Anastasia Golubeva and Diana Ishmatova
The same can be applied to e‐participation. e‐Participation requires a shift in citizens’ and decision‐makers’ roles. Reaction of policy makers to the possibility of such changing roles can take various forms from support to resistance, but it is not the only factor that influences the outcome of e‐participation processes. Equally, citizens can also be a limiting or facilitating factor in successful enactment in e‐participation. The latter requires an understanding from the citizens’ side of their new roles, a willing commitment to exercise new responsibilities and to demand the creation of corresponding conditions.
Institutional and political resistance to e‐participation processes was acknowledged as a major problem that connects directly or tangentially to a majority of other e‐participation barriers, such as low political efficacy, a lack of trust, a lack of awareness about public affairs and a lack of motivation to engage.
Revealing obstacles affecting people’ s willingness and ability to be politically involved online helps to understand major challenges of the e‐participation processes, this in turn can be translated into detailed actions to achieve the objectives of e‐participation.
3. The data
The authors explored the attitudes of university students of the Graduate School of Management( GSOM), St. Petersburg State University as they represent relatively wealthy young adults, perfectly fitting the current Internet use pattern in Russia; dominated by younger, wealthier, and urban users.
The data set used in this paper is taken from two internet questionnaire surveys carried out in April 2010 and December 2012 that involved purposive sampling of GSOM undergraduate and graduate students. The total number of participants that completed the questionnaire comprised 199 students from a total number of 676 students enrolled in the undergraduate and graduate programs in 2010 and 187 from a total number of 980 in 2012. The participants were between 18 and 24 years old, in both studies about 30 % were male. Thus, all participants of the survey had incomplete higher education, were of the full legal age and therefore eligible for all forms of public participation including voting. The respondents were either asked to choose answers from a given list with the possibility to extend the list with their own additional considerations, or to grade from 1 to 5 their level of agreement or disagreement with provided statements. Besides the traditional socio‐demographic data, the first part captured the user’ s experience with the Internet. The survey revealed that 100 % of respondents use the Internet on a regular basis and 99 % have home‐based access. Thus, all respondents have access and skills necessary for being engaged in electronic participation initiatives.
The second part contained questions revealing respondents’ current degree of involvement in public participation. The third part of the questionnaire revealed respondents perceived barriers for public participation. In the final part the respondents were asked about their preferred mechanisms of e‐ participation and the basic conditions necessary to ensure respondents’ involvement in e‐participation initiatives.
4. Analysis and assessment of findings
The findings from the survey of young Russian adults presented in this paper reveal respondents’ interest in e‐ participation, and support the initial assumption regarding the potential of ICT to attract new voices to political participation.
The respondents of our survey stated their interest in using at least one e‐participation tool listed in the questionnaire. The most interest was directed to information level participation tools such as online access to government reports and opinion polls, and electronic consultation level tools such as e‐petitioning and online dialogs with politicians and authorities for discussion of regional problems and drawing possible solutions.
Both surveys showed that only 11 % would not use any of the listed e‐participation tools( See Figure 1). 10 % of them are currently not engaged in any kind of public participation activities, so implementation of e‐ participation projects will most probably have little impact if any on the public participation of this category of people.
At the same time, the survey revealed that as much as 38 %( in 2010) and 75 %( in 2012) of those who are currently not engaged in public participation are willing to use at least one of the listed e‐participation tools.
207