What Do the People Think?: E-Petitioning and Policy Decision Making

Catherine Dumas (), Teresa M. Harrison (), Loni Hagen () and Xiaoyi Zhao ()
Additional contact information
Catherine Dumas: University at Albany
Teresa M. Harrison: University at Albany
Loni Hagen: University of South Florida
Xiaoyi Zhao: University at Albany

A chapter in Beyond Bureaucracy, 2017, pp 187-207 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract E-petitioning is a ubiquitous form of online political action that has emerged as a contemporary and potentially effective way for citizens to communicate with their governments about policy issues and that makes public participation in policy discussions more easily accessible. We argue that e-petitioning platforms generate novel types of data and that governments can benefit from the information acquired through various types of analyses. We begin by presenting e-petitioning as a new form of political participation in the context of several different types of national democracies. We suggest that e-petitioning has provided political activists with a new mechanism for collective action. From there we consider four popular national e-petitioning platforms in the countries of Scotland, Great Britain, Germany, and the USA. We discuss the design features and submission processes of the different platforms and how they generate different streams of data that governments can use to better understand e-petitioning behavior. We then suggest and illustrate different analytic tools that can be used to explore the characteristics and dynamics of e-petitioning. We conclude by suggesting that government should actively seek ways to interpret and understand this new form of participation and policy discourse.

Keywords: Social Network Analysis; Political Participation; Application Programming Interface; Online Social Network; Discussion Forum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:paitcp:978-3-319-54142-6_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319541426

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-54142-6_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Public Administration and Information Technology from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().