The Roadmap to e‐Democracy in Arab Spring Countries via Social Networks
Hany Abdelghaffar and Lobna Sameer German University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt Hany. Ismail @ guc. edu. eg Lobna. Sameer @ guc. edu. eg
Abstract: Electronic democracy has been in use in many countries around the world with mixed success. With the power of the web 2.0 technologies, there are more opportunities to enhance the democratic process through the use of social networking tools. Social networks showed potential for facilitating democracy and democratic change during the Arab spring revolutions, suggesting that they could be utilized as an e‐democracy tool. This research proposed a new model of how the decision making process for local governments in Arab spring countries could be improved via social networks. Quantitative approach was used to investigate how the use of a social network amongst people living in the same suburb could improve decision‐making on the local level. Findings showed that awareness building, deliberation and consultation factors could be used to affect the decision making for their local governments.
Keywords: e‐democracy, social networks, decision making, Arab spring
1. Introduction
Electronic democracy( e‐democracy) is a way to engage citizens and politicians with their government through Information and Communication Technology( ICTs)( Riley and Law, 2003). Its main objective is to change citizens from being passive to become active and to engage in the democratic processes in their governments( Lee and Berry, 2011). Recently citizens in the Arab spring areas, specifically in Egypt, demonstrated how the different ICTs could be used as tools of democracy and political change. Protestors used social networking sites, mobile phones and text messaging to bring about change in their countries( Arthur, 2011; Shenker, 2011).
Web 2.0 is one of the technologies that could potentially have an impact on achieving e‐democracy( Chadwick, 2008; Hull et al, 2010). The different web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, wikis, and blogs are available for governments to interact with citizens for very cheap costs( Hull et al, 2010). Nevertheless; some governments lack the motivation to adopt new web 2.0 technologies. On the other hand, citizens are moving from using the traditional bureaucratic means of information sharing to use new web 2.0 technologies such as social networks. This movement towards the use of social networks is hard for governments to control( Murugesan, 2007). Social networks help people to group their opinions and improve the public policy decision making which will lead to improving the democratic process and to reshaping public services( Chadwick, 2003; Flak et al, 2005).
This paper is presenting a model of how governments can use social networks to improve their decisionmaking and consider citizens’ opinions in decision making on the local level. Accordingly, the paper is aiming to answer the following research question: How social networks support the local government decision making to enhance e‐democracy? The paper structure starts by presenting the theoretical background for understanding e‐democracy followed by proposing the suggested e‐democracy model. This is followed by the methodology used in research and ended by the discussion section.
2. Theoretical background
E‐democracy is about how citizens add to the decision making process of their governments through the use of the ICTs. It could be treated as a tool or a mean of providing a system that empowers citizens to say their opinions regarding government issues( Mahrer and Krimmer, 2005). Several benefits could be achieved from e‐democracy. It enhances participation and inclusion of citizens in the political life( Riley and Law, 2003; Thomas and Streib, 2005). Citizens can have their input into the decisions made by their government which shifts the communications methods from one way of communications to become a two way( Stahl, 2005).
There are different classifications of e‐democracy( Paivarinta and Saebo, 2006). Partisan e‐democracy is one of the e‐democracy classifications that focuses on the implicit and embedded citizen participation and contribution in the decision making process. Another type is the direct e‐democracy which focuses on how the
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