AFFORDANCES AND CONSTRAINTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN ePARTICIPATION: PERSPECTIVES FROM INDONESIAN POLITICIANS

In this study, we explore social media use by politicians by investigating affordances, effects and associated constraints of introducing social media within eParticipation. Based on an interpretive case study in the Indonesian context, involving members of both national and provincial parliament, this study unearths internal and external affordances offered by social media. Internally, among politicians, social media enable, for example, idea storming and information sharing; while externally in the relation with their constituents, social media is used, for instance, for opinion gathering and political networking. These affordances yield both internal and external effects, such as broadened perspective, improved internal political supports, better public control, and better information for decision-making. This study also unveils constraints that hinder politicians in utilizing possibilities offered by social media in the eParticipation context. Theoretical contributions and practical implication are also presented, including classification of internal and external social media affordance, identification of constraints and affordance effects. This study is adding contribution to practice by helping politicians to design social media strategy for eParticipation

Technology Affordance and Constraint Perspectives on Social Media Use in eParticipation : A Case Study in Indonesia

Paper I-V are not available as a part of the dissertation due to the copyright.This doctoral thesis explains the role of social media within eParticipation from the perspective of politicians in the Indonesian context using the Technology Affordance and Constraints Theory (TACT) as a lens. Previous research findings into citizens’ perceptions of social media in eParticipation have been ambivalent; namely, social media can both encourage and discourage the democratic process depending on where, when, and how it is used. Furthermore, there is little understanding of the role of social media in influencing decision-making in the democratic process from the politicians’ perspective. Thus, my research is focused on gaining a more in-depth understanding of the role of social media in eParticipation from perspective of politicians through three main research questions: (1) How do politicians use social media for eParticipation purposes? (2) What are the constraints of social media use within eParticipation? and (3) What are the conditions needed for social media affordance acutalization to take place?publishedVersio

Hit the bull's-eye: electronic participation through social media

This paper presents research findings of reviewing 42 studies concerning electronic participation (e-Participation) through social media. Overall, such initiatives have reflected the prevalence of a one-way communication strategy, what do not considerably foster citizen involvement in policy decision making process.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Teachers Falling off the Cliff Affordances and Constraints of Social Media in School

In a digitalized society our work environment is highly integrated with our home environment making work boundless both in terms of time and space. The digital work environment risks increased stress. Based on a case study in Swedish schools we investigate how teachers experience the use of social media for work-related purposes. We do so by using the Technology Affordance and Constraints Theory to capture the affordances as well as constraints of this use. Findings show that affordances of social media in schools were increased opportunities for learning, transparency and community building. Constraints were distractions from learning, increased isolation, stress and, above all, lack of guidance in how and when to use social media. We end the paper arguing that lack of policies and guidelines governing the use of social media at work is risking an increase in boundary blurring and potentially more stress

Electronic participation through social media

It is widely acknowledge that many of e-Participation initiatives often attract wider audience and face serious limited citizens’ involvement. The use of social media has been seen as a hope to remedy such limitation. However, despite the recently adoption of social media the lack of citizens’ involvement in e-Participation initiatives still remains. This ongoing research paper aims at producing a general overview of e-Participation through social media. So far, the latest research works on such topic have been predominantly focused on a political context of e-Participation, where politicians-citizens interactions and activities are the central interest of the studies. Little existing studies investigate e-Participation in its own right in government context. The findings also reveal that the majority of e-Participation through social media initiatives are more informative than interactive, since few initiatives have been found that aim to considerably enhance citizen participation in policy decision making.This work has been supported by Portuguese FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology within the Project Scope UID /CEC / 00319/2013info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Making eParticipation policy - a European analysis: social and political trends in eParticipation: the public policy and the civil society perspectives

The creative and disruptive characteristics of digital networks have profound consequences for the production of citizenship, which has always been technologically constructed, but now derives its significance from a tension between elite intentions and network flows. Our aim in this paper is to explore this tension empirically by interrogating the process of policy-making with regard to eParticipation in six European countries

Predicting citizens acceptance of government-led e-participation initiatives through social Media: a theoretical model

Whilst the idea of utilizing social media to advance government-led e-Participation initiatives has proliferated significantly in recent years, mostly such initiatives do not meet the intended expectations, as the majority of them fail to attract wider citizens’ audience. Overall, the key factors that could explain and predict citizens’ participation are not yet thoroughly identified. Therefore, the current study develops a theoretical citizen-centric model that seeks to explain and predict the intention of citizens’ behavior towards their involvement in government-led e-Participation initiatives through social media. The methodological approach is primarily based on utilizing and extending one of the well-known theories for describing a person acceptance behavior, namely the Theory of Planned Behavior. The model applies the main constructs of the Theory – attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control; and complements them with several constructs drawn from relevant literature. The paper contributes to understanding the reasons why citizens decide to engage or not in government-led e-Participation initiatives through social media.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Electronic participation with a special reference to social media - a literature review

