Notes from the EDem10 — 4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010, at the Danube-University Krems, and held in Krems, Austria, on May 6th and 7th, 2010. More notes on this event: edem10.
Communications: Network Society
Social Networking on Climate Change: The IDEAL-EU Experience
Francesco Molinari and Erika Porquier
Deployment of a multilingual Social Networking Platform in three European Regions (Catalonia, Poitou-Charentes and Tuscany) dealing with the issue of climate change and energy policy-making at the level of the European Parliament (http://www.ideal-debate.eu).
Research questions:
- Are computer-based SNS valid extensions for F2F interaction?
- Can they be of use for policitians and policy-makers?
- Are there any structural differences between a EU and US approach?
Social Networking Sites are growing in audience and in amount of time spent in them. But it is problable (according to data) that though being used really intensivelly, SNS are still used by a minority: they pattern of adoption differs from most other online applications.
And it seems that Dunbar’s number (n=150) also applies to SNS.
Chris Kelly (2007) stated that there are five impact areas of social networking sites in US politics: branding, voter registration, fundraising, volunteering and voter turnout.
The project
The project featured a social networking site to debate climate change. Topics were launched and moderated by community facilitators.
Five characters of successful social networking sites in EU/US politics:
- Specialist rather than generalist
- Top down (by government initiative, rather than bottom up (party campaign)
- Dealing with policy issues, rather tahn electoral aims
- Presence of lively debates increases reputation and attractiveness, thus Google driven traffic (only EU)
- They can induce mass imitation and multiplicative effects (only EU)
“Vote Rush” (US) vs. “Bar Chat” (EU).
Recommendations:
- Limited in scope, single issue
- Aiming at structural change in behaviour of people
E-Government and Social Media: The Queensland Government’s MYQ2 Initiative
Matthew Allen and Mark Balnaves, Curtin University of Technology
- Toward Q2: information-oriented website with markers of “interaction” but little action.
- MyQ2: informatics in action, commitments, communications, citizens adopting behaviours aligned with governmental goals.
MyQ2 lets you create a “commitment” on the website (i.e. a task you’ll perform, a goal you pretend to achieve, etc.) and you can make it public, state why it is important, comment it, be reminded about it, etc.
Shift from understanding e-government as “talking” to understanding e-government as “acting”.
Other reactions on this session
- EDem10 – Day 1 – #2
- Building Issue-Based Social Networks in Europe
- Positioning Citizens as Agents of Governance: MyQ2
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