Archive for March, 2010
 |
24. March 2010 – 11:31 by Institute for Electronic Participation
|
Executive summary of presentation from the 11th Bled Forum on Europe Foresight Conference “The Future of Information Society and Challenges for Good Governance”, organized by the Centre for eGovernance development from 10th to 12th March 2010 in Bled, Slovenia:
According to the latest UN E-Participation Index measurement, the majority of South East Europe countries (Albania, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Romania), improved their global standing regarding the quality and usefulness of information and services for the purpose of engaging its citizens in public policy making through the use of e-government programs. Nevertheless, e-participation in SEE region is still falling behind their e-government developments. An overview of current e-participation situation in SEE within government domain is presented, highlighting key elements needed for strengthening e-democracy in the region. One of them is focusing on non-governmental organizations and civil society e-participation experience (e.g. on-line Citizen’s forum) needed for shaping inclusive and citizens oriented e-government policy.
Presentation slides are available at the Institute for Electronic Participation web site http://www.inepa.si/images/stories/mapping_edemocracy_see_region_delakorda.pdf (pdf, 1.49 mb).
As has become customary over the years the conference concluded with a draft declaration, which had been adopted by the participants of the conference. The process of formulating the declaration is based upon the main issues presented by the lecturers and highlighted by the participants in the discussions which followed.
To achieve even wider participation in the formulation of the Final Declaration of the 11th Bled Forum on Europe, your are kindly invited to provide comments, inputs, questions, add issues important to the development of information society not only in South East Europe, but around the world.
Please send your comments or your video responses to info.cegd@cegd.eu until the 12th of April 2010 and make sure your voice is heard and your opinion is included in the final declaration. You can publish your comments directly to European Debates on-line forum facilitated by the Institute for Electronic Participation (INePA) by fulfilling discussion form (Please enter your Username – Uporabniško ime, message Confirmation code – Potrditvena koda and submit your comment – Pošlji. No prior forum registration is required. Forum is also available in English language). The forum is providing a deliberation space for facilitated public debates and consultations on relevant European issues.
Web links to relevant sites:
Draft declaration of the 11th Bled Forum (pdf, 71 kb)
European Debates on-line forum
Simon Delakorda, M.Sc.
Institute for Electronic Participation
Posted in Events, News, Partners, Projects, Trends | 1 Comment »
 |
24. March 2010 – 11:10 by Centre for E-Government
|
The Centre for E-Government, Danube University Krems, kindly invites you to attend the next PEP-NET Meeting, in close collaboration with the EDem10 Conference, on 5 May 2010 at Danube University Krems.
1. Meeting Time, Venue
The PEP-NET Meeting will be held on:
5 May, 10:00-17:00
Danube University Krems
(Room 2.4/section “K” of the building)
Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Strasse 30
3500 Krems, Austria
There will be a social networking event on the evening in the Wachau (a Unesco site, famous for its wines) on or overlooking the Danube. Further details to follow.
For night owls who are into alternative music: the Donau Festival 2010 is on at the same time.
This gives you the opportunity to visit the EDem Conference on the 6 and 7 May 2010 (also at the Danube University Krems)
Conference fee: €95 for PEP-NET members (or €55 if you want to visit the first day only). The EDem Conference is part of the PEP-NET Conference Series and will host a PEP-NET Workshop!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Events | 1 Comment »
 |
23. March 2010 – 18:38 by Dan Jellinek
|
The recent warnings from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) that the internet poses the biggest threat to endangered species of any technology – by providing an efficient communications and sales network for those who would hunt and trade them – was another reminder that in itself, the net is neutral. Like most technologies, it is merely a tool to be used for social benefit or detriment, depending on who uses it, how and why.
In May I am participating in the PEP-NET workshop at the EDEM10 conference in Krems, Austria and I would like to use the session to explore this idea in more detail. In particular, I would like to examine the question – when is e-participation undemocratic?
The online trade in endangered species reminds us that we should never be dazzled by the glitz and excitement of a new technology, or the latest buzzwords like Twitter or ‘Web 2.0’, without stopping to consider how we can at least try to ensure that the effects of these technologies end up being as positive as possible.
