ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, information and communication technologies (ICT) have been widely used to engage citizens in public policy decision-making at different levels of government around the world. The use of ICT in citizen participation—often called electronic participation (e-participation)—has been touted as a means of lowering citizens’ psychological and physical barriers to access government and, thus, promoting citizen participation. Recently, a growing number of governments has offered various forms of e-participation technologies, such as email alerts and text messages, and even more interactive e-participation technologies, such as online blogs (hereinafter E-blogs), video sharing sites (hereinafter E-video), and social networking sites (hereinafter SNS) to enhance two-way communications between citizens and policy makers and public managers. Such interactive technologies enable government to hear citizens’ voices more effectively, to reach out more to citizens, to improve the quality and quantity of interaction between government and citizens, and to make sound decisions, thus solving policy problems through government–citizen collaboration.
