3.4 Campaigning and awareness building
Hany Abdelghaffar and Lobna Sameer
ICT could be used by government organizations for campaigns to achieve certain goals such as organizing election campaign and increasing awareness of a certain issue ( Paivarinta and Sæbo , 2006 ). Since social networks allow for two way communications between the campaign organizers and the public , and vice versa , it can be an effective campaigning tool in elections ( Williams and Gulati , 2007 ). Activists believe that the features of social networks would make campaigning cheaper and more effective ( Williams and Gulati , 2007 ). Obama ’ s presidential campaign in 2008 is a clear example of how he used the internet and specifically social networks in campaigning . Social networks such as MySpace , Facebook , and Youtube were utilized in connecting with the public , seeking volunteers and better organizing the activities of the campaign ( Kes‐Erkul and Erkul , 2009 ).
Social networks campaigns and awareness building activities have especially shown a transformational role of the society . The Arab spring revolutions in 2011 emphasize the importance of campaigning and awareness building via social networks ( Lotan , et all , 2011 ). Social networks illustrated their reach amongst citizens and how they helped in changing the political system in several countries . For example , Facebook and Twitter had a strong influence on grouping protesters during the Egyptian revolution in 2011 ( Lotan , et all , 2011 ; Timeline , 2011 ) that forced the Egyptian government to cut down the Internet connection to minimize the influence of the social networks on citizens ( Timeline , 2011 ). Based on this , we can conclude that campaigning and awareness building are essential during the contemplation and action stages of change . For instance , in the Egyptian revolution , any successful change required good campaigning in the contemplation stage which should continue at the action stage to make sure that the actual action on ground is matching its goals .
Since social networks have already shown a great impact in organizing campaigns and change , this research proposes that the use of social networks would have massive impact in campaigning and awareness for the community . It is assumed that citizens would be willing to use social networks in organizing social campaigns related to local political matters . Hence , we hypothesize that :
H5 : Campaigning via social networks significantly influences the local government decision making .
H6 : Build awareness via social networks significantly influences the local government decision making .
Table 1 below : presents each of the variables measure through the developed hypothesis and their definition . Table 1 : Constructs summary
Variable |
Definition |
References |
Information Provision |
‐ provision of laws , regulations , issues of interest etc online
‐ takes a bottom down approach from government to citizens
|
Coleman and Norris , 2005
Riley and Law , 2003
Williamson , 2007
|
Awareness Building |
‐ Political awareness in general .
‐ Awareness of local issues .
|
Williamson , 2007 |
Deliberation
Consultation
Campaigning
Community building
‐ Discussion of political matters amongst citizens
‐ government ’ s discussions of matter of concern with the citizens ‐ initiated by the government ‐ aims at helping the government with taking a decision regarding the issue at discussion ‐ citizens ability to organize themselves ‐ citizen ’ s ability to mobilize themselves in the service of a certain cause
‐ The ability of citizens to build communities amongst themselves These communities share a common set of values , causes or ideologies
Chadwick , 2003 Riley and Law , 2003 Williamson , 2007
Kersten , 2004 Caldow , 2004 Williamson , 2007
Coleman and Norris , 2005 Päivärinta and Sæbø , 2006 Williamson , 2007
Paivarinta and Sæbo , 2006 Birdsall , 2007 Murugesan , 2007
5