E-democracy - ICTs and Political Participation

ICTs and Political Participation

E-democracy has become a term that is used widely but also has widely different instantiations. We take as our definition of e-democracy, the use of ICT to support the democratic decision-making processes. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a major role in organizing and informing citizens in various forms of civic engagement. ICTs are used to enhance active participation of citizens and to support the collaboration between actors for policy-making purposes within the political processes of all stages of governance. Macintoch, Ann (2006). To support governments take advantage of the innovative e-participation pilots taking place at the national, regional and local level there is a need to know and understand more precisely what is happening elsewhere.The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) work Promise and Problems of E-Democracy explains how there are three main factors when it comes to ICTs promoting civic engagement. The first of these is timing; most of the civil engagement occurs during the agenda-setting in a cycle. The second key factor is tailor; this refers to the idea of how ICTs are changing in order to allow for more civic engagement. The last of these factors is integrations; integration is how new ICTs are combining the new technological ways with the traditional ways in order to gain more civic engagement. Although some governments and research centers have already undertaken a number of surveys in this area there is no standard way to describe the approach and detail the outcomes. Overall, there are many things that come into factor when dealing with ICTs and e-participation.

ICT creates the opportunity for a government that is simultaneously more democratic and more expert. Information Communication and Technology creates open, online collaboration. This improves governmental decision-making in a number of ways. We must not rely solely on professionals, but we cannot only rely on the direct, popular decision either. The idea of collaborative governance is that the responsibility of gathering information and making decisions is shared between those with technological expertise and those who are professionally considered the decision-makers. If there is greater public participation in the collaboration of ideas and policies, though not necessarily participation in the same values, then decision-making is substantially more democratic. ICT also promotes the idea of pluralism within a democracy. With increasing access to the internet, spreading ideas is easier and faster than ever. In addition, pluralism prevents any one source from monopolizing information channels. Thus, new issues and perspectives can be brought to attention that weren't considered before.

Another key idea pertinent to ICTs and the political sphere online is that regular citizens become potential producers of political value and commentary. Citizens are able to create their own blogs and websites to express their own views individually. But when the online political sphere works together, like ABCNews did with their Campaign Watchdog effort, citizens by the polls reported any rule violations perpetrated by any candidate's party. Civic involvement is encouraged and made more effective through the use of information channels.

However, involvement doesn't stop there. In 2000, Candidate's for the United States presidential race frequently used their websites to encourage their voters to not only vote, but to encourage their friends to vote as well. This two-step process, encouraging an individual to vote and to tell his or her friends to vote, was just emerging at that time. Now, political involvement from a variety of social media is commonplace and civic engagement through online forums frequent. Through the use of ICTs, politically minded individuals have the opportunity to become more involved.