Partly, the role of a technology is determined by the society within which it is used – look at the row currently raging over Google’s presence in China. In a non-democratic society, it is easier for technologies to be used to violate human rights – but then again, it is not the technology that is the problem in those states (the simple technology of a machete can be used to hack down either vegetation or human beings).
There is little the e-participation sector can do directly to protect the rights of people in a state where an unelected government chooses – as they inevitably do – to repress those rights to retain power and private control over a nation’s wealth and resources.
Indirectly, however, there may be ways of shaping our work in ways that help the cause of global freedom and democracy.
One key battlefield is that of internet governance. As control of the institutions and rules governing internet domain routing and other technical issues shifts gradually away from the US government towards the international community, a battle is taking place behind the scenes. Ironically, countries like China are claiming to be wresting power away from an ‘Imperialist’ US, in seeking greater local control: this would be all well and good if anyone thought that increased localised control over the internet would be used by the Chinese government for the benefit of the country’s own citizens. E-participation activists in all countries must lobby hard for international control that enshrines as many freedoms as possible in its basic tenets and protocols.
More directly, in developing e-participation and e-democracy projects in our own countries, we must ensure that the addition or integration of new digital channels does at the very least not adversely affect the democratic power structures that exist, and if possible, improve them. Mastery of new technologies and ownership of expensive equipment, for example, must not become pre-requisites for democratic engagement.
Technology is the servant, not the master, of a fair political system. The system itself must first be understood and strengthened, and then it must be supported by new technologies: digital activists should prioritise the improvement of the workings of our democratic system as a whole, and then look to see how technology can aid this process.
As for developers of e-participation software, tools and websites, we should see our work as part of a growing global picture that must remain as free, open, scalable and multi-platform as possible, to allow the benefits of the work we do to spread from citizen to citizen across the world despite the efforts of totalitarian states to prevent this happening.
We must also remember there are wrong ways of going about e-participation, ways which will tend to centralise power and play into the hands of the forces of private power. The use of jargon; expensive, brand-new technologies; and technologies which are hard for poorer or less educated people to access may all, consciously or unconsciously, have such anti-democratic tendencies.
In today’s digital world, the internet community is going to find itself increasingly on the global front-line for freedom and human rights. Let’s all try and lend our support.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
|
|
23. March 2010 – 17:30 by Institute for Electronic Participation
|
Presentation made at the Seminar for Watchdogs held in Warsaw, 11-12th March 2010. The slides are available at the Institute for Electronic Participation web site http://www.inepa.si/images/stories/eparticipation_watchdogs_eu_delakorda.pdf (pdf, 805 kb).
The presentation is a follow up from a discussion paper E-participation – a new sphere of NGO activity? originally published in June 2009 at the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE Trust) Civil Society Forum web site http://csf.ceetrust.org/paper/19/.
E-participation – a new sphere of NGO activity?
A new sphere of NGO activity has emerged in recent years in Slovenia, as a number of NGOs have started to take a more web-based approach. A number of on-line projects have been introduced, such as the Slovenian Civil Society e-Participation web service[1], The Citizen’s Forum[2], the NGO e-Participation portal available during the Slovenian EU Council Presidency[3], The Citizen’s forum for the European elections 2009[4], Open-source NGOs e-Participation platform[5] and the e-participation platform for NGO involvement in establishing the Law on voluntary work[6]. These projects aim to strengthen civil dialogue and utilize the internet to support participatory democracy.
Maximizing the impact of this new arena has understandably led to some challenges and dilemmas, for the NGO sector, which we will outline here and will, hopefully, form the basis of further discussion.
The real challenge
A number of ad-hoc e-participation projects and successfully implemented applications are not seeing much traffic or interaction because internet users are simply not paying attention to them. There are three main reasons for this. Firstly, the application is intentionally or unintentionally badly promoted to the general public or focus groups. Government institutions are not usually keen to promote on-line participation tools which are already available. They fear a potential rush to participate and management problems. NGOs, on the other hand, often do not have enough resources to promote their e-participation projects on a larger scale, particularly through traditional mass media.
