Boosting E-Participation

In this chapter, the authors show two case studies of the use of social media in municipal governments: Lerma, a small municipality with a significant growth, and Metepec, an important municipality of the State of México. The purpose of this chapter is to provide empirical evidence of how social media improves government to citizen relationship and promotes e-participation in municipal governments. The results are based on semi-structured interviews applied to public servants and a survey to evaluate e-government services by citizens. So, the citizen perception is contrasted with public servants' interviews. Citizens consider that electronic procedures and services implemented by their municipalities do not generate value. The efforts of governments should focus on avoiding corruption, making governments transparent, opening data, and properly managing the privacy of information.

E-Participation in Developing Countries

This chapter on e-participation in developing countries uses Cameroon as a case study to demonstrate the realities of practicing Web 2.0 and social media tools to drive collaborative initiatives between government agencies and citizens in developing countries. The case study was guided by the incentives for e-participation using social media technologies, the tools used by a government to drive such initiatives, the level of participation from citizens, and the challenges and risks faced in implementing these technologies. A study of Cameroon's National Social Insurance Fund (NSIF) confirmed the main incentives of e-participation initiatives in developing countries and the major challenges they face in implementing them.

Social Media and E-Participation Research

Citizens increasingly demand an active role in public affairs and decision-making processes. From a critical standpoint, this chapter consolidates existing knowledge and, in turn, provides a better understanding on how social media tools promote the citizens' engagement and participation. The main aim is to assist researchers in the development of their future analyses, identifying trends of research and the methodology used. In so doing, a systematic literature review has been used to examine social media and e-participation research in journals listed in ISI in the field of public administration and information science and library science during the period 2000-2016. The findings reveal that although research on social media and e-participation has increased in the last year, it remains immature. Therefore, further research is needed in order to understand the true impacts of social media tools and their involvement in e-participation.

Building Performance Competencies in Open Government

Open government initiatives around the world have encouraged governments to be more transparent and accessible while its partners have found new venues to further participate and collaborate. However, realities on the ground have begun to show the complexities of openness, raising questions on how these initiatives could be sustained. In the Philippines, most of the open government-open government data (OG-OGD) programs are considered top-down. This means that almost all of the activities are initiated by the national government and are often funded by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. However, due to the changes in political priorities, the future of these programs remains uncertain. Current experiences further highlight the importance of institutionalization as one of the ingredients to sustain these initiatives; thus, the authors believe that building capacities play an important part in such an endeavor. As such, this chapter presents an initial set of OG-OGD performance competencies for local government executives and their civil society partners.

Task Technology Fit in Online Transaction Through Apps

The purpose of this chapter is to examine what aspects of task-technology characteristics are most relevant to fit, satisfaction, and continuance intention of using apps in mobile banking transactions. Applying the SEM approach to a sample of 250 Malaysians, the findings of this chapter imply that the task characteristic of transaction-based apps is more relevant than technology characteristics. The results suggest that degree of fit is highly associated with mobile apps user satisfaction. Furthermore, the higher the degree of fit, the higher is the continuance intention to use apps for online transactions. Surprisingly, the findings show that the task characteristics are not relevant to continuous intention to use apps for online transactions.

The Use of Social Media in Facilitating Participatory Design

This chapter examines the effectiveness of using social media as an aid to primary school students participating in the design of their classroom interior layout. It describes two different attempts to do this that achieved varying degrees of success. Where a blog and Facebook page were set up to provide a virtual space for classroom design to happen, and despite teachers' expressed enthusiasm for involving students in the design of their classroom layout, very few participants resulted. However, one school successfully used the virtual space to show the work of the children and this example is described in the chapter. Social media was of more use in a second example where it formed an additional channel of communication between the researcher in the role of architect and the students. However, here it built on face-to-face communication, suggesting social media can aid in participatory design but is not a substitute for the latter.

Networks for Cyberactivism and Their Implications for Policymaking in Brazil

Networks for cyberactivism have been developed in Brazil since the end of the 20th century. This chapter presents results of a three-year research about networks for digital political participation developed by civil society. The research analyzed 41 networks according to specific analytical categories to deepen the understanding about their potential to foster citizens' engagement in political initiatives and strengthen democracy. Several mechanisms that considerably stimulate a culture of political participation were clearly observed. Possibilities for political acting through those networks tend to narrow the gap between citizens' claims and government actions but that is not always the case. There is a lack of synergy between citizens' demands and strategic planning of public policies and other political outcomes. Some hypotheses are discussed to understand this context and reflect on the trends and challenges to digital democracy in the twenty-first century.

Saving Democracy

The recent rise of populism around the world, often accompanied by nationalism and isolationism, is a trend that presents a serious threat not only to liberal democracies but also to global peace and security. Populist forces have already shown their influence through the British referendum on membership withdrawal from the European Union and the election of Donald J. Trump as the U.S. President in 2016. These two events alone had ripple effects and were felt by the international community. The causes of populism are being currently revisited. It appears that socioeconomic and cultural aspects are key contributors. Even though the persistent existence of populist elements within societies comes from the very core of the democratic experiment, the current trend in social media technologies allowed demagogues to utilize viral deception on a considerable scale. The authors argue that social media technologies could be employed through e-participation to inhibit populism by bolstering civic empowerment, transparency, progressive inclusiveness, fact-based analysis, and informed decision making.

Participation With Social Media

By improving ICT within the scope of administration, new terms like e-government, m-government, e-governance, e-participation appeared in the field of public administration. The concept of e-government affects municipalities—closest service units to the citizens—and with this effect developed the term e-municipality. Municipalities in Turkey began to use the new technologies for the delivery of services, and terms like e-participation and e-governance are widening rapidly. This chapter investigates whether Facebook pages are an effective tool for local participation. The social media-citizen relationship that is claimed to be more effective, especially at the local level, has been evaluated through the Facebook pages of the municipalities. This chapter focuses on the role of social media in participatory administration.

The Role and Impact of Social Media in E-Government

The rapid development of ICT has a significant impact on the lifestyle of and communication among people. Such impact tendencies alter the human activity as well as government functions and the ways these are implemented. The studies related to Web 2.0, social media, social networks, and their use in the government sector show that the issues such as the formation of social media and important role of the latter in public administration have become a broad research topic. Despite the presence of various approaches of states to social media and social media analytics in international practice, the large impact of social media on public administration is of no doubt. The chapter reviews such issues in the presence of the goal of building mutual communication between government bodies and citizens, the role of social media in building feedback between e-government and citizens, the use of social media in e-government, and the transformation of administrative mechanisms.