Twitter in Mexican Politics: Messages to People or Candidates?

Twitter has reached Mexican politics in the presidential election. Despite the fact candidates have a twitter account to send messages; we propose the question how they use it to communicate with citizens? This exploratory research provides evidence that Mexican presidential candidates are only sending messages for politicians and not for citizens. We collected and analyzed 618 tweets from the three most important political parties: PRI, PAN and PRD, from November 2011 to February 2012. Using a five category framework, we found that most candidates sent thank and regret messages, but very few messages to their militancy and citizens. We found that the lack of information about this technological tool has disabled Mexican politicians to take advantage of this tool. Finally we hope this research contributes to analyze the impact of social media in Mexican Politics in a more systematic way

Building “in-common” situations through inoperative technologies

El siguiente texto supone un acercamiento a las posibilidades que ofrece el desarrollo de la tecnología en el campo de la comunicación para la construcción de comunidades de interacción entre iguales. Con ayuda de la teoría filosófica elaborada por el filósofo francés Jean-luc Nancy acerca de la “comunidad desobrada”, trataremos de mostrar en qué medida una situación de comunicación entre iguales tiene por condición el anonimato de sus miembros, su infinita apertura y su ubicuidad. Partiendo de estas premisas, analizaremos las denominadas redes móviles de comunicación entre pares o P2P (MaNEt). Nuestra intención es proponer la infraestructura anónima, abierta y ubicua que subyace a estas redes de comunicación como el modelo de un operador necesario para la construcción de situaciones comunicativas basadas en premisas igualitarias.the following text is an approach to the possibilities offered by the development of technology in the field of communication for the construction of communities of interaction among equals. With the help of the french philosopher alain Badiou's philosophical theory on the “inoperative community” we intend to show that a situation of communication among equals requires the anonymity of its members, its infinite openness and its ubiquity. taking these premises as a starting point we shall analyse (uSa)/analyse (uK) the so-called mobile networks of communication between peers or P2P (MaNEt). our aim is to propose the anonymous, open and ubiqui - tous infrastructure underlying these communication networks as a necessary operator for the construction of communicative situations based on egalitarian premises

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

Civic Engagement Menggunakan Media Online di Kalangan Anak Muda Kota Padang

               The rapid development of the Internet raises questions about how the Internet contributes to the formation of civic engagement, including issues related to public interest. Internet presence raises concerns increasingly fertile individualist values, especially among young people.                This study intended to investigate form of public participation, especially among young people in the city of Padang and how the role of online media (social media) on the participation of young people in issues of public interest.                This research is uses qualitative and quantitative methods with interviews, observations, questionnaires as data collection techniques. Social issues, education and health is a major concern young people in the city of Padang, meanwhile political issues are not preference. Political eficacy is the reason for the reluctance to get involved in political issues. Keywords: Civic Engagement, Media Online, Media Consumption, Digital Activism, Kota Padan

Designing an Online Civic Engagement Platform: Balancing More vs. Better Participation in Complex Public Policymaking

A new form of online citizen participation in government decisionmaking has arisen in the United States (U.S.) under the Obama Administration. “Civic Participation 2.0” attempts to use Web 2.0 information and communication technologies to enable wider civic participation in government policymaking, based on three pillars of open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Thus far, the Administration has modeled Civic Participation 2.0 almost exclusively on a universalist/populist Web 2.0 philosophy of participation. In this model, content is created by users, who are enabled to shape the discussion and assess the value of contributions with little information or guidance from government decisionmakers. The authors suggest that this model often produces “participation” unsatisfactory to both government and citizens. The authors propose instead a model of Civic Participation 2.0 rooted in the theory and practice of democratic deliberation. In this model, the goal of civic participation is to reveal the conclusions people reach when they are informed about the issues and have the opportunity and motivation seriously to discuss them. Accordingly, the task of civic participation design is to provide the factual and policy information and the kinds of participation mechanisms that support and encourage this sort of participatory output. Based on the authors’ experience with Regulation Room, an experimental online platform for broadening effective civic participation in rulemaking (the process federal agencies use to make new regulations), the authors offer specific suggestions for how designers can strike the balance between ease of engagement and quality of engagement – and so bring new voices into public policymaking processes through participatory outputs that government decisionmakers will value

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