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Social inclusion and digital divide: eParticipation dilemmas in municipalities

Published: 22 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

Citizen-participation faces a large number of obstacles. eParticipation is considered to be one of the key tools to ensure effective state-to-citizen communication. A number of initiatives have led to the creation of eParticipation platforms, enabling digital participation online via ICT technologies. Even though these solutions have been introduced, the overall citizen participation remains at a relatively low level, and in general eParticipation objectives have not been fully met. One of the main reasons identified, why the initiatives fall short on participation, is the problem of digital divide and social exclusion. We present a study on eParticipation in municipalities, based on an opinion-mining project in an Irish city. We provide preliminary results and our conclusions after conducting a specific initiative. We identify key factors and decisions that have led towards a promising initiative in the field of eParticipation.

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    ICEGOV '12: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
    October 2012
    547 pages
    ISBN:9781450312004
    DOI:10.1145/2463728
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt: Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Government
    • University at Albany - State University of New York: University at Albany - State University of New York

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 22 October 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. digital divide
    2. eParticipation
    3. public forum
    4. public participation

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    ICEGOV '12
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    • Macao Foundation, Macao SAR Govt
    • University at Albany - State University of New York

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    ICEGOV '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 23 of 98 submissions, 23%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 350 of 865 submissions, 40%

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