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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