Through the Social Web: Citizen-led Participation in Ontario Policy-making

In the mid to late 1990s, many states developed eGovernment programs that included the use of consultation technologies. More recently, the social characteristics of the web have emerged as offering an alternative means for citizen participation, promising more openness and inclusion. In this dissertation I draw upon studies of the policy-making process and media design, to examine the implications of citizen-led production of infrastructures for public participation in policy-making through the social web and within the context of open government discourse. My research methods for this research project were ethnographically informed. I participated in the design and use of social web infrastructures for participation in policy-making as a contributor to open government communities in Ontario, Canada. I also analyzed Hansard records as well as the popular press, and interviewed 15 citizen designers who created social web based infrastructures for public participation in the policy-making of four bills in Ontario. In my research, I develop and use the term citizen designer drawing on the more common phrase of citizen journalist. Both terms suggest that citizens can engage in creative practices to encourage institutions such as government or the mass media to become more participatory. The citizen designers in my project were found to act as policy entrepreneurs, sometimes for particular bills, but more generally for the broader ideal of open government that includes citizen participation. The major finding of this work is that citizens are using an integrated mix of social web tools across multiple policy windows to promote openness and participation. This work contributes to the policy, information and the internet studies literatures on the roles and experiences of internet-savvy policy entrepreneurs who are situated in civil society networks, which are not always tied to formal organizations. This work also expands our understandings of citizenship to include the design and use of the social web in everyday political life.

Department dc:contributor.department

Information Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Karen Louise

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Clement, Andrew

• social media
• internet
• policy
• Canada
• science and technology studies
• information

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Canada

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ca/

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/43729

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/43729