Secondly, the e-participation projects are focused on relatively minor or highly technical expert issues, which may be irrelevant to the general public and their quality of life. If this is the case, NGOs have a duty to explain these complex issues, relate them to everyday life experience. They have to explain to people why the issue is relevant to them and how their participation can improve the situation. Never-the-less, a much more effective way to rally people around e-participation is to base projects on public problems and policy issues, which directly concern a larger proportion of the population.
Thirdly, there is often little evidence of how these e-participation projects will impact public opinion or decision-making processes. Potential users do not know how the results of e-participation are going to shape policy issues, problems or public perception. Improving this situation requires feedback from governmental institutions and politicians, monitoring any impact on legislation or changes in public perception of a particular issue and the degree of mass media recognition. E-participation is therefore often more of a political and social challenge than a technological one.
Sustainable success
NGO e-participation projects, although not for profit or market-oriented, are often very demanding in terms of both organizational and financial resources. Open-source Internet applications and user friendly web 2.0 applications enable NGOs to establish their own e-participation applications very quickly and with minimum costs. Whether or not an NGO successfully implements e-participation, however, depends on its mobilization capacity, decision-making impact, community building, technical security, personal data protection, moderation of on-line communication, public promotion, monitoring techniques and evaluation methods.
Most of this know-how is needed in order to establish a proper social, communication and political environment for e-participation applications. For example, when moderating an on-line policy forum or consultation, a specific set of rules usually applies to enable deliberate democratic communication and starting questions. Data is usually available to enable informed debate and messages from participants are summarized in a report at the end.
NGOs facilitating e-participation projects often need to have at their disposal expert and in-depth understanding of complex decision-making, policy-making and public opinion forming processes, especially at the level of EU institutions.
Furthermore, new skills are required when facilitating and building up social networks and communities as a part of e-participation projects. This includes using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flicker and providing messages through different formats and features on-line. As the most successful e-participation projects are the ones which are most sustainable, NGOs have to provide long-term, diverse human and technological input to keep up with rapidly evolving Internet technology.
Coordinating off-line and on-line participation
The digital divide is often cited as a barrier to e-participation. Older generations are generally less likely to have the proper skills required to use new information and communication technologies. Marginalized groups within society often do not have proper Internet access, allowing it to be dominated by white, well-educated people.
It has been suggested that the democratic potential of the Internet is strengthening the political power of those who are already information-rich and empowered. The Internet therefore supports the existing balance of power in favour of political elites.
For these reasons it is vital that e-participation projects implemented by NGOs play a part in real-time processes and are connected to live events and discussions in order to enable the participation of people who are unable to utilize the latest technology.
For example, the on-line Citizens forum for the European elections 2009 enabled e-participation through a system of e-points, positioned at live public events. Facilitated by a moderator, these e-points provided access to laptops. Paper questionnaires were also distributed with the results later published in an on-line debate.
Legitimatizing participation
NGOs deliver both top-down and bottom-up e-participation projects and applications. The first are usually co-financed by government institutions on a local, national or EU level. The second are usually co-financed by the NGO foundations, networks or implemented by NGOs themselves.
As top-down e-participation projects such as e-consultations, e-panels, participatory budgeting and e-legislation are promoted and supported by government institutions, they have a higher degree of public visibility. They are also more likely to impact policy or legislation directly.
On the other hand, because these government institutions have a greater degree of ownership over the project, they can hijack the e-participation process and adapt it to their specific goals. These are often related to legitimizing governmental agendas, as was the case with the NGO e-Participation portal for the Slovene EU Council Presidency.
Bottom up e-participation projects such as e-activism and e-campaigning are used by NGOs to coordinate, organize, finance and engage the public. They aim to mobilize and gain support or deliver a political message as a part of political campaigns, as was the case with the Open-source NGOs e-Participation platform.
