Social media gives us all a new way to connect with each other; it also gives politicians a new way to connect with their voters. The old way was often through the press which gave little room for personal expressions. But have the politicians taken to using social media and if so in what way?To find out we constructed a persona with specific search criteria's to find out which Swedish Members of Parliament were writing blogs and having facebook and Twitter accounts. The way they were being used was then catalogued. Our results indicate that roughly 50 percent of the 349 Members of Parliament in Sweden blog, roughly 75 percent have a facebook account and roughly 20 percent Twitter. The overall conclusions points to Swedish Members of Parliament having a decentralized and personal way of using social media. The Swedish Parliament has some ways to go before they can fully participate and deliberate with the people of Sweden through social media.
Equality within groups is ordinarily taken for granted when technology for e-democracy is conceived and developed. However, inequality in online communication is just as common as in other social contexts. Therefore, we have developed a groupware with the express purpose of illuminating imbalance of power. Inequalities are measured and made visible to users of the system, and they change dynamically as actions are taken by users. The system is based on democratic meeting techniques and is reminiscent of a strategy game based on social media. Each participant's score within the game is dynamically calculated and reflects that user's activity, others' reactions to that activity and reactions to others' activities. The calculations and weighing mechanisms are open to inspection and change by the users, and hierarchical roles reflecting game levels may be attached to system rights belonging to individual users and user groups. The prototype we present stems from the question of how to conceive of groupware based on diversity and is the result of combining social theory with algorithms for modelling and visualising user hierarchy and status. Empirical user tests suggest improvements to the prototype's interface, which will be implemented and further evaluated by embedding the algorithms in a system for e-participation.
In order to investigate and challenge a normative liberal democratic view of participation, we propose an experimental system based on differences in reputation and user activity. Based on democratic meeting techniques and social media, basic principles for a groupware are formulated containing typical democratic features such as voting and discussion, but taking reputation into account and clarifying the individual's activities in relation to the group. The prototype stands in contrast to commonly used internet forums by highlighting differences in reputation and activity and making these visible and changeable by its users thus shedding some light on status and reputation issues in internet forums and groupware.
In technological development in the area of e- democracy in-group equality is taken for granted. However, inequality in online communication is just as common as in other social contexts. To research the effects of starting from the presupposition of inequality we have developed a groupware for discussions. Based on democratic meeting techniques and social media it takes the form of a strategic game. The score within the game reflect user activity and the reactions to the activity in a dynamic way. Existing groupware and Internet forums available share the measurement of user activity but their evaluation systems are hidden from the user and not open to change. Instead, our system offers many reaction mechanisms that all add to the score for a user that can be seen as the expression of the user's status. The calculation and weighing mechanisms are open to inspection and change by the users. Hierarchical roles reflecting game levels may be attached to rights of what a specific user may change. The prototype presented in this paper will be evaluated in the next phase of the design research process.
"What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens' input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and Göran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences. "