As a consequence of the interdisciplinary nature of Electronic Partici-pation (e-Participation), current research on the field is fragmented and scattered. The exciting blurry boundaries and the immature identity of the field are making difficult the understanding of the main domain themes being investigated, in par-ticular for “neophytes” researchers. In practice, several e-Participation initiatives often attract a wide audience but face serious limitations regarding involvement of those who attract. Recently, the potential of using social media to address cit-izens’ involvement deficit has been subject of academic debate. By consulting 44 e-Participation papers, considered highly relevant to the aforementioned chal-lenges, this paper produces a general overview of e-Participation research, par-ticularly through social media. The findings show that the e-Participation field still faces the challenge of identity and strive for gaining wider recognition as an independent research area. Concerning e-Participation through social media which seems to be partly overlooked in the field research, the politicians-citizen’s interaction has dominated scholars' attention and the adoption of such initiatives sponsored and driven by governments are rarely examine. Based on the findings, several research suggestions, which could play a significant contribution to advance future e-Participation research, are proposed

Enhancing stakeholders' participation : a semantic, spatial and temporal contextualization perspective

La participation des parties prenantes (PPP) vise à impliquer celles-ci dans les processus de prise de décision concernant des projets affectant leurs communautés. Traditionnellement, les processus de participation des parties prenantes (PPPP) se maintenaient à travers des assemblées et des forums de discussion physiques permettant de rassembler les parties prenantes, de collecter et d'analyser leurs opinions pour aider les décideurs dans leur prise de décision. Ces dernières années, l'évolution des technologies de l'information (TI) et leur prolifération dans la société ont donné lieu au concept émergent de la participation électronique ou la e-Participation. Il s'agit de nouvelles formes de participation basées sur les technologies de l'information tel que les blogs, les plateformes participatives et les réseaux sociaux. La PPP est une notion en constante évolution et a reçu une attention considérable de la part des praticiens et des chercheurs dans différents domaines et disciplines. Cependant, peu de recherches se sont intéressées à la compréhension multidisciplinaire des PPPP et de la valeur que revêtent les données collectées à travers ces PPPP. Cette thèse contribue à la littérature de la PPP en offrant une meilleure compréhension globale du concept de la PP, de ses enjeux multidisciplinaires et de la valeur que revête les données collectées à travers les PPPP. Cette thèse est structurée en deux articles et un chapitre. Le premier article de cette thèse vise à offrir une meilleure compréhension des enjeux multidisciplinaires auxquels les PPPP font face. À l'appui d'une revue systématique de la littérature analysant 191 articles de recherche, cet article met en exergue que les PPP font face à des enjeux : « administratifs », « éthiques », « politiques », « légaux », « technologiques », « sociaux des parties prenantes », « économiques », « socio-économiques » et « d'efficience et d'efficacité ». De plus, l'article démontre que les PPPP œuvrent à l'intérieur de quatre principales dimensions qui sont « la gouvernance », « l'application », « les parties prenantes » et « la société » et que ces dimensions sont interreliées et sont influencées les unes par les autres. Dans ce contexte, l'évolution vers des PPP qui sont plus efficaces et plus résilientes envers ces enjeux requerrait une prise de conscience de ces dimensions d'enjeux et des efforts de collaboration multidisciplinaire entre la recherche et la pratique. Le deuxième article se concentre sur l'enjeu spécifique du « contexte de vie des parties prenantes » et rend compte de la manière dont les parties prenantes expriment, de façon implicite ou explicite, leurs contextes de vie dans leurs commentaires de participation. Par une analyse qualitative des données de participation provenant de quatre études de cas dans deux pays différents, cet article identifie un ensemble de patrons, appelés aussi « patterns », sémantiques, spatiaux et temporels permettant l'identification du contexte de vie des parties prenantes à partir des données des PPPP. L'identification et la compréhension des patrons que les parties prenantes expriment dans leurs commentaires pour représenter leurs contextes de vie visent à renforcer l'influence des parties prenantes sur les décisions découlant des PPP dans lesquelles ces dernières étaient impliquées. De plus, l'article propose un modèle conceptuel démontrant l'importance pour les décideurs de capturer et d'analyser les patrons sémantique, spatial et temporel dans les données des PPPP afin de favoriser une prise de décision cohérente et réactive aux contextes de vie des parties prenantes. Finalement, l'article souligne le rôle que jouent les technologies de l'information pour l'identification de ces patrons. Le troisième chapitre offre une meilleure compréhension de l'identification automatique des dimensions sémantique, spatiale et temporelle du contexte de vie des parties prenantes dans les PPP. En se basant sur une analyse théorique, ce chapitre utilise la théorie des affordances et la théorie du réalisme critique pour offrir une