Grass-roots activities like e-petitions, e-questionnaires, Facebook groups and blogs do not usually represent part of a formal or institutionalized policy-making process and are therefore providing much needed input from citizens in relation to government institutions, based on the principle of participatory democracy. This can, however, sometimes result in conflict with a government or a stalemate in the decision-making process. In order to overcome this kind of dichotomy, a new NGO participatory community multi-media project in Slovenia has been exploring new possibilities for video e-participation 2.0, such as Studio 12)[7]. Top down e-participation is more efficient but bottom up e-participation is more legitimate.
Looking for success in e-democracy
NGO e-participation projects in Slovenia clearly demonstrate the democratic value of the Internet, especially when providing information and data related to decision-making process. This was the case with the Slovene Civil Society e-Participation web service which provided information and opportunities for citizens and NGOs to e-participate in different policy-making processes. Meanwhile, the NGO e-Participation portal for the EU Council Presidency enabled document provision, raising EU policy awareness, strengthening transparency and enhancing public visibility of the Slovene Presidency.
On the other hand the challenges of justifying such initiatives as forms of e-democracy and funding still remain. Firstly, meeting social expectations related to the depth of on-line discussions and deliberation is demanding additional efforts in perceiving Internet technology as a truly interactive technology within decision-making processes.
Secondly, the political expectations behind providing concrete evidence of the inclusion of citizen and NGO contributions into final decisions, documents or policies are often not realized. For this purpose a proper evaluation framework or methodology for the effects of e-democracy should be created. The latter is especially important when reflecting on imaginary and fake top down e-participation projects conducted by governments and public relations agencies.
The future of NGO e-participation
A number of challenges therefore remain for NGOs keen to get involved in e-participation. They must develop effective ways of linking on-line and off-line participation, thereby tackling the digital divide.
They must also reflect critically on institutional, top-down public relations and technocratic-oriented attempts at e-democracy introduced by political elites and governments.
Successful examples of NGO e-participation need to be promoted to the general public through the media, thereby creating more public awareness.
Transparency of e-participation, inclusiveness and personal data protection must be secured in order to build confidence and the conditions necessary for e-participation need to be cultivated further.
NGOs need to create focused and sustainable e-participation projects and cement their role as e-participation facilitators.
Finally NGOs need to successfully manage their e-participation resources. They need to build up a catalogue of professional skills in on-line engagement and participatory process management. They need to accept that e-participation needs to appeal to the general public as a means of improving quality of life. E-participation needs to become personal.
E-participation initiatives clearly come with more political and social issues and dilemmas than technological ones. This gives debates on e-participation additional relevance, as they are framed and conceptualized by debates on the future development of political democracy.
Simon Delakorda & Matej Delakorda
[1] www.e-participacija.si/en
[2] www.e-participacija.si/forum_EU / www.epractice.eu/en/cases/citizensforum07
[3] www.predsedovanje.si/en / www.epractice.eu/en/cases/predsedovanjesi08
[4] www.evropske-volitve.si
[5] www.okno.cnvos.si
[6] www.sodeluj.net/pic-ceetrust/
[7] www.s12.si/content/view/95/104/
[8] The Institute for Electronic Participation was established in 2007 as the first Slovene non-profit non-governmental civil society organisation professionally focusing on eDemocracy, eParticipation, eGovernance, eInvolvement and eInclusion. INePA experts and professionals have been the main architects behind most of the largest and most successful e-democracy projects in Slovenia. (www.inepa.eu).
References used in this article:
1. Delakorda, Simon / Delakorda, Matej (2009) Contribution to democratization of the EU Council presidency: NGOs e-participation portal Predsedovanje.si. The International Conference on eParticipation: ePart 2009.1st-3rd of September 2009. Linz, Austria. To be published.
2. Delakorda, Simon (2007) Digital Age – A Stronger Democratic Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in the EU? The Our Europe project. Available on-line http://www.ourdebate.eu/index.php?oldal=hirek&id_hirek=73.
