral competition, characteristics of media systems, and the strength of party organizations. The theoretical framework presented in this chapter overcomes three theoretical and empirical fallacies that have limited researchers’ ability to understand the relationship between social media and political participation. These fallacies inaccurately suggest that platforms’ affordances are a destiny that inevitably shapes outcomes, that the effects of social media are uniform among different groups of users rather than varying based on their specific characteristics, and that contextual features and systemic factors do not play any relevant role.

Participation in real-world laboratories in a new light?! Closing the gap between co-creative and deliberative participation

Real-world laboratories (RWL) involve co-design and co-creation of knowledge based on a transdisciplinary cooperation of actors from different social worlds – academia, administration, economy, civil society – each endowed with specific interests, resources and worldviews. According to their claim, RWLs are supposed to be a means of inclusive participation in the co-creative shaping of solutions for socioecological issues. In the literature dealing with RWLs, participation is thus mainly understood as an active involvement by civil society, change agents and citizens in processes of experimentation and implementation of solutions. We call this co-creative participation. However, participation in talk-based opinion formation and decision-making processes – we call this deliberative participation – is hardly a subject of discussion in the respective literature, although deliberative participation has been at the heart of participation research for several decades. In this paper, we argue that co-creative and deliberative participation are two distinct forms of participation which can be conceptualized differently but are both relevant for successful experimentation in RWLs. Based on our practical experiences in the ‘real-world laboratory for sustainable mobility culture’ (RNM), we propose an ideal-typical conceptual framework for participation in RWLs that combines co-creative and deliberative participation, thereby aiming to contribute to a systematization of, and rationale for, different forms of participation in RWLs.

Pulled in all directions: Open strategy participation as an attention contest

In this article, we investigate a crucial factor in open strategy research: participation. By drawing on the attention-based view, we argue that the degree of participation in both analog and digital practices of open strategy is the result of “attention contests.” These attention contests arise as the attention structure of Open Strategy initiatives (as quasi-temporary organizations) and the attention structure of the main organization compete for actors’ limited attention. As these attention structures collide, four tensions emerge (process ambiguity, status transitions, time constraints, and identity shifts). We argue that the impact of these tensions is contingent on the type of Open Strategy practice; digital or analog forms of Open Strategy-making. Therefore, we offer a new theoretical understanding of why and how actors participate in Open Strategy initiatives. Based on this, we offer various mechanisms of how firms can facilitate meaningful participation in these different practices. This essay opens up promising avenues for future Open Strategy and participation research.

One Health of Peripheries: Biopolitics, Social Determination, and Field of Praxis

Amid the urgency to solve countless and severe health problems, asking what is health or who can and must have it may seem like a waste of time. However, some responses can reveal prevailing practices that divert attention from fundamental problems, thus maintaining privileges and deepening health inequities. One Health of Peripheries arises from these questions and takes three interdependent senses. The first refers to attributes determining the well-being and suffering of peripheral multispecies collectives: a state, a process, the realization of capacities. The second problematizes marginalizing apparatuses that define health and who can and should have it. The third encompasses practices in more-than-human social spaces in which, and through which, One Health is experienced, understood, and transformed. The qualification of health as “one” does not refer to the lack of plurality, nor to the simple aggregation of health fragments (human + animal + environmental), but to the complexity of health in a field with peripheral places, ensuing from margins to privilege those who are inside and legitimize the exploitation of those who are outside. The interaction among margins creates degrees and kinds of privilege and vulnerability that materialize epidemiologic profiles while articulating different peripheral strengths and needs supports a collective resistance to break margins. Social determination, a key concept in the (Latin American) collective health movement, underlies such profiles. However, this movement overlooks the more-than-human dimension of social determination; that is to say, One Health of Peripheries is a blind spot of collective health. The cartography of One Health of Peripheries has unique needs regarding participation, research, and inclusive policies for the decolonial promotion of healthy lifestyles.