conceptualisation des affordances et des fonctionnalités technologiques correspondantes qui sont nécessaires pour l'identification automatique des patterns sémantiques, spatiaux et temporels dans les futures technologies participatives.Stakeholders participation (SP) aims to involve stakeholders in decision-making processes regarding projects affecting their communities. Traditionally, stakeholders' participation processes (SPPs) were maintained through meetings and physical discussion forums to bring together stakeholders and collect their opinions to help decision-makers in taking their decisions. In recent years, the evolution of information technologies (IT) and their proliferation in society have given rise to the emerging concept of electronic participation or e-Participation. These are new forms of participation based on information technologies such as blogs, participatory platforms and social networks. SP is an ever-evolving concept and has received considerable attention from researchers in different fields and disciplines. However, little research has focused on the multidisciplinary understanding of SPPs and the value of the data collected through these SPPs. This thesis contributes to the SPPs literature by offering a better global understanding of the concept of SP, its multidisciplinary issues and the value of the data collected through SPPs. This thesis is structured in two articles and one chapter. The first article of this thesis aims to provide a better understanding of the multidisciplinary issues that SPPs face. Based on a systematic literature review of 191 research papers, this article aims to review, categorize, and offer a better understanding of the different issues that stakeholders' participation processes (SPPs) can have. This paper has two main contributions. First, it presents a typology of issues that is organized in nine categories: economic, efficiency and effectiveness, ethical, legislative, political, administration, socioeconomic, stakeholders and social, and technology. Second, it proposes a conceptual model of SPPs dimensions of issues. The conceptual model demonstrates that SPPs work within four main dimensions which are "governance", "application", "stakeholders" and "society" and that these dimensions are interrelated and are influenced by each other. The second article focuses on the specific issue of the "stakeholders' living context identification" and attempts to account for how stakeholders implicitly identify their living contexts in their participation comments. Through a qualitative analysis of participation data from four case studies in two different countries, this article identifies a set of semantic, spatial and temporal patterns allowing the contextualization of data collected through SPPs. Moreover, a conceptual model for the identification of the living contexts in SPPs data is proposed. This conceptual model emphasizes the importance for decision-makers to capture and understand semantic, spatial and temporal patterns in SPPs data in order to ensure a decision-making that is consistent and responsive to stakeholders' living contexts. Finally, the article highlights the role that information technology plays in identifying these patterns. The third chapter attempts to provide a better understanding of the automatic identification of the semantic, spatial and temporal dimensions of the living contexts of stakeholders in SPPs. Based on a theoretical analysis, this chapter uses the theory of affordances and the theory of critical realism to offer a conceptualization of affordances and their corresponding information technology functionalities that are necessary for the automatic identification of semantic, spatial and temporal patterns in future participation tools

Building civic architecture in cyberspace: digital civic spaces and the people who create them

At the same time as we are seeing ever increasing numbers of people actively using social networking sites, and growing evidence of increased participation in campaigning and digital activism, we are seeing a decline in democratic participation in the UK at both a national and local level. This thesis examines these two contrasting effects within the context of Local Government in the UK and explores what the impact might be at the neighbourhood level. The work discusses the influence of place based online activity on democratic decision-making Local Government and the ways in which traditional processes of decision-making, democratic participation and community engagement practice may need to change to reflect the upward pressure that is being exerted by citizen use of new technologies and adjust the way in which Local Government facilitates citizen participation in decision-making. The work develops the concept of Digital civic space as an alternative to eParticipation platforms and discusses how such spaces are being used to connect online activity with democratic processes at present and how present experience may be used to inform future developments. Employing an Action Research method, the research analyses three projects in order to examine the nature of the pre-existing participation online and the impact of creating online civic spaces to connect the participants both to each other and to local decision-makers. Design criteria are proposed which describe the necessary qualities of public-ness, openness, co-production, definition of place and identity and the thesis reaches conclusions as to how these criteria might better connect local resident with the democratic decision-making processes for their communities