3. Delakorda, Simon (2007) Citizen’s Forum: The first successful eDemocracy initiative in the Republic of Slovenia? eChallenges 2007 conference & Exhibition, 24th-26th of October 2007. Den Haag, The Netherlands. Available on-line http://www.inepa.si/images/stories/citizens_forum-delakorda-echallenges07-final.pdf.
Simon Delakorda, M.Sc., (1978) is a full time eDemocracy/eParticipation practitioner & researcher and founding director of the Institute for Electronic Participation in Ljubljana. Starting in 2000, he participated in most of an early internet democracy projects within university and NGO’s sector in Slovenia. He is an author and co-author of articles and case studies and conference speaker on democracy, political participation, active citizenship, non-governemental organizations and government on-line. He received his political science B.Sc. degree on e-democracy in 2002 and M.Sc. degree on e-participation in 2009. He worked as an e-democracy course associate and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, as a co-founder and head of the Centre of Electronic Democracy at the Institute of Ecology and as an e-democracy associate at the Arctur IT Company Ltd. In 2004 and 2006 participated in preparation of the Slovenian eGovernment policy documents. During 2006-2007 he coordinated and managed the E-participacija web portal and moderated the first successful e-democracy experiment in Slovenia – the Citizen’s Forum. In 2007 he founded the Institute for Electronic Participation (INePA). His current projects and research focus includes e-participation 2.0 at the EU level institutions and civil society. He is a member of the Slovenian Political Science Association. He received awards and experts recognitions as an e-democracy student, moderator and facilitator and is currently the affiliated expert of the Demonet: the eParticipation network.
Matej Delakorda is a project manager and IT expert. In 2007 he obtained his University Degree in Sociology at Unversity of Ljubljana. In his career he has been involved in developing and maintaining eDemocracy and eParticipation web applications. He is a president of management board of Institute for Electronic Participation and a project manager in Studio 12 which is a Slovene multimedia Center and Internet TV station. Among his bigger IT projects were: non-governmental organizations portal for the period of Slovene EU Presidency, web portal for democratic e-participation of Slovenian citizens, NGO’s and civil society, video portal and independent multimedia production that covers issues of ecology, society and human relationships.
Posted in good practice, members, Projects, Tools, Trends, Uncategorized | No Comments »
 |
22. March 2010 – 17:56 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
|
I’m in my fourth week at the Interactive Communication Department at TuTech, so it’s about time I found out what we do here!
I thought I’d ask a couple of my colleagues i) what our department does, ii) what the secret to a successful online consultation is, and iii) what results-oriented online consultations we have been involved in.
I started with my new boss, Rolf Lührs, who heads up the IC Department. I asked, “what does our department do?”
“The IC Department is a small team of seven people that specialises in running results-oriented online consultations. To avoid discussions with no tangible outcome, TuTech developed the DEMOS platform and methodology that ensures citizens are actively involved in government and their built environment. Our team moderates the discussions, which generally last between three and four weeks. We have even adapted the DEMOS platform to cater for specialist areas, in particular participatory budgeting and urban planning.”
As well as delivering projects for customers, we run projects that are financed by public money. For example, the Living Lab project — which aims to promote collaboration amongst small and medium-sized medical technology companies in Hamburg and bring them into contact with customers — is a project that is financed by the EU. Of course PEP-NET itself is another example of an EU-funded project that TuTech is involved in.
I spoke to another colleague, Maren Lübcke, and asked her: “what is the secret to a successful online consultation?“. Here’s what she said:
“Getting the technology right is important, but the key is in the communication: you need to have a clear concept that outlines what role citizens’ input will play, and this needs to be communicated clearly to ensure they don’t feel their time is being wasted by discussing something that won’t change anything. Proper moderation ensures that the results are properly collected and summarised, and that they can then feed into decision-making processes.”
No prizes for guessing what the follow-on question was: what historical examples do we have of results-oriented online consultations?
