Internet and political empowerment: Towards a taxonomy for online political empowerment

In the age of the information revolution, the Internet can be used to involve citizens in political processes and leads to the emergence of the new version of political empowerment. This article analyses the possible effects of the Internet on the political empowerment of citizens. We interviewed 29 citizens of Tehran to learn how the Internet affects their political involvement, and to determine whether it results in their political empowerment. We analysed the interview transcripts using Strauss and Corbin’s open-coding scheme, revealing 44 constructs. These were refined and categorised into two aspects: ‘political awareness’ and ‘political participation’. This taxonomy can be employed to evaluate the use of the Internet for political empowerment and to develop the ways to empower citizens. Six main findings on the effect of factors which contribute to the political empowerment of citizens were developed. The question of which factors are essential for citizen empowerment is likely to be context-specific and is recommended as the topic of future research.Information and Communication Technolog

Towards a balanced E-Participation Index: Integrating government and society perspectives

Since 2003, the United Nations has introduced the E-Participation Index (EPI), the first index to evaluate e-participation initiatives worldwide. This index has been subject to criticism for not representing the society side of e-participation initiatives. The EPI assesses e-participation initiatives on the government side only and neglects the society side, which includes all kinds of civil e-participation initiatives. In this work, the society side is included by incrementally extending the EPI with the Human Development Index and the Democracy Index. To identify the weights of the index, the best–worst method (BWM) is used while surveying 23 experts. The results show that political rights and civil liberties are viewed as the most important criteria with which to evaluate e-participation initiatives. Using this ranking, the Balanced EPI (BEPI) is created, giving weight to both the government and society sides. The new index concerns the willingness and empowerment levels of citizens so that the public can influence policy and political decision-making. Dedicated e-participation measures should be developed in further research.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Information and Communication TechnologyTransport and Logistic

Can the internet promote democracy? A cross-country study based on dynamic panel data models

In the age of information revolution, information and communication technologies are penetrating all levels of societies and are also influencing the political aspect of each country by providing some facilities such as the Internet and web technologies. Democracy, as a universal value and a political system, is also well known and has an important role in the sublimation of the human societies. This study attempts to examine the effect of Internet extension on democracy promotion by using a panel consisting of 122 countries covering the period from the year 2000 to 2014. In order to estimate the effect, and also to deal with the endogeneity and autocorrelation problems, the dynamic panel data models are employed in the study. The results of estimation models indicate that Internet extension has a significantly positive effect on democracy promotion during the period. In the end, some ideas for further research are presented.Information and Communication Technolog