Here are just three of them:
Hamburger Domplatz (Hamburg Cathedral Square) — The Hamburger Domplatz, the site where a cathedral used to stand, is of historic significance to the city of Hamburg because this is where the city is thought to have begun. The site, which was a car park at the time, was going to be redeveloped into a building for commercial use. Following public discontent with the plan, the public was consulted on what should be done with the site. One of the suggestions that came out of the online consultation was that the site should be turned into a square with flower beds, greenery and benches for people to relax. The square was accordingly adapted to this purpose.
Participatory Budgeting in Hamburg –TuTech provided the platform for the 2009 consultation on Hamburg’s long-term budget. Because budgets cannot be changed at short notice, citizens were asked how they would spend the budget between now and 2020. As well as a moderated discussion forum, users could use an interactive tool to create their own budget. And of course the numbers had to stack up!
Zusammenleben in Berlin – Each German state has to produce a regular report on how family-friendly that state is. In 2008 TuTech ran an online consultation that fed directly into this process, forming part of the report. A similar project took place in Hamburg (Familienfreundlicher Wohnort Hamburg) in 2005.
***
So there you have it: a short introduction to TuTech Interactive Communications Department. I didn’t mention all of the work that my new department does because I wanted to keep the post short. But if you want to hear about the consultation around climate change adaptation that TuTech is running, or are curious about our other projects, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
 |
19. March 2010 – 09:00 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
|
In this article I would like to mention a few interesting posts related to eParticipation in the last two weeks. The goal is to give an overview of what was going on in the eParticipation realm over that time. The full articles are always linked to under the short summaries.
Andrea DiMaio over at the Gartner blog network discusses two reports by the US Government Accountability Office which state that the OpenData and Transparency websites (Recovery.gov, USAsepending.gov) are far from perfect. His take on the issue is that critic at this point in the development towards more transparency and participation to much criticism could be harmful.
Blog.gartner.com
The BBC conducted a world wide survey with over 27.000 participants and found that almost four of five respondents see internet access as a fundamental right. A majority of those questioned believe that the internet improved their freedom. On the flipside several concerns and dangers where mentioned: fraud and easier access to violent and explicit content being among them.
News.bbc.co.uk
mySociety lays out their vision for the twelve months and promises both a new citizen-facing project (FixMyTransport aiming at “connecting and empowering people who share transport problems of different kinds”) and a improved backend system called Project Fosbury (aimed at making the whole process of civic engagement simpler by breaking it down into single steps).
Mysociety.org
The Swiss canton Zug has published its eGovernment and intranet platform iZug as an open source tool which can be used by other public administrations. This is interesting for two reasons: Firstly the iZug tool seems to be feature-rich and may be of interest for other (especially Swiss) administrations and secondly this is another example of the how attractive open source in general and specifically the Plone framework (Python based CMS) has become for public administrations.
Move-online.de (German original)
Google Translation (English)
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) plans to connect 100 million additional American homes to high-speed broadband (up to 20 times faster than today) over the course of the next years. These plans are laid out in the national broadband plan presented on March 16th. Now the plan has to be adjusted to the roughly 200 recommendations the FCC got from different players. Some of these adjustments will need involvement of Congress which might slow down the process.
Latimes.com
Posted in News | No Comments »
 |
18. March 2010 – 17:03 by Civil College
|
We have seen various examples , how national parliaments are using the data available in parliament records to display on websites.
It is unlikely to have a function to easily find and compare voting records of political groups and individual representatives. The data is from the 2004-2010 years, and obtained from the official site.
This mashup site: www.itsyourparliament.eu provides this function with a really accessible user interface and a possibility to comment.
This social responsible mashup have built and mantained by Buhl & Rasmussen without any financial support from the EU or other is a typical case, that we citizens like, admire and even encourage to follow – when somebody has the spirit, talent and skills to point out and re-engineer information holes based on public data sources.
This example highlights the importance of open standards and open data, which technically makes possible to build a services like this. Just like in the offline world, where accessibility to relevant information is a cornerstone for real participation, here, accessing data in appropriate format (open standard) is equivalent.
Empowerment subnews.
In Hungary, a success story of right defender NGO, HCLU (TASZ) is highlighting the issue of e-participation in civil campaigns.
After a journalist investigation on the planned new Hungarian Motor Race court’s financial background - to involve state aid and loan /see the story here http://www.xpatloop.com/news/63685 -sorry, but the editor has some bugs now/, – a couple of NGO’s, dealing with transparency have started to run a small scale email campaign, to get different data, related to the planned investment.
A few hundreds of emails has resulted a big scandal in the Hungarian political arena, and saved 35billion Euros for Hungary.
Writing an email, signing a petition does worth the time investment of a few minutes. Although, there might be only 1 from 1000 cases to produce such a big saving, but we have to be aware and spend some time to scan trough our facebook group messages and emails.
A few minutes every day can make us better e-and-non-e citizens!
Posted in News, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
 |
18. March 2010 – 16:24 by Simone Gerdesmeier
|
Social Networks are not only a place to meet and greet your friends online. They are becoming more and more ubiquitous and especially – but not only – for the young generation they are an alternative tool for sharing information and news. Some Social Networks promote the exchange about political topics with special tools. Let’s take Facebook for example: Facebook members can not only write on their friend’s walls, share personal messages, and follow their friend’s timeline; users can also create or become members of groups and feature so called causes. In this way they express their political views, take part in political discussion or simply show their support for certain causes on their profile.
Facebook members use group feature to discuss about the European Union
Facebook does not provide concrete figures about how many groups deal with political topics. But there are a lot of them, creating a buzz about current political events as well as about long-term processes. Given the mass of users located in the European Union, it’s hardly surprising that a number of groups are also concerned with specific European topics. If searching for the term “European Union”, you get far more than 500 results, including groups like FOR A “EUROPEAN UNION” NETWORK, At least 400 million EU citizens don ‘t want Turkey in European Union !!!!, Females In Front – EU or anti-European groups like I Declare Myself Not a Citizen of the European Union.
Looking at this lively group culture, the questions pops up: Can social media like Facebook help to create a European Identity?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
|
|
17. March 2010 – 11:56 by Centre for E-Government
|
The Eurodoc is a conference providing a framework for young European researchers from multiple disciplines. The annual meeting took place in Vienna from March 11-15, 2010. Young researchers from all over Europe were meeting to engage in interdisciplinary communication, networking and workshops. One of them, “Science 2.0″, was dealing with opportunities to carry out research activities in the open from the very beginning.
Open Science throughout the complete research process
The workshop was lead by Daniel Mietchen, a biologist who is striving to do his research and teaching in the open as far as possible.
While scientists have gloried in the disruptive effect that the Web is having on publishers and libraries, with many fields strongly pushing open publication models, we are much more resistant to letting it be a disruptive force in the practice of our disciplines. (James Hendle)
Although scientific research is a collaborative endeavour which would greatly benefit from such direct interactions between participants, few researchers have started to explore the possibilities of the Web in areas they are not familiar with. The workshop addressed how science would look like if researchers would be less resistant to the new opportunities. Web 2.0 should be combined with scientific methods and many such combinations are currently being explored. Of special interest are those who allow to make the research more widely accessible.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Events | No Comments »
 |
12. March 2010 – 19:42 by Olga Lacigova - 21c
|
The eCitizen 2.0 project funded by the InterReg IV Call officially kicked off on the 16th of February in Tampere, Finland. eCitizen 2.0 is a follow up of Interreg 3C funded Challenge of eCitizen (2005-2007) which promoted interregional collaboration on eGovernment development. eCitizen 2.0 led by the Baltic Institute of Finland brings together 11 Local Authorities from four regions of Europe to stimulate new Web 2.0-inspired approaches to citizen-centred and driven service delivery.
Over the next three years partners will regularly meet in joint seminars to discuss key issues, challenges and opportunities in eParticipation and will explore the designated sub-themes for the end-of-project online manual on eParticipation. Partners will also be exposed to state-of-the-art development in eGovernment on their Study Tours across Europe. The project is designed to enhance direct collaboration and peer learning between more and less experience project partners.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
